5

Teamwork and You

“None of Us is as smart as all of us.”

–Ken Blanchard

If we start extolling the virtues of teamwork and the power of synergy, it would be like preaching to the choir. That is because our present day work culture is predicated upon working efficiently in groups and most of us have been indoctrinated into these concepts even before we started our careers. The conventional wisdom is that the group’s well-being is far more important than your individual well-being and that you should surrender your individual identity at the gates of your organization and perform only as a member of your team. Your individual performance will be whitewashed by the larger performance of the group and in the end, you partake in the rewards doled out to the entire group. Even the standard exhortation to be a ‘team player’, can sometimes take on an ominous interpretation as ‘either you or the team—but not both’.

However, in our discussion on teamwork here, we are going to take a different perspective and argue that individual excellence and group excellence need not be mutually exclusive, but they can rather complement and supplement each other quite well. At first glance, the above premise may seem like a contradiction in terms. But effective individual-group bonding is a two-way street, where the individual not only contributes immensely to the group’s collective goals, but also derives an extra dose of strength and motivation from the group to achieve personal excellence. This ability to give to the group and enhance its cohesiveness and the reciprocal ability to receive from the group and improve one’s individual performance is in our opinion yet another important soft skill and we would like to call it ‘team intelligence’.

5.1 The Changing Nature of Teams

In recent times, there has been a paradigm shift in the concept of group itself. The classical notion is that a group is a monolithic ensemble of drones, supervised by a queen bee, which does the ordering about. As a typical example of a group, we can point to a school of fish, which swims around in-sync as a well-oiled perpetual-motion machine, with every fish participating in the action and pulling the whole group. There is only a group identity and an observer will have to strain himself to follow an individual fish. If you are a researcher, you may argue that the fish sacrificed their individual needs so that they could optimize turbulence, shear, etc. For the entire group.

Now, if this school of fish were to swim up to the ZYX Corp., a cellular phone manufacturing company and take a peek through the door of a conference room in their facility, they would see another example of a team at work. A ‘school’ of six human beings synchronously discharging their duties—developing a new cell-phone product called Model M123. They match each other’s schedules, meet each other often and virtually connect with each other via e-mails and phone communication. Our fish observers will even marvel at the idea of the group members sacrificing their individual identities for the good of the team.

But let us don the modern hat and zoom in on this M123 new product development group in ZYX Corp. Upon a closer look, we see that the six people involved actually have names and identities! and instead of being a homogeneous group, the members are from various departments of the organization, such as marketing, finance, engineering, etc. And they all have a stake in what kind of product this new Model M123 is. It is the responsibility of this team to bring out a consummate product with the best design, great features, world-class quality, at a reasonable price-point and to hit the market ahead of the competition. The marketing manager, Ms Mukherjee, is also the ‘team-leader’, although she is more like an enabler/facilitator, rather than a hierarchical leader.

The M123 group discussions can sometimes become acrimonious. Mr Singh, the quality engineer, may want a neat quality feature in the product, but the finance manager, Ms Reddy, would think that it would make the product more expensive. And Ms Mukherjee of Marketing may want to accelerate the development of the product because she has reports that the competition is almost ready with its product. But, Mr Naik of Engineering thinks that he may not be able to rush through the necessary engineering-development work. This is not a personal tug-of-war between egoistic individuals seemingly at cross-purposes. But it is more like thrashing out the details of orthogonal functions so that the best of all the worlds is incorporated into the product design. This kind of healthy conflict is even encouraged by the group, so as to look at things critically. This new product development group is in essence just an assembly of specialists, knit together by the need to develop a new product. This new face of a team (see Figure 5.1) is very different from say, a school of fish (although some fish might disagree with us!). The group of people is now gelling together to form a cohesive team.

 

Fig. 5.1 A typical multi-functional team

We can summarize our observations of the ZYX Corp. M123 new product development team as follows:

• Each person has a specific identity, role and responsibility.
• All roles are important; there is a clear division of labour.
• The role assignment is not random. It is based on expertise.
• Even though there is a ‘leader of the team’, the other members are very important as well.
• The team makes consensus decisions on many matters, moderated by the leader.
• It is not necessary that there be any shared history or geography among members.
• It can even be a virtual team, i.e., split among multiple locations.
• Synergy is demanded and obtained.
• Conflicts occur periodically, but are accepted as healthy.
• The team is highly democratic and everyone is free to voice his or her opinion. But once a group decision is arrived at, it is implemented by all members.
• The team is not necessarily permanent.

