The current thinking about employee engagement is somewhat misguided since leaders tend to get all of the blame for having disengaged employees. Missing from this perspective is the fact that team members also bear some responsibility for where they fall on the disengagement-engagement continuum. All leaders can do is create an environment conducive to team member Buy-In; after that, it is up to each team member to decide to become fully engaged and committed to team success. There are three things that leaders can do to foster Buy-in: 1) establish credibility, 2) paint a compelling picture of the future, and 3) empower team members.

Establish Credibility. Interviews with thousands of people and over a million 360-degree feedback ratings show that credibility is a critical component of leader effectiveness and team success. Credibility can be defined as the degree to which members believe in the leader; it has two components—trust and expertise. Trust concerns building strong relationships with others, and expertise concerns having the relevant knowledge and skills. Because trust and expertise are independent, leaders and members can have a variety of high and low combinations.

The fact that trust and expertise are both needed to establish credibility leads to interesting group dynamics. For example, teams often recruit new leaders and members because they possess needed expertise, but they may not be listened to until the other members begin to trust them. If seasoned veterans have the required knowledge and skill set, but are difficult to work with, they will not influence decision-making. Leaders who want to improve their credibility need (at least) moderate levels of relevant expertise and team members must be able to trust them.

Leaders must then persuade the team that each member has the expertise needed to perform in their respective roles. This will build trust between team members and enhance group cohesiveness. If any team member lacks credibility, then Buy-In will suffer and the team may fail.  Leaders can help those players who lack credibility by gaining the trust of other team members and providing additional coaching or training.

Paint a Compelling Vision of the Future. Some people are gifted orators who can inspire others. Research shows that leaders who paint powerful visions of the future have subordinates who exert extra effort towards team and group goals. However, few leaders provide clear visions for their teams or groups. When asked to describe their vision for their teams, most leaders are stumped but may make lengthy presentations. It is somewhat ironic that people work hard to attain leadership positions but cannot explain why anyone should join their teams. When President George H. W. Bush was running for a second term in office, his staff asked him what his vision was for his second term.  He responded, “Vision, vision, what is this vision thing?”  Most observers believe that is what cost him the election.

Most leaders would communicate persuasive visions for their teams if they knew how to do it properly—the “vision gap” is a function of knowledge not motivation. Leaders need to keep five factors in mind when creating and explaining their visions for the future: 1) honor the past, 2) be realistic about the present, 3) provide hope for the future, 4) capitalize on stories and metaphors, and 5) use emotional energy during delivery.

Empower Team Members. Empowerment stands on two legs: delegation and development. Team members feel empowered when they have the freedom to make decisions that fall within their roles and responsibilities. Team members feel dispirited when they are micromanaged. Leaders can do several things to empower team members. The first step is to ensure that team members have clear roles—this will define the needed knowledge, skills, and decision-making responsibilities. Involving members in team decisions also improves empowerment, as members who contribute to the decision-making and create the action plans will have higher levels of Buy-In than those who do not participate in these activities. Involved team members are those most committed to and engaged in team success. 

One important component of the Rocket Model© is Buy-In, which concerns the degree to which leaders and members are committed to and engaged in team goals, roles, norms, and success. There is an important difference between member commitment and engagement. A United States Marine corporal may be very committed to The Corps and protecting the United States, yet he may not be particularly engaged while walking guard duty at Camp Pendleton. In this scenario, the corporal will do the minimum and nothing more. Likewise, team members may be committed to the team and its goals yet not engage in the tasks needed to succeed. The Holy Grail for leaders is to create teams whose members are both committed to and fully engaged in the tasks needed to succeed.

Team members with high levels of commitment and engagement will work toward team goals, take their roles and responsibilities seriously, adhere to team norms, and do what is needed to help their teams and groups win. Team and group members with low levels of commitment and engagement may publicly agree to decisions but privately ignore them. They will also be unconcerned with achieving team and group goals. Executive leadership teams avoid conflict, so a lack of Buy-In may not be apparent in their meetings. However, they will use proxies to fight their battles, which will start a chain of inter-department finger pointing: the sales leaders may complain that R&D designs products that nobody wants; leaders in R&D will blame operations for building products with poor quality; both groups will blame IT for poor software systems, etc. Executive team members smile and compliment each other’s accomplishments, even though outside the boardroom, Rome is burning.

