Teams Blog

In May of 2000, I received a gift for all the wrong reasons: more than a week off with pay, because a wildfire was threatening to burn down my workplace! I refer to the Cerro Grande Fire that destroyed 400 homes in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and melted a guardrail within sight of American’s only nuclear weapons “pit” facility. At the time I had been working at Los Alamos National Laboratory, home of the atomic bomb, since 1993. Having completed three years as a project leader there, I was frustrated at the limitations of being a manager at a government facility. But I had learned something important about myself. It seemed I was pretty good at creating self-directed work teams, and it was very rewarding to see those teams take off.

One day I was watching TV coverage of the fire. A shot from a news helicopter showed heavy billowing smoke, which opened up briefly to reveal the main administration building. My office was next to that building. I decided it was time to pursue another job. So I spent the rest of my time off writing the business plan for what would become TeamTrainers™ Consulting.

I filed for a business license on June 5, 2000, ten years ago today, in Albuquerque. I chose the date in honor of my father, who would have been 79 that day had he not died when I was 10. The first order of business was finding out the truth about team building. I had taken a couple of seminars, read some books, and done a ropes-course retreat, and was skeptical based on my experiences. As an ex-reporter, I was used to digging for the real story, and had already reviewed something like 600 scientific sources on topics as diverse as romantic attraction, persuasive writing, and corporal punishment of children. For the next six months, I was in the libraries at the University of New Mexico one day a week doing research.

The result was my training manual, The SuddenTeams® Program. Currently it’s over 500 pages (not the book version) and I have nearly that many sources in my bibliography, not counting another 250-300 I reviewed but didn’t use. It covers every aspect of forming and leading a team from after the people have been selected until the team shuts down, including special challenges such as leading virtual teams, getting buy-in from unions, etc.

At this point I made a mistake. I now know the sales cycle for my type of service is 12 to 18 months. At the time, not seeing much sales movement after six months, I panicked and decided I needed a better market. Given its size and high-tech companies,  and my friends there, Seattle seemed the logical choice. You could say I was following the Microsoft model, given that Bill and company started that company in Albuquerque and moved to the Seattle suburb of Redmond.

During my years in Seattle, I freely admit, TeamTrainers ranged from full-time activity to mostly dormant. It’s 10 with an asterisk, as they say about sports records. I am grateful to my ex-wife for pushing me to revive it at one point. I can say I taught at Hewlett-Packard in Silicon Valley, the City of Seattle, and the University of Washington-Bothell, among other places. Another mistake I made was promising clients confidentiality. My argument was that I was giving them a competitive advantage they didn’t want their competitors to know about. But it didn’t add to my sales, and it’s making things a little harder now because I can’t offer many references.

That birthday asterisk also applies to my time here in Raleigh, NC. I grew up here, lived elsewhere 25 years, and came back for family reasons in 2008. I took a year off from TeamTrainers after moving to Raleigh, deciding whether I really wanted to start this business for the third time given that I would mostly be marketing for a while. But the fun I have helping teams is worth the effort.

I have never wavered from the mission I chose from the start: “To improve people’s lives by spreading the benefits of true teaming as widely as possible.” That’s why I keep my hourly rate below the market average, so smaller companies and nonprofits can afford my services. My first gig here was at N.C. State University, and I am especially proud of pro bono work such as trainings for Hospice of Wake County and the N.C. Jaycees. Having seen the life-changing impact of real teamwork on workers and their managers, I wish I could get every team in America to adopt the best practices for teamwork according to science. But until they do, TeamTrainers will have many more birthdays.

In parts one and two of our walk through team-building history, researchers Skipton Leonard and Arthur Freedman showed us that much of what we think of as recent advancements actually date back as much as a century. We’ll finish up the journey with a look at the ’90s and what should have changed in the Aughts, according to them.

In the 1990s, the authors write, team-based structures became more commonplace in part because IT companies adopted them. “Owing to the spectacular success of these corporations in the global marketplace, organizations of all varieties—from low tech smokestack industries to governmental agencies and educational institutions—enthusiastically embraced team-based structures in efforts to improve productivity and quality,” they report.

However, almost all of the books on teamwork were based on the experiences of their authors as team developers, not on hard science about what works and what doesn’t. Even the book I most often recommend as a starting point for those interested in teams (other than my own teamwork book, of course), was based primarily on its authors’ work at consulting firm McKinsey and analysis of Gulf War logistics operations. (The Wisdom of Teams, 1994.) Solid research on teamwork had dropped by the wayside. Most university researchers even gave up membership in the National Training Laboratory, discussed in Part 1 as one of the birthplaces of modern teamwork efforts. This parallels my constant griping that many consultants seem out of touch with the science, which I’ll repeat shortly.

The journal article upon which this series of posts is based was published in 2000, so we can see if their advice for the “future” was heeded in the past decade, as quoted below.

