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

Over the past several years, Hogan has held an annual Game Day as a way to bring everyone together and have a little fun on a Friday afternoon. Hogan Game Day involves teams competing in a series of Minute to Win It-style challenges where individuals earn points for their teams based on successful completion of the game. Not only does the winning team get a swanky trophy and bragging rights for the year, they also get to make a donation to the charity of their choice.

Given our ambitious and driven nature, things can get a little competitive. Your teammates are cheering you on, while the competition will do whatever it takes to rattle your concentration and get in your head, which can make stacking chocolate Ding Dongs on your forehead pretty challenging.

Beyond the fun of taking a Friday afternoon off to compete in silly games with your coworkers, Game Day serves another important function – it helps get people engaged. Hogan recently published a whitepaper on the importance of engagement in the workplace. One of the key points from this paper was that engagement has an impact on a company’s bottom-line. When employees are disengaged, productivity suffers.

So, how do we get (and keep) employees engaged? Research shows that it starts with senior management. When bosses treat their employees with concern and respect, workers tend to feel valued and will go above expectations.

There are many techniques bosses have at their disposal to help increase employee engagement. Although extravagant corporate outings like whitewater rafting excursions tout their ability to help build and engage teams through improved communication skills and enhanced trust among team members, these excursions are not only costly but incredibly time consuming. Luckily, there are much simpler ways for managers to get their employees engaged.

The first step for organizations to increase engagement is to hire employees that are more likely to be engaged. An obvious first step would be to hire people that possess the relevant knowledge, skills, and experience necessary to perform the job. However, there is more to engagement than simply being able to perform the job. It’s important that people also like their job. As such, understanding organizational and cultural fit is imperative to having engaged employees. If people do not find congruence between their values and the values of the company, we are more likely to see dissatisfied and disengaged workers.

Once the right people are in the position, it is important to keep people engaged. A few ways to keep people engaged include increased communications between boss and employee, providing opportunities for stretch assignments, and hosting events that display appreciation for the employees. When managers have regular communications with their employees, they have an opportunity to reinforce how the employee’s work has contributed to achieving the mission of the organization, which should help provide a sense of meaning for their job. Providing stretch opportunities allows managers to challenge their workers and allow them a chance to grow their skill sets and responsibilities. Lastly, having appreciation events such as game days and other outside the office gatherings can allow workers to have fun and bond with one another. Probably the most important thing to consider with any engagement activity is to be genuine. If the initiative seems forced, chances are the employees will see right through it and the activity may backfire.

Over the past several years, Hogan has held an annual Game Day as a way to bring everyone together and have a little fun on a Friday afternoon. Hogan Game Day involves teams competing in a series of Minute to Win It-style challenges where individuals earn points for their teams based on successful completion of the game. Not only does the winning team get a swanky trophy and bragging rights for the year, they also get to make a donation to the charity of their choice.

Given our ambitious and driven nature, things can get a little competitive. Your teammates are cheering you on, while the competition will do whatever it takes to rattle your concentration and get in your head, which can make stacking chocolate Ding Dongs on your forehead pretty challenging.

Beyond the fun of taking a Friday afternoon off to compete in silly games with your coworkers, Game Day serves another important function – it helps get people engaged. Hogan recently published a whitepaper on the importance of engagement in the workplace. One of the key points from this paper was that engagement has an impact on a company’s bottom-line. When employees are disengaged, productivity suffers.

So, how do we get (and keep) employees engaged? Research shows that it starts with senior management. When bosses treat their employees with concern and respect, workers tend to feel valued and will go above expectations.

There are many techniques bosses have at their disposal to help increase employee engagement. Although extravagant corporate outings like whitewater rafting excursions tout their ability to help build and engage teams through improved communication skills and enhanced trust among team members, these excursions are not only costly but incredibly time consuming. Luckily, there are much simpler ways for managers to get their employees engaged.

The first step for organizations to increase engagement is to hire employees that are more likely to be engaged. An obvious first step would be to hire people that possess the relevant knowledge, skills, and experience necessary to perform the job. However, there is more to engagement than simply being able to perform the job. It’s important that people also like their job. As such, understanding organizational and cultural fit is imperative to having engaged employees. If people do not find congruence between their values and the values of the company, we are more likely to see dissatisfied and disengaged workers.

Once the right people are in the position, it is important to keep people engaged. A few ways to keep people engaged include increased communications between boss and employee, providing opportunities for stretch assignments, and hosting events that display appreciation for the employees. When managers have regular communications with their employees, they have an opportunity to reinforce how the employee’s work has contributed to achieving the mission of the organization, which should help provide a sense of meaning for their job. Providing stretch opportunities allows managers to challenge their workers and allow them a chance to grow their skill sets and responsibilities. Lastly, having appreciation events such as game days and other outside the office gatherings can allow workers to have fun and bond with one another. Probably the most important thing to consider with any engagement activity is to be genuine. If the initiative seems forced, chances are the employees will see right through it and the activity may backfire.