The lack of Buy-In is not confined to executive teams – any team can have members who are not committed to success. Uncommitted and disengaged members will focus on their own agendas and blame others when things go wrong. When Buy-In is lacking, leaders will hear: “It wasn’t my fault, I got my part done” or “I never agreed with that decision.” Buy-In is the rocket fuel for team success. Just as rockets with more fuel carry heavier payloads, teams with greater Buy-In can achieve more difficult goals. The opposite can be found when member Buy-In is low.

Buy-In is a component of the Rocket Model© where there are differences between groups and teams. Group members only need to buy in to their individual roles and goals; team members need to buy in to their team norms and goals, be willing to cooperate and do joint work, and internalize the idea of shared fates. In a group, if members do not have high levels of Buy-In, they may fail to achieve their individual goals, but this may not impact the group’s overall success. Teams, however, depend on cooperation and joint work to succeed. Teams with even one or two low Buy-In members (think Slackers or Criticizers) will lose. This difference between teams and groups has important implications for leaders.

Teams have many norms, some of which might involve safety, expected work hours, e-mail inquiry response times, or meeting attendance. Research shows that some norms are more important than others; the rules governing a team’s operating rhythm, communication, decision-making, and accountability norms have the biggest impact on team cohesiveness and performance. 

A team’s operating rhythm concerns the frequency and management of team meetings, and a surprisingly high number of leaders do not know how to run efficient team meetings. Communication may be a problem if team members complain about being in the dark, confidential conversations being shared with outsiders, or that difficult topics never get raised. Decision-making can be a problem when leaders make autocratic decisions or, conversely, groups make too many decisions by consensus. Leaders who play favorites or fail to hold members accountable for their performance or misbehavior usually have problems with team morale and performance.  

Given the issues surrounding sub-standard performance and norm violations, every group and team will need a sheriff. Although members can play the role of team disciplinarian (i.e., shop stewards, athletic team captains, and Non-Commissioned Officers), more often than not the leaders must play this role. Unlike teams populated with Slackers, Criticizers, and Brown-Nosers, leaders who set clear expectations, hold members accountable, and treat people fairly usually attract and/or retain Self-Starters. If leaders are unwilling to uphold standards and hold people accountable for their performance, they will create dysfunctional teams that fail to achieve their goals. Establishing an explicit team accountability norm is important since few things can wreck team morale more quickly than favoritism. When members detect foul play, they can be expected to spend time complaining about the situations rather than doing what is needed for their teams to succeed. A related but even more prevalent problem for groups and teams is a lack of consequences. Too many leaders are more concerned about winning popularity contests than beating other teams, and are reluctant to hold members accountable for sub-standard performance and norm violations. Leaders who play favorites or fail to maintain standards will eventually have teams full of Brown-Nosers, Slackers, and Criticizers.

Norms are unwritten rules that guide human behavior. Examples include elevator and airport security line etiquette. Most people “know” what to do when entering an elevator full of strangers: enter the elevator, face the door, don’t make eye contact or engage in conversation, and leave quickly when reaching the desired floor. In airport security lines: take a bin; quickly fill it with shoes, jackets, laptops, liquids, etc.; put the bin and any luggage on the conveyor belt; walk through the body scanner; and then like Lucille Ball in the candy factory, reassemble everything as quickly as possible. Like all norms, those governing elevator and security line behavior are not written down but everyone is expected to abide by them. Those who don’t observe the norms are considered aberrant.

How do norms relate to building teams? Context describes what situations face the team; Mission, what the team is to accomplish; Talent, what roles team members’ play; and Norms, how the team gets things done. Norms develop as soon as a group of people gets together. Within an hour or so of first meeting, groups will develop rules for greeting and communicating, making decisions, and setting follow-up meetings. The longer a group has been together, the more entrenched its norms become. Some groups even develop their own language in the form of TLAs (three letter acronyms). Seating arrangements, pecking orders, meeting schedules and behaviors, dress codes, presentation formats and styles, decision-making processes, work hand-offs, and performance standards are all common team norms.  Norms are typically obvious to outsiders but often invisible to insiders. Unfortunately a team’s “rules of the road” are usually implicit, leading newbies to annoy more seasoned team members by wearing the “wrong” clothes, sitting in the “wrong” seats, or raising “forbidden” topics. 