“1. Don’t oversimplify the process.”

Leonard and Freedman recognize the need for easily understood concepts, but say team builders must know and address the complexity of group dynamics. Too often consultants try to make team development seem easy, and it simply isn’t. An example is the overuse of the “Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing” model first proposed in 1965. Unfortunately, this is still quoted as gospel by too many presenters and team builders. I use it as a frame of reference, but always add that teams can be in various phases at once and the curve through them is rarely smooth. Also, with proper development the “Storming” phase is not inevitable. On the down side, teams can drop out of the Performing phase after hitting it, so you can never completely stop your teamwork efforts.

“2. Start studying teams as they exist and function in real-life contexts today.”

This, I’m happy to say, has become more prevalent in research over the past decade. For example, research on business project teams in automotive and railway companies since I started TeamTrainers in 2000 has influenced my work. A study in a large bank showed that good teamwork was more important to branch performance than diversity training.

“3. Practitioners need to revive their historically active partnership with researchers.”

Amen. The biggest barrier to my marketing efforts are the myths that continue to be spread by many in the team building industry who don’t take the time to learn the science. On the research side, however, too many studies are still simply “correlational,” as Leonard and Freedman lament. That is, they merely describe high-performance teams at a given point of time or rely on participants’ recollections instead of using more sophisticated methods to detail what caused that high performance. A lot of my recommendations are built on likely results based on the science combined with my real-world experiences. I’d rather they were all based on studies that compared monetized performance of similar teams at Point A to performance of the same teams at Point B (and C) with just one change in the way those teams were operated. Then we’d know much better whether that change worked and was the difference.

“4. The research and theory regarding teams needs to move beyond the linear, homeostatic view of organizational systems.”

In other words, much of the research has viewed organizations as progressing in a straightforward way that works toward internal balance. Have you ever worked in one of those? I’m sorry to say there has not yet begun to be enough research into how the corporate culture limits team performance, or how teams react to and cause changes in the corporate environment, or the role of decisions by some upper managers. My definition of a high-performance team says that the team performs as well as it can given its environment. The classic example is when a company declares itself “team-based” but continues to give raises and bonuses based on individual performance. Said company should not be surprised when people then put their own agendas ahead of the team’s.

“5. Finally, researchers and practitioners need to have a better appreciation for the history of research and theory regarding teams.”

That’s part of the reason for this series of posts (and last week’s anti-”team-building” rant). Much of what we think is new is not, and much of what we need to know is known. If you’re a manager and want better teamwork, it’s just a matter of learning what really works and applying it. If you don’t want it, then you are wasting your company’s money and causing yourself and others unnecessary pain. Have the courage to admit team leadership is not your thing and find a position that will be healthier for you and the team.

Source: Leonard, H. S., and A. Freedman (2000), “From scientific management through fun and games to high performing teams: A historical perspective on consulting to team-based organizations,” Consulting Psychology Journal 52(1):3.

“By 1972, the necessary theory and methodologies for practical, large-scale team-building programs were in place,” psychologists Skipton Leonard and Arthur Freedman wrote in Consulting Psychology Journal, as quoted in an earlier post. But a set of handbooks published that year for non-professional facilitators set the tone most people still think of when they hear the term “team building.” Let’s continue our somewhat disturbing look at how much or little has changed in teamwork training by covering the 1970s and ’80s.

The authors write, “many participants experienced team building as enjoyable, enlightening, and useful in improving intragroup relations but much less effective in accomplishing significant personal or team transformations… Line management considered these programs to be mostly irrelevant because they used so-called touchie-feelie exercises that were perceived as merely fun and games.” The journal article includes a Dilbert cartoon in which Dilbert asks, while cutting out paper dolls blindfolded, “Are you sure we’ll cry and hug?” Facilitator Dogbert replies, “Actually, hugging is iffy.”

Organizational development (OD) experts recognized the limitations of the touchie-feelie approach, which grew out of 1960s “encounter groups” (see Part 1), and noted a disconnect between team builders and managers. The former focused on relationships and how people were working together, such as their norms and decision-making processes. Managers “were more interested in setting goals and priorities and analyzing or allocating the way work was performed,” Leonard and Freedman write. I’ll note that these priorities do not have to be mutually exclusive; in fact, high-performance teams usually invest time in both.

