Monitoring Team Effectiveness – Using the Success Factors
In your role as a team leader, you can use the dimensions of effectiveness as team performance indicators. Fully evaluate each dimension as you conduct periodic assessments.
Lack of clarity about purpose is a frequent cause of team failure. Everyone on the team should be able to answer the question What are we here to accomplish? in the same way. When the purpose is clear to all, it provides the motivation for ongoing effort and willingness to endure setbacks and tackle tough obstacles. Team members remain energized and are moved to a high level of performance when the team’s purpose represents an engaging vision of possibility. Members are stimulated by a shared direction and by goals that are a challenge, but not impossible, to achieve.
When the team’s purpose is not clear, motivation and effort suffer. When members have different understandings of the team’s purpose and direction, conflicts arise and they may work at cross purposes.
What to Look For
What to Do
Help the team set challenging goals for itself that are clearly tied to its purpose, and that will require ingenuity and renewed effort to achieve. Setting a stretch goal is an excellent way to sharpen a team’s focus because it forces members to move beyond where they are comfortable and leave behind familiar thought processes and methods. They have to use everything they know, and seek new knowledge, insights, and experience to reach the goal. They have to depend on their own abilities and strengths, and also on the skills and expertise of the others on the team. Challenging goals keep the team’s purpose vivid and compelling. |
An Empowering Team Structure
An empowering structure helps the team make the most of its resources. That kind of structure means that when the team was formed, the person responsible paid attention to team functions, member roles and responsibilities, member competencies required for the work, team size, team stability, and the role of team leadership.
Once a team gets rolling, it may become apparent that some key roles or competencies are not represented or are overrepresented. Defined roles allow for smooth transitions of leadership as the task migrates between areas of expertise. The team may need to be expanded as the scope of its mission becomes clearer. Some members may leave the team for one reason or another, and decisions will need to be made about how or whether to replace them. Teams that believe they have the necessary talent and skill to achieve the goals move forward with confidence.
Teams usually develop tacit, unwritten norms that govern the behavior of their members. Problems may develop when there is turnover on the team and new members work against the prevailing norms. The processes established for the team to carry out its work need to be reviewed periodically to see if they are working well. Teams that feel a sense of ownership about the procedures and processes they use will be more motivated to follow them to the level of thoroughness required.
What to Look For
Frustration about roles. Undefined, missing, and duplicate roles are all sources of team frustration and flagging effort. |
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“Can’t do” attitude. The lack of a key skill and the inability to acquire that competency – through training or by adding a member with that skill – can cause your team to stumble or even fail. |
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Rigid structure or lack of structure. Teams need a certain amount of definition and form to function well. They can be hampered by having too many tactics or having problems solved for them, which can stifle energy and initiative. Teams can also suffer from too little structure, which may leave people floundering, not knowing how to proceed. |
What to Do
Strong Organizational Support
When a team is falling short of expectations, members typically look for causes inside the team. They often blame delays and disappointments on interpersonal tensions and conflicts. But sometimes, the cause of team failure lies outside. One common cause is the lack of organizational support. High-level sponsorship – even in the face of turnover or restructuring – is important to a team’s effectiveness.
Not all required resources can be anticipated when the team is formed or launched; so organizational support involves providing the team with the resources it needs on an ongoing basis. The team itself may ask for a particular kind of instruction or training once it is up and running. As it gets into its work, the team may need clerical and other kinds of assistance. Time is frequently a resource that teams have in short supply. Organizational support may come in the form of managers endorsing the team’s work and granting time to members away from their normal duties, without penalty.
A frequently overlooked, but critical, type of organizational support is reward for team performance. Team rewards make members feel valued and supported for the work they do in support of the team’s goals. Many, if not most, organizations compensate and reward employees for individual performance. Understandably, this type of reward system encourages people to put more effort and time into the solo tasks and projects for which they are measured. Organizations that reward teams for their efforts, rather than reward members for their good work (even if it’s on behalf of the team), create a supportive environment for team success.
Other organizational support can be found in education systems, which provide opportunities for acquiring new skills and knowledge by serving on teams. Information systems also play an important part. To stay aligned, members need the tools to communicate with each other, with the organization, and with external stakeholders. Finally, control systems like inventory, human resources, finances, and regulations can either support or hinder a team. Control systems also have a direct impact on the reward, education, and information systems that affect team performance.