Although they are implicit, norms potently affect team member behavior and represent a powerful lever that leaders can use to change team and group dynamics. Surprisingly, we find that Norms are often one of the lowest scoring components in the Rocket Model©, and many leaders are either oblivious to the norms that are in effect, or unaware of how to change them. It is critically important that leaders create explicit team norms that are aligned with team goals and roles.

Bad followership can destroy team performance. Followership concerns the level of engagement and critical thinking skills demonstrated by team and group members. A group member may have all the right skills and be in the right role, yet sit in the corner and pout rather than perform. Other members may have fewer skills but work hard and offer good ideas for improving processes which, ultimately, improves team functioning. 

As seen in the diagram, engagement and critical thinking are independent dimensions of followership. These two dimensions can be divided into four followership types: Self-Starters, Brown-Nosers, Slackers, and Criticizers. The power of the model becomes obvious when leaders use it to assess the follower types on their team or group. Knowing members’ types will provide leaders with insights on how best to manage them since each type should be approached differently. . 

Self-Starters, such as Bob and Vonda, are individuals who are passionate about working on the team and will try to make it successful. They constantly think of ways to improve team performance by raising issues, developing solutions, and showing enthusiasm. When they encounter problems, they resolve issues and then tell their leaders what they have done rather than waiting to be told what to do. This follower type will improve their leaders’ performance by offering opinions before, and providing constructive feedback after, bad decisions. Self-Starters are critical to the performance of teams and are the most effective follower type.

Brown-Nosers such as Ken and Sharon have a strong work ethic but lack critical thinking skills. Brown-Nosers are dutiful and conscientious, rarely point out problems, raise objections, or make waves, and do whatever they can to please their boss. Brown-Nosers constantly check with their leaders and operate by seeking permission rather than forgiveness. Leaders who feel entitled, think they are hot, or think they are the only ones capable of developing solutions, often surround themselves with Brown-Nosers because suck-ups constantly flatter their great bosses. Brown-Nosers often go far in organizations, particularly in those that lack objective performance metrics. Organizations lacking clear measures of performance often make personnel decisions based on politics, and Brown-Nosers play politics very well.

Slackers don’t work very hard, think they deserve a paycheck for just showing up, and believe it is the leader’s job to solve problems. Slackers are clever at avoiding work, often disappear for hours, look busy but get little done, have good excuses for not completing projects, and spend more effort finding ways to avoid finishing tasks than they would by just doing them. Slackers are “stealth employees” who are happy to spend their time surfing the Internet, shopping online, gossiping with co-workers, and taking breaks with no concern for their jobs.

Criticizers are followers with strong thinking skills who are disengaged. Rather than directing their analytical skills to productive outcomes, they find fault in anything their leaders and organizations do. Criticizers educate co-workers about their leaders’ shortcomings, how change efforts will fail, how poorly their organizations compare to the competition, and how management ignores their suggestions. In terms of their impact on team and organizational performance, they are the most dangerous of the four types because their personal mission is to create dissent. If not managed properly, these team killers can take over teams and entire departments!

Leaders can use the followership model to understand group dynamics and what they need to do to improve team talent within any team or group. These four follower types are dynamic—they can and do change over time. Members who were once Self-Starters can become Criticizers and vice-versa. Because follower types are dynamic, leaders should periodically assess their own behavior and use the followership model to evaluate the impact it is having on the people in their groups.

By Gordon Curphy
Curphy Consulting Corporation
Guest blogger and co-author of The Rocket Model

Armies with the best soldiers usually win wars, and sports teams with the best athletes usually win championships. Everyone knows how important it is to pick the right people for a team, yet this is an area where leaders woefully fall short. Far too often team members are selected because of empire building and politics rather than skills and experience. A simple way to determine whether a team or group is staffed properly is for leaders to ask themselves these five right questions:

• Does the team have the right number of people?
• Does the team have the right structure?
• Do team members have the right skills?
• Are team members in the right roles?
• Are people on the team for the right reasons?

Overly inclusive or empire building leaders often make the mistake of having too many people on a team, which has a negative impact on team efficiency and effectiveness. Many leaders also make the mistake of organizing their teams around their favorites rather than letting the nature of the work drive team structure. Sometimes, members do not have the right skills or are not in the right roles, which also has a negative impact on the team’s ability to win. Team performance usually suffers whenever anyone is on the team solely because of favoritism or political expedience. 