The sense that people will play nice if they are taught to, ignoring the realities of competition and power struggles in the working world, came under challenge, a good thing. But corporate culture harmed teamwork in ways that seem depressingly current. Read these quotes about the 1970s from the article and tell me how much has changed:

• “The typical organization… was hierarchically organized, with firm boundaries between functional silos and a compensation policy that rewarded individual rather than team performance.”
• “Excited team builders frequently turned despondent” upon seeing positive team changes “evaporate within weeks (sometime days or hours) of the return of participants to their work units.”
• “Furthermore, the typical reward systems provided incentives for individual rather than team-oriented behavior and contributions. Employees and managers did what was inspected and measured…”
• “Many managers gave lip service to teamwork but were reluctant to walk the talk.”
• Deep down, people were and are afraid of teamwork because they “‘think it will render them anonymous, invisible…’”

Leonard and Freedman assert that the economic realities of the 1980s turned things around. The U.S. was in the worst recession prior to the current one, plus inflation was high, while former enemies Germany and Japan became economic powerhouses. Businesses responded by changing their basic models, eliminating lifelong employment expectations, and reducing layers of middle of management. “The span of control for most managers reached levels that ruled out the old command and control style of management,” the article says. “Without the guarantee of employment, management needed to develop new approaches to motivate and empower employees.”

Team approaches became more common, including “self-managing production teams,” cross-functional teams, and the quality circles of Total Quality Management. (As the article notes, TQM started in America, was ignored, and came to favor here only after Japan used it in that country’s spectacular rebirth.) Silo-busting, team-focused organizations became more typical and switched to team-based pay and rewards.

As the old personnel departments morphed into “human resources” and added OD to their responsibilities, some team builders came to realize they had to be more strategic in their approach, Leonard and Freedman write. Researchers “called for more consultation with teams in the process of doing their work” and stressed the need to do team development within the context of company goals and issues. How sad it is that 20 years later, some HR managers still resist this idea (see HR study summary) and HR and training groups have to continue to sponsor workshops on “strategic alignment.”

Frankly, any top manager would be foolhardy to support efforts that don’t feed the company’s goals. That means, in turn, HR and training folks are foolish to push such efforts without creating measures that show alignment.

We’ll finish up with the ’90s and beyond in Part 3. Perhaps we’ll find that the team building industry has learned something from the past, but I fear the Santayana quote remains in effect.

Go to Part 3.

Source: Leonard, H. S., and A. Freedman (2000), “From scientific management through fun and games to high performing teams: A historical perspective on consulting to team-based organizations,” Consulting Psychology Journal 52(1):3.

One of my favorite blogging activities is showing that many of the buzz words of management are nothing new, are unproven, or both. The latest to stumble a bit is “transformational leadership.” For a study summary I recently posted in TeamResearch News, I described this as “a popular management style focused on the leader’s charisma and extolling of shared values.” According to About.com, the term was coined by presidential biographer James MacGregor Burns in 1978 and popularized by a researcher in a 1985 book. That popularity is gauged by the 1 million links turned up by a Yahoo search on the exact phrase.

I advocate all of the behaviors attributed to transformational leaders. These include encouraging people to try new things, supporting individuals emotionally, articulating “the vision thing” (yes, there are hard numbers to support that recommendation), and being a role model. But whenever I saw transformational leadership discussed in the popular literature, I was left with the uncomfortable feeling that the writers saw it as an either/or style that did not address lower levels of human motivation. A sense of mission is important to a team, but people always end up wanting to know, “What’s in it for me?” You may consider this selfish. I don’t, because it is basic human psychology. It becomes selfish when getting what you want is taken to the extreme of blocking others from getting what they need.

The study was a kind called a “meta-analysis” in which researchers pull data from all relevant studies on a topic to see what the consensus seems to be. This team looked at more than a thousand data points from nearly 90 studies. The researchers concluded that transformational leadership overlaps so much with a goal-and-reward style of managing, it is fair to say the former is a layer atop the other that cannot stand alone. It is a good addition, linked with higher satisfaction from workers with the leader and higher job performance by the leader. But it is no better than the reward system for group performance, and worse on a couple of the leadership measures they found in the studies.

Clear losers in the study were managers whose only leadership efforts are to try to anticipate problems; worse were those who merely fixed problems after the fact; and worst of all were those who didn’t manage at all. On the other hand, if you try to get by with management by cheerleading alone, that won’t work. As if in support of this, another study I just posted found student teams in a lab experiment who used “we” and “success” a lot as they talked through their work did worse than their competitors. The communications scientists in that study, who did not expect that result, speculated people talk about teamwork and performance when they don’t have them. In response to the insipid line, “There is no ‘I’ in ‘team,’” I have always pointed there is no “we,” either.

On the history front, the meta-analysis found that the traits attributed to transformational leadership are so similar to an earlier style called “charismatic leadership,” there was no point to separating the styles statistically. Charismatic leadership dates as far back as a book published in 1921.

The study reinforces what I teach in my teamwork training about how to create high performance, such as:

• Create a mission and/or vision for the team.
• Set measurable goals for achieving it.
• Let the team take the lead in creating a plan to meet those goals.
• Set rewards for achieving the plan milestones and goals.
• Let the team figure out its roles, internal rules, and processes.
• Ask what it needs from you and supply that.
• Monitor progress, praise profusely, and nudge the team when needed.

