The Team-Building Tool Kit: Tips and Tactics for Effective Workplace Teams - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

DEBORAH HARRINGTON-MACKIN (North Bennington, VT) is president and founder of New Directions Management Services, specializing in training in total quality management, team building, work teams, customer service, and supervisory skills.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1 C H A P T E R

Getting Started

THE US E OF TEAMS as an organizational strategy to engage employees

and improve productivity is now more than three decades old.

In the early 1970s, the leadership of Gaines, a Topeka pet food plant,

launched a novel experiment to transform its workplace into selfdirected

and cross-functional work teams when no one else was doing

it.1 The increases in productivity at Gaines caught the eye of other

organizations and the rest, as they say, is history. Today, although many

organizations have implemented components of teaming, they have yet

to realize the full range of possible benefits. Some have simply changed

the language they use, calling supervisors ‘‘coaches’’ and group leaders

‘‘team leaders,’’ with no real change in structure or empowerment.

Others do teaming when everything is okay and then revert to a traditional,

top-down model when demands increase, or they don’t get the

quick results they need. These are only superficial attempts at teaming.

In this book, we show you how to develop ‘‘real’’ teams—teams that

look different from what you might have seen before.

Developing teams begins with leadership systematically providing

the following:

• Assurance of job stability (not security) for people who actively

participate in the transition, especially as their old jobs

‘‘go away’’

• Time for teams to meet regularly

• Rewards for both team and individual achievement of goals

• Clear statements of dissatisfaction with status quo—‘‘the

way we’ve always done it’’

• A compelling vision that grabs people’s imagination

• Carefully delegated authority and responsibility in a way

that makes people believe they will be successful

• Movement from individual to team decision making

• Feedback and performance measures on an ongoing basis

• Opportunities to benchmark with others who have been

successful in their teaming efforts

• A strong commitment to stick with teaming through the

‘‘muck in the middle’’

Team building begins with a clear decision by leadership to encourage,

and even to require, employees to operate in teams. Leadership

must recognize that teaming is a cultural change that will include:

1. Developing awareness of teams as both a tool and a culture

shift

2. Acquiring knowledge and understanding about how teams

function

3. Learning skills to perform new teaming behaviors

4. Internalizing attitudes and beliefs so that teaming becomes

a way of life

The role of leadership is critical through each of these steps. Lack of

leadership support remains the number one cause of team failure.

Leadership Commitment

Leadership at all levels must support team efforts openly and without

reservation if it expects teams to succeed. Yet managers and supervisors

sometimes feel threatened and may even take credit away from

their teams when improvements are made. They often fail to realize

that their own involvement in team activities will promote trust and

cooperation between them and their subordinates and will enhance

their own reputation as effective managers.2

Typically, we have seen newly formed teams repeatedly look to

upper management to test the organization’s commitment to the new

team structure. Leaders must take special care to reiterate their belief

in the team’s future and to check critical offhand remarks or statements

of frustration. Leadership must also avoid the ‘‘on-again/offagain’’

syndrome, in which they value teams when everything is going

well but take time away from team meetings and team decision making

when pressures rise.

Leadership must also see teams not only as a ‘‘tool’’ but also as a

way of thinking and being. When teaming is marginalized to being

‘‘just a tool,’’ it becomes optional whether to pick up the tool or not.

In actuality, teaming is a cultural change in addition to being a tool;

in a team environment, we must change the way we think and approach

tasks. It is no longer ‘‘people watching people watching people.’’

There is a firm belief that every person at work is a responsible

adult, capable of thinking for himself or herself and making effective

decisions about his or her own work. When adults are encouraged to

use their knowledge, experience, and skill, a shift in attitude occurs

and something magical takes place.

Let’s look at the key benefits and drawbacks of teams:

Key Benefits

• Improve productivity by 15 to 20 percent in six months, and

up to 30 percent in eighteen months.3

• Drive accountability and responsibility to all areas within

the organization.

• Create a highly motivated environment and better work

climate.

• Share in the ownership and responsibility for tasks.

• Prompt a faster response to technological change.

• Result in fewer, simpler job classifications.

• Elicit a better response to the less formal values of a younger

generation of employees.

• Result in effective delegation of workload and increased

flexibility in task assignments.

• Improve buy-in and common commitment to goals and

values.

• Encourage proactive and often innovative approaches to

problem solving.

• Improve the self-worth of the workforce, resulting in improved

interpersonal relationships.

• Increase four-way communication.

• Allow for greater skill development of staff; cross-training

in roles and responsibilities.

• Promote an earlier warning system for potential problems.

• Excite greater and faster interdepartmental interaction; reduced

‘‘silo’’ thinking.

• Result in more time for management to work on strategic

issues rather than day-to-day firefighting.

• Reduce absenteeism as well as the number of accidents and

defects.

• Improve housekeeping and efficiency.

Key Drawbacks

• Require long-term investment of people, time, and energy.

• Appear confused, disorderly, and out of control at times.

• Can cause role confusion; members have difficulty leaving

‘‘hats’’ at the door.

• Are viewed negatively by ‘‘old school’’ people who like

order and control.

• Require one to three years to be fully implemented.

• Require people to change, especially managers, who must

learn to trust and let go.

Researchers have found that the effectiveness of teams is greatly

influenced by members’ attitudes about the organization. If team

members feel support and commitment...