Although leaders can ask themselves the five right questions at any time, it is best to do this after team context and goals have been determined, as these are critical determinants of team talent. Leaders who answer these questions before team context and goals are set are usually just making rationalizations for their favorites.

Perhaps one of the most overlooked yet most important actions of team functioning is setting team goals. Far too many teams have  poorly defined goals or none at all. The goals of a group or team should determine:

• Size, skill requirements, roles and responsibilities (Talent)
• How often it meets, makes decisions and communicates (Norms)
• The level of engagement needed (Buy-In)
• Resource needs (Power)
• Espirit de corps and conflict resolution (Morale)
• How to win (Results)

Team and group goals define what is to be accomplished, when it needs to be accomplished, and how to know when it is accomplished. Therefore leaders must spend time developing well-defined goals and metrics for their groups and teams if they want to succeed.

Goals also determine whether members operate as a group or a team. If members do not work together, or share common identities or fates, then they need to operate as a group. Conversely, they may need to operate as a team if the members’ fates are tied to the accomplishment of the same goal and collaboration is necessary for success. Having well-defined goals, metrics, and benchmarks will improve both team and group performance because everyone will know what is required. 

There are several other aspects of team goals worth noting. First, team goals drive team behavior; individual goals drive individual behavior. Leaders should not expect direct reports to work collaboratively if all the goals and rewards are based on individual performance. Second, team goals should be measurable and include a mix of leading and lagging indicators. Finally, team goals also need to include both internal and external benchmarks. Teams that only measure themselves against past performance may look like they are winning all the battles but, in fact, may be losing the war with competitors.

Most organizations have something called an executive or senior leadership team that typically ranges in size from 6-15 people. It consists of the CEO,  COO, and functional and business unit heads. General responsibilities for top teams include setting strategy, defining organizational structure, determining key roles staffing , setting performance targets, making policy, and managing the business. Because of their unique membership and responsibilities there are some interesting observations about teams at the top that are worthy of additional discussion.

1.  Who is on the Team? Richard Hackman reported that only ten percent of the 120 top teams he researched had agreement on team membership. This finding fits in with our observations on senior leadership teams  -- inclusivity often trumps efficiency and effectiveness. These findings suggest that many top teams have “loose” boundaries and may not be as tightly aligned as one might think.

2. Top Teams are often too big to be Effective. Because top teams tend to be more inclusive than exclusive, most are too big to be effective. Since the number of relationships to manage increases exponentially with each member, top teams bigger than ten members typically suffer from efficiency, effectiveness, speed, alignment, and communication problems. Organizations tend to be more successful when CEOs use a top team of 5-7 key leaders to deal with key challenges, make decisions, and manage day-to-day affairs and a more extended team to help set strategy, review quarterly business results, etc.  

3. Should Teams at the Top Operate as a Group or a Team?  As described in The Rocket Model: A Practical Guide for Building High Performing Teams, the tasks should dictate if an individual, group, or team is the most effective way to operate. Yet top teams rarely if ever have this discussionsince the CEO usually dictates what he or she is comfortable with and leads accordingly).  Although it is well within the prerogative of CEOs to determine how they want to manage their top teams, team efficiency, effectiveness, and, ultimately, organizational performance suffers whenever there is a mismatch between the CEOs’ leadership approach and the tasks to be performed by their top teams.

4. How do Top Team Members Define Their “First Team”?  Because top team members have their own organizations to manage, oftentimes C-Suite executives define their “first team” and the function or business unit they manage. In other words, their primary loyalties lie with the HR function or EMEA business unit rather than with the top team. If the CEO is managing direct reports as a group then this is not a big deal, but these divided loyalties will cause major problems if the CEO wants to build a high performing top team. CEOs can minimize this problem by having an explicit discussion about whether direct reports should operate as a group or a team (or when it is appropriate to do so).

5. Artificial Harmony. Top team members rarely complain in team meetings, even thoughthey may suffer from divided loyalties, be unsure of who is or is not on the team, have a team too big to be effective, and/or be under a CEO using the wrong managing approach.  Many members come to meetings with “their lips sealed” and refuse to bring up controversial issues. As a result, top teams suffer from artificial harmony and talk about how wonderful everything is in meetings only to complain to their staffs. Rather than hashing out disagreements in team meetings, top team members often use proxies to fight their battles. Organizations whose top team members heap praise on their peers, yet suffer from a “silo mentality,” are often victims of artificial harmony.