The words may change, but more often than not, the group management methods that work have been around for decades. It’s up to you to decide whether you’ve had enough of firefighting to do some fire prevention by putting them in place.

Any dip into history reminds me how poor we humans are at learning from the past. An article I came across on the history of teamwork by consulting psychologists Skipton Leonard and Arthur Freedman proves the point. So many of the lessons I try to get across in my practice have been known to work for decades, yet remain largely ignored by “team builders” and many managers.

Prior to the 1800s, “With the exception of music (i.e., orchestras) and the theater, there are few examples of the high levels of specialization of labor, interpersonal communication, integration of effort, cooperation, and problem solving that characterize modern teams,” the authors write. I smiled when I saw that. My first introduction to project teamwork came as a backstage “techie.” For the record, I wasn’t doing that prior to the 1800s.

Otherwise, the “work environment” was a line of orders from the king down, along with jostling for power by everyone who wasn’t trying simply to survive. Only in families was there some level of cooperation and division of labor, though again one spouse or the other usually ruled. That said, “Researchers who have studied group dynamics in the past often note the parallels with family dynamics…” Leonard and Freeman write.

In 1897, French sociologist Émile Durkheim made fairly accurate predictions about group norms—informal rules people naturally create, usually without knowing it, as they do things together. Freud touched on groups as well, but the authors credit American psychologist William McDougall as the first “teambuilder,” based on his 1920 book The Group Mind. He offered five bases for better group effort, they write:

• “continuity of existence…”
• “development of an emotional relationship to the group as a whole by defining the nature, composition, functions, and capacity of the group”
• “interaction… with other groups similar to the group but differing in some key aspects”
• “traditions, customs, and habits that define the relationships between members”
• “a definite structure…”

Let’s stop right there. All of this perfectly matches what I said yesterday in a talk for a Chamber of Commerce event and that I create through The SuddenTeams Program. It is backed up by decades of subsequent research after McDougall. None of it matches what most “team builders” force work groups to do. And most managers still refuse to address these 90 years after McDougall first wrote about it. Okay, rant over.

The middle of the last century saw the growth of “social psychology,” so-called to differentiate it from the previous focus on individuals or pairs of people. What we now call social norms, groupthink, and peer pressure were first identified. A center for group dynamics research was founded around 1946. (The center’s Web site disagrees with the authors on the date.) That year, founder Kurt Lewin and his students also hosted “a conference on intergroup relations focusing on racial and religious discrimination” sponsored by a state agency and diversity groups. It attracted a number of people who would later be important researchers in the teamwork field, including names that appear in my bibliography. It may well have been the first use of the participatory training style so common today, and Leonard and Freeman say it was the birth of the field of group dynamics.

In another theatre reference, they write that Lewin conducted “shop-floor group meetings in a pajama factory (the play and then the movie Pajama Game reputedly were based on these experiences).”

Lewin was involved in the founding of the National Training Laboratory (NTL) in Bethel, Maine, but died before he could participate in its first conference. The idea of ”training groups” (“T-groups”) began there. These, too, looked a lot like modern facilitated trainings (versus lectures) and presented the first diversity trainings. Many future teamwork researchers passed through the NTL. “Leaders from educational, religious, community, and business organizations came to Bethel each summer for several intense weeks of training aimed at improving… their effectiveness as individuals and change agents in society and organizations,” the authors write. “Bethel converts returned to their institutions and introduced flip-charts, innovative seating arrangements, and programs that balanced theory input with experiential learning modules.”

Ideas prevalent today moved from the lab into businesses. “Herb Shepard and Bob Blake, in their work with an Esso refinery, developed a managerial grid based on structured, leaderless groups in the late 1950s and called their approach ‘organization development’” (OD). I had to bite my tongue a few years ago when an HR person called self-directed teams ”passé” as if they were a recent fad.

The upheavals of the 1960s caused in the U.S. a cynicism about the possibility of large system change. Social psychologists focused more at the small group level where change seemed reasonable, the authors write. Researchers began to note the effect that job tasks had on organization (instead of the other way around), and developed a “sociotechnical” approach to OD that recognized how tasks, technology and organization evolve together.

“By 1972, the necessary theory and methodologies for practical, large-scale team-building programs were in place,” Leonard and Freeman write. Unfortunately, a series of handbooks on team building introduced the “touchie-feely” approach that was fun but ”much less effective in accomplishing significant personal or team transformations.” Sound familiar? It would if you had been at my talk yesterday!

More in a future post.

Go to Part 2.

Source: Leonard, H. S., and A. Freedman (2000), “From scientific management through fun and games to high performing teams: A historical perspective on consulting to team-based organizations,” Consulting Psychology Journal 52(1):3.