As the M123 project evolves, more and more people will be added to the team— sometimes on the order of hundreds of people—and the project meetings themselves will be attended by tens of people, zipping through the issues quickly, but methodically. On the one hand, the team will look like a multi-pronged behemoth, but on the other hand it will have the feel of a giant orchestra playing in harmony and delivering perfect music. This kind of smooth-functioning team does not develop by accident or magic. It calls for a solid team culture in ZYX Corp., with workers trained in team intelligence. Let us see what this concept team intelligence is in the rest of this chapter and how we can integrate ourselves into a modern group effectively. A number of the points discussed here are in line with knowing the big picture and understanding your contribution to it.

5.2 The Basics of Team Intelligence—Being a Part of the Team

We will present here some of the basic tenets of what we termed as team intelligence in the previous section.

Know the team goals: You must know the mission of your team in very clear terms. If you are a part of a new product-development team, then your goal is to develop a specific product with specific features, within a given deadline and of course, well within the budget. Be aware of all the ‘specifics’. This goal is common to all team members and it is why the team is formed in the first place. These common goals should bind you with the other group members. This is the big picture that should hold the entire team together.

Understand the shared vision: Not only are the end goals of the team shared by the team members, but also, the path to achieve those end goals is common to all team members. It sets the tone for group action. Everyone has the same playbook, the same deadlines, the same project management Gantt charts and network diagrams.

Evince mutual trust: There must be trust among group members—that they can count on each other to deliver their own part of the activity in time and to the prescribed standards. There must be cooperation among immediate team members when they pass on responsibilities to one another. Especially these days when ‘just in time’ concepts are being used all over, trust is ever more important for things to run smoothly.

Display commitment: This is an extension of trust. A total commitment to the group’s goals and vision and to the group members is essential to the group’s ultimate success. If you are a part of the M123 team, you are committed to doing a few things for the group and you cannot later renege on those responsibilities. You cannot join a team to look important or because the group has a certain elite character to it. Team membership is a total commitment of a chunk of your time, energy and resources. Modern teams are so frugal in their size that they have just enough people to do the job. If any team member slacks off or does a poor job of his assignment, it can derail an entire project.

Know your role and others’ roles: Find out the division of labour in your team. Find out not only your specific responsibilities, but also others’ functions and responsibilities. This way, when there is an intersection between your role and some others’ function, you can quickly discuss it with the right team member. Also, unless special situations warrant it, do not try to take on other people’s roles. If you are a quality engineer, do not behave like a finance person just because you are privy to some financial information.

 

Fig. 5.2 Know your role and others’ roles

Build relationships: You must actively cultivate relationships. It may be a bit tough if you are habitually a shy person. But remember that you don’t have to be personal friends with every member of the group. You just need to develop a professional relationship—to the extent that you can interact smoothly with the other person. Exactly how one goes about building a relationship may vary from person to person. But if you have a common challenge or activity (projects are full of such things), that itself can nurture a basic relationship between two people. Most organizations conduct ‘team-building’ exercises often and these definitely aid in relationship-building.

Network: An extension of relationship-building is networking, where you have a vast web of interconnected contacts—some within your group and some even outside, which can prove to be useful resources in your group’s mission. Given today’s global reach of things, it is imperative that we develop our skills of rapport-development even if we are physically invisible to the person at the other end.

Be sensitive to international/distributed team issues: One of the new realities is the virtual team that dwells in different parts of the world or that is distributed across several locations. The cohesiveness of such a group will be hard to gauge and even more difficult to improve. This is where we need to pay special attention to phone and e-mail-communication skills to bond with the other members. Try to find details about your virtual partners the way you would if they were present right next to you. Don’t let distance take anything away from getting to know the other person. Be aware that you will be in a pen-friendship mode, and both you and the other person will be doing plenty of ‘impression-management’ and you will have to sort through a lot of details (as we will see in Chapter 6 on ‘Diversity Awareness’).

Communicate constantly: Staying in touch with the team members through extensive communication is absolutely vital for the group’s performance. You must be in frequent communication with specific members with whom you have immediate interaction. A face-to-face meeting is the best mode of communication, although other relevant modes should also be pursued, given the realities of team distribution across geographic locations that have become common today. You must have a different line of communication with the team leader and the management. The conference calls and meetings are other places where you have to be an effective communicator to move the group’s progress forward. No wonder we have devoted a good part of this entire book to communication!

Celebrate team-achievements: Any achievement of the team will have to be celebrated—appropriately and in a timely fashion. Participate in it graciously and enjoy the fruits of your labour and other people’s. Whether you are singled out or not, remember it is a team win and act accordingly.

