Building a Winning Management Team. A good team structure is the best way to ensure your organisation flourishes in these challenging economic times. The current business environment requires teams that can deliver on today’s challenges, evolve collectively and adapt to take on more complex tasks in the future. But the question is, “What makes up a good team?”
Many people believe that effective teams are created by good leaders. Leaders who adopt a democratic leadership approach which gives all team members a voice and the space to work together amicably. However, this is not necessarily the case. Research into team performance points more specifically to the quality of the team’s structure. This applies to all teams in an organisation, especially management teams.
The late J. Richard Hackman, a Harvard professor, who specialised in the research of management team performance, leadership effectiveness, and the design of self-managed organisations and teams, suggests that winning teams achieve three goals. They ensure individuals can grow by being part of the team, that teams grow stronger through effective teamwork, and that the work the team does has the primary objective of delivering on its clients’ or customers’ needs and expectations. Ultimately by putting the customer front of mind, the performance of the team, and its individual members, improves.
Designing the right team
Building a winning management team needs to be designed in a way that promotes teamwork. Research into team behaviour has identified three essential structural elements that promote people working together effectively. These are:
- Understanding the role of the team and the work it must perform
- Defined parameters to govern the team and team composition
- Identifying the primary and secondary norms of behaviour that create productive teams and ultimately enhance the prospect of achieving a positive outcome for the customer
The team’s work
Teamwork is successful when three motivators are in place. They know the work they do matters. The team’s role is defined and what they need to achieve is clearly articulated. They are given the freedom to carry out their work without undue interference and are rewarded with unbiased feedback about the job they are performing. Teamwork is meaningful to an organisation when the team can perform varied tasks, their delivery is measurable, and the finished product satisfies customer expectation.
Team parameters and composition
The purpose of the team will determine its composition and the parameters that govern it. However, irrespective of the team’s function, some parameters are consistent in all well-constituted teams. These include:
- Team membership is clearly defined, and everyone knows why they have been asked to participate
- Each team member has a clearly defined role and is accountable for the outcome of that role
- Teams should be small enough to be agile, yet big enough to adequately execute the work. Research has found smaller teams of four or five people are often more effective than larger ones
- Teams should be diverse to promote rigorous collaboration and debate in order to produce a better product or offering
Identifying primary and secondary norms of behaviour
Norms specify which behaviours are acceptable and unacceptable within a group. Behaviour that is regarded as acceptable and appropriate is reinforced, whereas unacceptable or inappropriate behaviour is discouraged. Norms are critical for team structure as they are a powerful and efficient way of coordinating and regulating team behaviour. Teams need to consider both primary and secondary norms of behaviour.
Primary norms are outwardly focused and look at delivery and results. They focus the team’s attention on promoting any activity that will enhance the prospect of achieving the desired outcome for the customer. Primary norms need to be deliberately set, implemented, and emphasised.
Secondary norms which are inwardly focused, are the behaviours that team members believe are appropriate and important enough to regulate. Secondary norms are about maintaining harmonious interpersonal interaction that promote teamwork and are usually self-regulated.
While both sets of norms are important, many organisations tend to focus too much on the secondary norms that seek to encourage harmony and a happy team culture; often to the detriment of behaviour that promotes effective product delivery. Winning management teams are those that strike a balance between teams being accountable for meeting customer expectations in terms of product or service delivery, while still ensuring that the team is able to work well together.
Coaching for teamwork
Understanding how the structure of teams can enhance productivity outcomes within an organisation is a critical element of business coaching. The GROW coaching team will always work with clients to understand the different team scenarios within their businesses. All too often we find that many organisations do not have clear management team structure at all. And where there is not a clear team structure, we find that these teams often operate in departmental silos.
Our role as coaches is to help our clients build winning teams that work interdependently with all teams in the organisation. The first step is to build a well-defined management team that works effectively as a unit. This team can then encourage effective teamwork across the business. We encourage clients to make their management team jointly accountable for delivering on the company’s mandate which ultimate sees them create a product or service that meets customer expectations.
Business coaching is about helping people build well-functioning, sustainable businesses. Teams form an integral part of that mandate. We are working to ensure that we design teams that develop as a unit and execute their function better. We start with the end in mind.