The terms team and group are often used interchangeably, but there are some differences between these two concepts.

We define teams as consisting of three to 25 people who:

• Work toward a common set of goals
• Work jointly
• Share common leadership
• Hold joint accountability for performance
• See themselves as being part of a team with common goals and shared fates

This definition of teams is somewhat different from the usual definition in three ways. First, according to this definition dyads are not teams. The dynamics between any two people are much simpler than those between three or more people. Second, this definition assumes people share a “mental model” about the teams to which they belong. In other words they identify themselves as being members of a particular team and tend to have common interpretations of events. And third, teams tend to be fairly small—usually less than 25 people. Larger groups may call themselves teams (such as a professional football team) but in reality they are usually groups made up of various sub-teams (the offensive unit, defensive unit, etc.). Common examples of teams might include commercial aircrews, crews of firefighters, United States Army platoons, product development teams, manufacturing shift workers, fast food restaurant crews, research and development teams, and soccer teams. The individuals in each of these examples share common goals, depend on the help of the other team members, share leadership and common fates, and most importantly, identify with their teams.

Groups are clusters of people that do not share these five characteristics to the same extent as teams. A regional sales team responsible for selling insurance and other financial services to local citizens would be a prototypical group. In this so-called team, each sales rep has individual revenue and profitability goals for an assigned geographic territory. An individual’s ability to achieve these goals does not depend on what the other sales reps do; instead it is completely dependent upon that person’s own performance. Although individual efforts contribute towards the region’s revenues and profitability goals, the region’s performance is merely the sum of each rep’s individual efforts. If a regional sales manager wants to increase revenues, then he or she could add reps, expand territories, increase prices, or change the product mix; requiring the reps to work more closely together would have little if any impact on the region’s financial performance.

This is not to say that leaders play passive roles when managing groups. In fact, far from it! Leaders in charge of groups need to ensure that the members operate under the same assumptions regarding customers and competitors, possess the right skills, stay motivated, share information, have adequate resources, achieve their individual goals, and get differences quickly resolved. Contrast these leadership demands with those of a head surgeon of a cardiovascular surgical team. The head surgeon would have many of these same leadership responsibilities but would also needs to ensure that their fellow surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants shared common goals, cooperated, used common work processes, had seamless task handoffs, shared a common fate, and identified with the team as they put stents and pacemakers into patients. Thus, the leadership demands on people in charge of teams are more extensive (and consequently more difficult to master) than the demands on people in charge of groups.  

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

There is no denying that technology has changed how we do business. We can stay connected to our colleagues 24 hours a day from virtually anywhere in the world, and access to limitless amounts of information is at the touch of our fingers.

On the one hand, this increased connectivity allows us to move faster, be more productive, and work harder than ever before. On the other hand, it makes for a long workday.

But how much is too much? In a survey of more than 600 people in multiple jobs and industries across more than 50 countries, Hogan found that:

The 40-hour workweek is dead:

Our respondents were unusually engaged:
“Engagement refers to how employees perceive their jobs and employers,” said Hogan President Dr. Robert Hogan. “It is the opposite of alienation. When employees are engaged, they like their jobs, they work hard at their jobs, they take initiative, and they show loyalty.”

Highly engaged respondents were more likely to:
• Talk to friends and family about work more than once per day
• Believe that they enjoy their job more than their friends and family
• Work more than 50 hours a week
• Work outside of business hours because they want to

“How people react to constant availability depends on how engaged they are,” Hogan said. “The more engaged an employee, the more he or she will be willing to bring work into their family/home life.”

There is no denying that technology has changed how we do business. We can stay connected to our colleagues 24 hours a day from virtually anywhere in the world, and access to limitless amounts of information is at the touch of our fingers.

On the one hand, this increased connectivity allows us to move faster, be more productive, and work harder than ever before. On the other hand, it makes for a long workday.

But how much is too much? In a survey of more than 600 people in multiple jobs and industries across more than 50 countries, Hogan found that:

The 40-hour workweek is dead:

Our respondents were unusually engaged:
“Engagement refers to how employees perceive their jobs and employers,” said Hogan President Dr. Robert Hogan. “It is the opposite of alienation. When employees are engaged, they like their jobs, they work hard at their jobs, they take initiative, and they show loyalty.”

Highly engaged respondents were more likely to:
• Talk to friends and family about work more than once per day
• Believe that they enjoy their job more than their friends and family
• Work more than 50 hours a week
• Work outside of business hours because they want to

“How people react to constant availability depends on how engaged they are,” Hogan said. “The more engaged an employee, the more he or she will be willing to bring work into their family/home life.”