What to Look For
Counterproductive reward systems. If you’re rewarding individual effort instead of team effort, you’ll find that people won’t give their best to the team task. |
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Roundabout tactics. If the team’s tactics are designed to get around the organization’s policies, systems, and cultural expectations, that indicates that the norms of the organization are an obstacle to team success. It might also indicate that members don’t know how to operate effectively in the organization. |
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Ill-designed information systems. Without clear channels and processes, information flow can get stalled. That’s even more important when a team is separated by time and distance, as many global teams are. Lack of communication can put a damper on team success because it becomes difficult for members to share what they know and what they have learned. |
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Out-of-kilter control systems. Unclear or overbearing control systems (inventory, human resources, finances, and regulations) get in the way of team effectiveness. |
The awareness or suspicion that team performance doesn’t count in the eyes of the organization may emerge well after the team has been launched. That’s why it’s so important to monitor team performance on a regular basis. A suitable reward system can underscore the organization’s support. If team rewards weren’t built in at the beginning, for example, they can be instituted when the need appears. Rewards don’t always have to be financial. Highly visible recognition, celebrations of milestones, and even educational opportunities for members can serve as team-oriented rewards. |
Positive Internal Relationships
Many different kinds of team difficulties and deficiencies strain relationships and surface as bad attitudes, mistrust, and power struggles. For example, low levels of trust and cooperation may stem from different and conflicting understandings of what the purpose of the team is. Interpersonal problems can also occur when members with similar skills feel more competitive than cooperative. Team structure can also be a culprit to bad internal relationships. There may be too few people on the team, for instance, which can foster a preoccupation with who is and isn’t doing their share and result in finger-pointing when the results promised to the organization are delayed or incomplete. Team roles that are unfilled, lack of organizational support, no high-level sponsor, and a lack of resources all can cause a team to perform sluggishly but look like individual performance problems. Resentment and blame may follow.
Favoritism. When some members are perceived as having a closer relationship with the team leader than others, it’s likely that the team isn’t enjoying full cooperation among all its members. |
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Safe tactics. Tactics that just barely satisfy team objectives may be a sign of poor or weak relationships among members. In the absence of robust relationships, teams may value harmony above finding the optimal ways to do things. The tactics they adopt may be designed primarily to minimize conflict and strife. |
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Turnover. When individuals consistently find reasons why they can no longer serve on the team, it’s often a sign of disagreeable, stressful relationships among members. |
What to Do
Well-Tended External Relationships
No team exists in a vacuum. Effective, well-performing teams understand the needs and perspectives of many external stakeholders, some inside the organization and some outside. They foster and maintain external relationships with people and organizations outside the company, including competitors, suppliers, strategic partners, regulatory agencies, and customers. In particular, effective teams operate with an awareness that the external environment is constantly changing. Holding on to outdated assumptions about the external environment causes many teams to fall short of their goals. Similarly, teams need to beware of falling into the themversus-us mentality. Partnerships with regulatory agencies, for example, can be more effective in achieving team goals and organizational results than traditional adversarial positions.
What to Look For
Playing politics. Take a close look at how the team relates to stakeholders in the company, and see if undue weight is being given to organizational politics. For example, has the team left some part of the organization out of the loop because it doesn’t want to deal with an anticipated turf battle? |
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Angry suppliers. If vendors are complaining, it often indicates that the team doesn’t understand their operations and constraints. |
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Alienated customers or clients. The purpose of a team frequently relates directly to serving and satisfying the organization’s clients. Unhappy customers may be a sign that the team has lost sight of its purpose. |
What to Do
If your team isn’t effectively using its external relationships, one simple intervention is to have someone who represents one of those relationships (a vendor, for example) come to speak to the team. Your team may need a tour of facilities and processes to gain a real understanding of a client’s needs, for example. Training or coaching can help members understand stakeholder perspectives, and look beyond attitudes and complaints. If your team is working from old maps about the competitive landscape or the regulatory climate, for example, you can make a course correction by establishing systems for constantly scanning the external environment and staying on top of changes. |
Efficient Information Management
Managing information is a major challenge in today’s complex and geographically dispersed organizations, and one that is often overlooked as it applies to teams. Teams are not effective in the absence of accurate and timely information. They need plans for gathering and disseminating information, and they need to frequently review those plans to make sure that they are operating as intended. When information doesn’t flow efficiently, your team may make poor decisions, leave crucial stakeholders out of the loop, and miss deadlines.
Both the team and its external stakeholders need to clearly understand the lines of communication and they need to use those communication channels, or information gaps can become information caverns. Imagine the disaster that would result if your team were charged with developing and bringing to market a new product line, but only toward the end of the project did it discover that there were no provisions, and no budget, for training the hundreds of people who would be responsible for selling the product and explaining it to customers.
What to Look For
Missed market changes. When news from the outside world isn’t incorporated into the team’s continuing work, it’s a sign that information-gathering systems need to be revamped. |
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Erroneous conclusions. Too many wrong answers and unwise decisions may indicate that the team isn’t receiving and considering enough information to make solid decisions. |
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Missed opportunities. If the window of opportunity keeps closing on your team, it may indicate that the team is not getting and disseminating information in a timely manner. |
What to Do
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