6. The Cascade Effect. It is important to remember that top team dysfunction has a ripple effect across the rest of the organization. Open warfare between the heads of R&D and Marketing, Marketing and Sales, Sales and Operations, or Finance and IT will play out in major battles between the departments. CEOs need to explicitly manage artificial harmony and open warfare if they want to create a fully engaged workforce and a high performing organizational culture.

Every group and team operates in a specific context. The situation faced by a U.S. Navy SEAL team in Afghanistan is different from that faced by a team drilling for gas in North Dakota. Context is interesting because (a) it is very complicated and (b) existing research is not very helpful in telling us how context affects team success. Yet, contextual factors critically impact the success or failure of a team. The extent to which leaders can control  situational factors affecting their teams and groups varies greatly. Some situational factors can be directly influenced, others can be influenced only indirectly, and many cannot be controlled at all. Because contextual factors have a profound impact on group dynamics, getting team member alignment on these factors is a critical responsibility for leaders. All too often team members have different assumptions about customers, suppliers, or competitors.  Their well-intended, but misaligned, actions can inadvertently destroy team morale and sub-optimize team efficiency and effectiveness.

One noteworthy aspect of team context is the implicit nature of team member assumptions—team members rarely if ever articulate their assumptions about key stakeholders. In order to make the implicit more explicit, team members should work together to identify the key constituencies that affect the team. These entities might include key customers, competitors, other teams, regulatory agencies, vendors, the parent organization, etc. Team members should then discuss and agree on the top three to five assumptions they have for each constituency. Gaining alignment on team context makes it much easier to determine the purpose and key goals for the team;  reviewing team assumptions about key constituencies can also help new members get integrated into the team more quickly. 

There is no universally accepted model for transforming collections of individuals into high performing teams. There are four more common models used to improve team performance, which include Tuckman’s Stage Model, Hackman’s Inputs-Processes-Outputs Model, Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and Curphy and Hogan’s Rocket Model. Although each of these frameworks offers unique insights into team dynamics, The Rocket Model has several distinct advantages over the others.

Tuckman’s Stage Model. Tuckman noted that leaderless discussion groups seemed to go through four distinct phases: forming, storming, norming, and performing. Groups do not become highly effective until they reach the performing stage. The model provides advice to leaders for helping groups transition through the four phases. Although these phases can readily be seen in volunteer groups, they rarely occur in corporate settings since work groups are usually brought together for some purpose, have better defined roles, and have some sort of pecking order.

Hackman’s Inputs-Processes-Outputs Model. According to Hackman, inputs are the raw materials available to a group or team, and include team members, raw materials, equipment, etc. Processes are the procedures or systems team members use to do work, and outputs are the end products. The inputs-processes-outputs model is based on sound research, but is too vague to be of much use.

Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Lencioni developed a team stage model that includes: (a) absence of trust; (b) fear of conflict; (c) lack of commitment; (d) avoidance of accountability; and (e) inattention to results. The model provides some useful insights into team dynamics, but is not based on sound research, and although it seems to make intuitive sense, in many cases it is simply wrong.

Curphy and Hogan’s Rocket Model. The Rocket Model capitalizes on the advantages of the previous frameworks in that it is based on research from hundreds of teams and provides sound, practical advice for improving group and team performance. The Rocket Model consists of eight components, which include context, mission, talent, norms, buy-in, power, morale, and results. Context concerns gaining team member agreement on the challenges facing the team; mission is setting team goals and benchmarks; talent focuses on the number, roles, and skills of team members; norms pertain to the rules by which team members operate; buy-in is all about fostering employee engagement; power concerns acquiring needed authority and resources; morale pertains to the level of team esprit-de-corps and conflict, and the accomplishments attained fall in to the results component.

The Rocket Model can be used to diagnose current team functioning and launch brand new teams. It can also be applied to co-located and virtual teams and groups. Because it is based on a foundation of research and provides practical advice for improving team and group performance, we believe The Rocket Model is superior to the other three frameworks.

By Gordon Curphy
Curphy Consulting Corporation
Guest blogger and author of The Rocket Model