the last word
The Five Biggest Teamwork Ills
WHAT’S HOLDING YOUR TEAMS BACK AND HOW TO FIX IT
By Dr. Mario Moussa, Dr. Derek Newberry and Madeline Boyer
Twisting your features into a mask
of pain, you dig your heels into the
soft grass. A rope tears into your
palms. A clear voice speaks to you
amid the many confused thoughts swirling
in your head: “What am I learning from
this experience?”
If you’re like many who have done this
exercise at a corporate retreat, you should
be learning about teamwork. As others
join you, the collective rope-pulling effort
seems to demonstrate the point. Little by lit-tle,
the boulder starts moving until it nudges
over the 30-foot mark. Cheers erupt.
But you notice something. With each
additional person who contributes to the
effort, the boulder moves faster, but not as
fast as you would have imagined. By the
time the tenth person steps up, you feel the
group is barely pulling harder than when it
was only six, even though everyone seems
to be working hard.
This well-documented phenomenon,
social loafing, is an issue that plagues any
group of individuals working together, but
it isn’t the only one. Knowing what to look
out for can be half the battle.
1. OVEREMPHASIZING
ABSTRACT GOALS
People like to talk about transcendent
goals for a reason. Steve Jobs was known
for his inspiring keynote talks that em-phasized
changing the world. Such goals
are uplifting, and can make work feel more
meaningful. But if team members don’t un-derstand
what’s in it for them, it can be hard
to commit to working towards team goals.
Teamwork Rx: Make sure that big, col-lective
goals align with small, personal
commitments that drive performance.
2. UNDEREMPHASIZING ROLES
Many teams think that merely getting the
right talent in play is all that it takes for a
team to be successful. Research has shown,
though, that you need clear structure and
well-defined interdependent roles in order
to best leverage the strengths of those on
your team.
Teamwork Rx: Well-structured teams
generally outperform those with more raw
talent – strength, skill or IQ. Take time to
find the roles and structure that make sense
for your team.
3. MAKING TOO MANY RULES
Human beings are rule-making machines
– it is what allows us to interact as social be-ings.
Often the tendency in teams is to try
to plan for every possible situation and cre-ate
rules for all potential contingencies. This
is both time-consuming and ineffective.
Teamwork Rx: Focus on the few rules that
are likely to have the biggest impact on your
team’s culture and performance: informa-tion-
sharing, decision-making and conflict
resolution.
4. IGNORING REFLECTION
One of the major cognitive biases rec-ognized
by research is outcome bias: if
you’re successful, you don’t really reflect
on what went well or could have gone
better. However, reflection is as impera-tive
when things are going well as they are
when they’re not. Too often, teams reserve
formal reflection for annual retreats or
quarterly reviews, when it needs to be tak-ing
place with much more frequency.
Teamwork Rx: Remember that check-ins
need not always be huge affairs reserved for
daylong retreats – they can be as simple as a
weekly stand-up meeting.
5. FAILING TO SELL THE
CHANGE
You can be right, but ultimately still be
unsuccessful. Such was the case for Lloyd
Braun, the ABC executive who was the
champion and driving force behind the
television show, Lost. Braun was so con-vinced
that his idea would be a hit, he
barreled through green-lighting the
most expensive television pilot budget
to that date. He did not take the time
to get others on board with his vision,
and even though his intuition was cor-rect,
he was fired before the show even
premiered.
Teamwork Rx: Strength of will and cha-risma
are not enough to push through change
– work hard to get buy-in so that people want
to come along with you.
In the end, good teaming is being mind-ful
about working together, and making
sure to check in frequently to close the
gaps between what you say you want to do
and what you’re actually doing. n
Dr. Mario Moussa, Dr. Derek Newberry
and Madeline Boyer are the authors of
Committed Teams: Three Steps to
Inspiring Passion and Performance.
Lightspring/Shutterstock.com
48 ❚ JULY/AUGUST 2016 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL
