I started studying the art and science of teams and collaboration 20 years ago, and the research I relied on had been going on for more than 50 years before that! Yet, in just the past week, the topic of teams and collaboration seem to be popping up everywhere – the cover story on the Nov-Dec issue of Harvard Business Review; a report from Reflective on the Future of Teamwork; numerous posts on LinkedIn (cute one by SABIC features a video of kids building a playscape). So why, after decades of research and practice and presentations insisting that collaboration is a “normal human drive that children understand without being told” are we still trying to figure out how to design and lead effective teams?
I have a few theories. Some are probably even supported by research. (feel free to send citations to [email protected])
Theory #1: Collaboration is a skill, not an instinct. Despite being social animals with a desire to connect, human children are not born knowing how to collaborate. They learn collaboration (or don’t) from the people who raise them, and the rules of collaboration vary from one family to the next. So like effective communication, collaboration is a skill that must be learned and re-learned as each new generation enters the workforce.
Theory #2: The social ideals for collaboration and leadership are continually changing. For instance, my parents and grandparents idealized General George Patton and “Give ’em hell” Harry Truman and the screen personas of Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne – men who epitomized the ideals of the time but who would find themselves under continual HR scrutiny today. (You’ll notice no women are on this list.) So even if every child learns a bit about leadership and collaboration at home and/or in school, we don’t all learn the same things, and the lessons vary from one decade to the next.
Theory #3: The conditions of “teaming” continue to change as well. When teams research began, team members worked face-to-face, typically participating in one departmental team at a time. Next came cross-functional teams, still face-to-face, but bridging the departmental boundary. Then came self-directed work teams – often within the department but now with less supervisory oversight. Then virtual teams – across departments, locations, even organizations. And finally global virtual teams, which are now a taken-for-granted condition of working in most large corporations. Each evolution in team configuration also ushered in – or was ushered in by – an ever-increasing diversity of both people and technologies, within organizations and in the marketplace.
So today’s teams are a new breed calling for new skills and practices. No wonder that you might be finding your management toolkit stretched to its limits. At the same time, the basic human capacities involved in collaboration haven’t changed much, and some insights from 40-plus-year old research endure:
- How a team begins sets the tone for the first half of their work together. A rocky or ambiguous launch is likely to yield miscommunication at best, disengagement at worst. A little time invested in planning and executing an effective launch will pay off many times over in productivity and will also build the organization’s collaboration capacity for future projects. (See research by Connie Gersick and Richard Hackman)
- A clear goal and clear participation expectations greatly increase the likelihood of success. Does each team member know the goal for this team – what they are to deliver to whom by when and, perhaps most importantly for maximum effectiveness – why? While we’re on the “why?” question – why was each team member asked to join this team? What unique contribution were they expected to make? Who should they contact if/when they run into roadblocks and how should they reach that person? These all seem like “duh!” sorts of issues, but hundreds of teams around the world are squandering organizational resources on a daily basis basis because these questions haven’t been answered. Assembled pros are more than capable of “figuring it out as we go,” but the time and energy wasted on false starts and rework is staggering.
- Good meeting facilitation makes a difference. Specifically, facilitation strategies (eg, de Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats”) that ensure everyone is given the opportunity to contribute and be heard increase both engagement and effectiveness.
- The more virtual the team, the more important the enabling structures. In the absence of visual cues and face-to-face hallway conversations, the importance of clear goals and norms around communication channels, information sharing, and decision-making become all the more important than ever for keeping everyone on the same page and headed the same direction.
- Conflict will occur. Anticipating and agreeing on norms for managing conflict up front can decrease the time and energy required to address and recover from conflict later on.
These are just a sampling of the enduring principles. If you are an Org Development/HR manager with responsibility for talent development in your organization, do check out Francesca Gino’s article, “Cracking the Code of Sustained Collaboration,” in the Nov/Dec 2019 Harvard Business Review. She does a great job of identifying key skills required for collaborating effectively regardless of the team composition or goal.
What are you doing to build your own and your team’s collaborative capacity? Please send us a note via [email protected]. it’s something we can all get better at.
Onward ho!
ps – this post was originally published as an article on LinkedIn.
