This chapter explains how work groups and teams can be opportunities for learning. The more powerful structure for learning, however, is the true team. Katzenbach and Smith provide this definition of teams:
… a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.
This definition suggests that teams are more dependent on organizational learning for their success. Team members learn collectively. But whether group members are working together simply because they share the same task (work group) or they are together because their success is determined by their ability to function as a cohesive, coordinated, integrated unit (team), groups can and do learn.
Group-focused organizational learning enhances the capacity of a small-group (approximately two to twenty people) to act as a unit in the workplace. The members’ collective know how and know-why change the culture, behavior, and effectiveness of the group. They are both learning together and learning how to learn together.
What does it take for a group to be effective and to sustain that success over time? The key is to create an environment for optimal and continuous learning. Connectivity, defined by Marcial Losada as the number and quality of interactions among group members, is what creates this environment, and what makes high performance groups successful. Connectivity is achieved by balancing inquiry with advocacy, by focusing on others as well as on oneself, and by maintaining a high ratio of positive feedback to negative feedback.
Group learning should be linked to the goals of the group and the goals of the organization as a whole. The group discovers through its own experience how to become a more effective part of the system. This learning builds the capacity of the group to achieve high performance, which in turn helps the organization achieve its potential.
Teams that achieve high performance in the workplace go through a process of learning and change that causes them to become increasingly effective. The Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance Model is useful because it helps us relate the stages of team development that make up this process to the learning that needs to happen at each stage. These stages do not necessarily occur in order, however: Goal and role clarification (Stage 3) might occur, for example, while trust building (Stage 2) is still going on.
There are seven stages to the model:
THE DREXLER/SIBBET TEAM PERFORMANCE MODEL
Stage 1: Orientation
Group members need to understand why they are in the group, and why others are there. They need to know how they can contribute to the work of the team, and they need to believe that the team can accomplish something worthwhile.
Stage 2: Trust Building
Group members need to be able to trust the other members of the team, and need to feel trusted by them. When team members trust each other, the feedback is more open and honest. Members learn that their own risk-taking builds this trust.
Stage 3: Goal/Role Clarification
Group members need to know the specific task of the group—what is within its charge and what is outside its charge—and what each person’s responsibilities are with respect to those goals. They must reach consensus on the purpose of the group and the roles of individual members before they can expect meaningful work to be done.
Stage 4: Commitment
Group members need to know how they will do their work together. They need to have a shared understanding of how decisions will be made, how resources will be used, and (probably most importantly) how dependent they are on each other to achieve the group goals.
Group members need to have a clear picture in their minds of the overall process for achieving the team goals. They need to understand how their individual roles and responsibilities fit into this picture, and that what they are doing is aligned with what everyone else on the team is doing.
Stage 6: High Performance
Not all teams achieve high performance—only those teams that become highly interdependent, highly interdisciplinary, and creative. This transitory state of harmony, order, and flexibility is reached when all team members are working in unison toward team goals.
Stage 7: Renewal
From time to time in the life of a team, members must decide to either recommit themselves to the work of the group or no longer continue as a team. This decision is either rejuvenating to a group that still has value to its members or freeing to members who have ceased to find value in the work.
Use these stages of team development as a guide. Look for signs that a team is moving through each stage and achieving the learning that needs to occur in order to make progress toward high performance. Remind members of the work that needs to be done if they are to fully develop as a team.