 

Fig. 5.3

Celebrations are also big team-building exercises. Even a simple, celebratory group lunch or outing should be used as an opportunity to liaison with your team members. A few moments with your colleagues outside work will reveal their personal sides, that can go a long way in improving your professional relationship with them.

The above list of the basics of team intelligence is by no means complete. Nor did we go into great details. Plenty of Great tomes have been written about what makes a person a responsible, effective and efficient team member and what habits foster group spirit. We hope you will complement our presentation with material from such literature. Remember also that your main focus must be your job as an engineer or marketing professional or finance manager and don’t let that be affected by your efforts to become a better team citizen.

5.3 Be the Glue That Binds the Team

While the above are the basic ingredients of team intelligence, some astute team members will bring much more to the team—such as adding value to it by improving team-cohesiveness. The mysterious glue they bring to the team is often referred to as ‘team chemistry’, one of those terms which doesn’t have a precise definition. However, team chemistry is what characterizes any modern team like the M123 team (sports teams and political teams use this term extensively). In traditional teams, with conventional homogeneous group composition, team chemistry is not that much of an issue. The ‘fish-ness’ is enough of a gel for a school of fish to band together. At any rate, a traditional group will have a traditional leader at the helm who will take care of team-cohesiveness.

Team chemistry or group cohesiveness—whatever you want to call it—is not only a difficult thing to quantify and measure, but opinion is also divided on exactly how much of it is required to bring out the best performance from a group. Teams which are also socially cohesive (where team members not only work with each other but are also personally friends outside work) may seem ideal. But research has been inconclusive as to whether such high-chemistry groups have necessarily better work performance. There is, however, no denying that we need a certain bare minimum of chemistry to make the team functionally cohesive for it to perform efficiently. A modern team like the M123 development team counts on its team-savvy members to be the chemical agents and bring about this function or task of cohesiveness. This is where you too can be an important contributor.

And how exactly does one add chemistry to a group? By adding a different flavour to the team—like, by being:

• The team’s enabler, who helps the entire team in starting new activities;
• The technical wizard of the team, who takes care of the team’s needs in the technical front;
• That Miss Dependable
• The Mr Conflict Resolver who can resolve conflicts or by being the ‘ go-to guy’ for solving difficult problems;
• The ice breaker or team builder, by removing any misunderstandings;
• The devil’s advocate by anticipating external problems and proposing solutions proactively.

It is important to appreciate that the roles we have discussed above are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive. You can even bring more than one of these attributes or roles to the table. In our M123 new product development team for example, D’souza can not only be the team’s enabler, but can also be its effective task finisher (besides, of course, being the representative of the manufacturing department). Similarly, the others can also bring in various elements of chemistry to make the team robust and perform at a high level. Some people, even if they are not the greatest experts in their field, may be highly sought-after by virtue of their ability to bring chemistry to the team. That is how important team intelligence is (see Figure 5.4).

 

Fig. 5.4 Roles played in a multi-functional team

However tempting it may be, it is difficult to itemize a master list of such elusive, group-binding ‘chemical elements’ or analyze your team’s performance on the basis of such a list. That’s why it is all the more critical for you to relate to your group in special ways and exude warmth towards everyone in the team.

5.4 What Can Destroy Team Intelligence?

A modern group, such as the M123 new product development team, is a creation of the parent organization. It is basically an assembly of individuals with none of the traditional structure and binding forces. For example, the members in an old-fashioned group, such as a battalion of soldiers, may have a shared past or common background, whereas an M123 group may have members who have not even seen each other. They will have to go on only on the basis of common goals. It is easy for centrifugal forces to weaken a modern group since loyalties do not have time to develop, unlike in traditional groups. Even one or two team members with poor attitude can greatly jeopardize a group’s morale and performance in today’s set up. So, we need to watch out for such things and nip them in the bud. Let us look at some examples of such low team-intelligence.

 

Fig. 5.5 We don’t find such examples in the world of ants

‘Win-lose’ attitude: A very strong ego can kill all camaraderie and create a ‘win-lose’ attitude where as much as you want to win, you would want the other person to lose and look bad. Even though in the short term you may feel good, this is counter- productive and futile. If there are any personal differences with any group member, sit down with them and discuss the differences. In this highly competitive world, we cannot afford to self-destruct within the framework of our own group.

Individual opinion/interest domination: One variation of the high-ego situation is the ‘my way or no way’ attitude. You fall in love with your ideas so much that you are bull-headed about taking another look at things. ‘I have done this so many times,’ you might argue, trying to intimidate others in the group. Realize that if you give up your opinion in the interest of the goals of the team, it is no defeat. The idea is to reach a consensus opinion and push ahead with the project.

Poor inter-personal skills: Rudeness, discourtesy, bad-mouthing, hyper-sensitivity, social prejudices, etc. Can all be rolled into the general poor inter-personal skills category and need to be remedied quickly. It may have something to do with the basic insecurity you may have. Get counselling if the problem persists even after discussing it with teammates. Leave office conflicts in the office. Taking them personally and feeling slighted or insulted at the flimsiest of circumstances is poor team-intelligence.

Independence vs. Interdependence: Some team members have a way of disconnecting from the group and doing their own things in the periphery no matter how much they are goaded into joining the mainstream. They are basically loners who have the ‘leave me alone’ attitude. These people view independence as a virtue and strength. This can kill team spirit. Good team chemistry thrives on, and builds upon, a strong sense of interdependence, where each member contributes to and enjoys the team’s success as a whole without narrow territorial fights.

Confusion and flock mentality: Some people have no clue as to what the team is all about. They are excessively dependent on kind-hearted team members to pull them along. They are confused and overwhelmed by the task in front of them. They simply ride on other people’s output and hope that nobody notices. They have minimal contribution to the group’s performance. Such deadwood is best removed at the earliest for the benefit of the entire team.

5.5 The Other Face of Team Intelligence—Individual Development

Being a responsible team member and being able to add chemistry to the team is just one half of team intelligence. To be able to use the team as a platform to put on an impressive individual performance is the rest of the story. If you are Naik of Engineering in the M123 team, left to yourself, you would probably invent several technologies. But with a Mukherjee pushing you toward a deadline and a Reddy limiting you on cost, you will innovate even more and come up with the perfect technological solution. Here are some ways in which your team can help improve your personal performance.

You manage risks and downturns better: A team is a great shock-absorber. Individual downturns and defeats may not stick out that prominently in the context of a team. Besides, the team also acts as extra sets of eyes and ears that will alert you ahead of time if you are heading in the wrong direction. Since other people’s fortunes are tied to yours, you will tend to stay in the middle of the road than take extreme risks.

You learn something from others: Working in a cross-functional team, such as the M123 team, is a great learning experience. You learn a lot about other people’s functions, roles and the big picture in general. Besides, you will see the many ramifications and perspectives of your own activities and how it rattles through the entire enterprise. Your knowledge will become well-rounded.

Better feeling of security, comfort level: Once you become comfortable with your team, you will be at peace with yourself. This sense of (job) security is an ideal atmosphere for personal growth. Instead of Being complacent, use this positive ambience to perform better and further your career.

Your communication skills improve: Your communication skills will no doubt improve from what they were. Being a member of a project team like M123, you will hone your meeting, presentation and report-writing skills. Since you have to pitch to the upper management every once in a while, your skills in vertical communication will also improve. And if you are like Ms Reddy of Finance, you have to constantly defend your position and articulate your viewpoint in all the group discussions and thus your verbal skills will also become stronger. There is nothing like ‘immersion’ to quickly pick up skills.

Feedback, help and encouragement motivate you: The biggest benefit you get out of teamwork is a fan club of several team members who will root for you in your endeavours. They will give valuable feedback, criticism and pointers to your performance. Some of them will actively help you. Some others will be a repository of great habits that you can emulate. The motivation and encouragement you derive from the team experience will be a major high that you can ride to the next level of personal excellence.

5.6 In Summary

Although this chapter is developed around a modern project team, team intelligence is a general enough soft skill that can be used in any group environment. Whether your group is modern or a traditional one depends on the composition and mission of your group and also on the nature and culture of your organization. So, a key success factor in teamwork is:

If you work on ‘projects’, and that too in a modern IT company, or any ‘flat’ organization, it is likely that your group is more along the lines of the M123 team, where responsibility is functional.

This produces ‘team chemistry’. In order to achieve this team chemistry,

The team is greater than the sum of its parts. Make sure

Instead of Looking at teamwork as constraining, you ought to look at it as yet another avenue to discover yourself and enable significant self-improvement. Not only should you help your team to be the best that there is, but also you should personally aim to be the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of your team. To this end,

Once you start being an integral part of the team and start cherishing and living the team goals, your own stature and importance will grow in the organization. You will find that you will start enjoying being in the team and soon you will start appreciating the fact that it takes different types of people to achieve the shared team vision. This leads us to get better diversity awareness, which is the topic of the next chapter.