The "I" in Team, Part 1

The Return-on-Investment (ROI) on team building is lousy. I've seen figures that suggest a positive return on investments in things like corporate training programs and employee engagement. I've read about improved business performance based on increases in employee satisfaction. However, I have yet to come across any convincing work linking typical team-building programs to sustained improvement in team performance and outcomes. I feel certain that when, or if, those calculations are ever done, it will suggest a lot of money is being wasted, because the vast majority of the work done in the name of team building isn't creating any value.

I've been either managing teams or working with those who manage teams for almost 30 years. I've experienced or been part of leading hundreds of team-development or team-building exercises. I've taken part in paintball shoot-outs in the woods; I've led others in forming make- believe aircraft companies that designed and then mass-produced paper airplanes which then competed for greatest distance flown; I've sat in circles, and led those sitting in circles, passing a "talking stick" and telling deep, or at least less shallow truths. Some of this work was hugely enjoyable; some was really touching, some embarrassing and some, like my experience with paintball, surprisingly painful. Some of it left me feeling stoked or moved or just plain smiling. Some of it got me down or left me angry. None of these events, however, had a lasting impact on the performance of the group or groups involved.

But why?

Large organizations, run by very smart people, spend significant amounts of money trying to get good at something that you'd think is natural. I mean, humans evolved to collaborate, didn't we? Cave paintings in Europe show bands of early humans working together to bring down prehistoric creatures.

Observations of modern animal behavior suggest that the critters who evolved along with us also work together at things like hunting and child rearing. Birds do it, bees do it, even chimpanzees in the jungle do it. Apparently.

What's more, not only do we appear evolutionarily predisposed to collaborate, we think and act like it's a really good idea. Teamwork is something we hear about endlessly, starting on the playground, in school sports, and then at work. When we aren't hearing about teamwork, we're reading about teamwork in the latest company newsletter, or on motivational posters in the conference room:

Together Everyone Achieves More

When we're told that we're not team players, it's a severe criticism. Experts and students in the area of group dynamics devote days and months, even years, to reading about, writing about, and studying groups and teamwork. There are countless books and articles on the subject and who knows how many specific team interventions intended to enhance collaboration in the workplace. Yet, based on my 25 years of professional experience, all this inclination, effort and interest have yielded little in the way of sustained improvements in team effectiveness.

Again, why?

Part of the answer to the "Why?" is that teamwork is almost too sacred to question. Teams and teamwork, like organization charts and bitching around the coffee machine, are an essential part of corporate life for most of us. We may sense that the high we get from those team exercises, along with the bruises, wears off eventually and that things go back to the status quo, but no one is willing to look at that as failure. However, it's in my nature to challenge the status quo and I've become intensely interested in answering this particular "Why" question. I'd like to find some answers so that I, and those I work with, can then develop more effective approaches to enhancing collaboration in the workplace. That's what this book is all about.

The Framework I described in the Introduction arose out of my quest to understand why typical team building is so often a waste of time and what might work better. While this Framework is new, my fascination with groups and how they function is deeply ingrained. I'm the sixth of 11 children: five girls, six boys; five older than me and five younger. I grew up smack dab in the middle of a family whose particular dysfunctions (the subject of another book, perhaps) were magnified by our sheer numbers. Learning how to navigate that sometimes perilous environment instilled in me an intuitive sense of what it takes to survive in a group, and a natural interest in finding new and more effective strategies to do so. In 1994 I was fortunate enough to be hired by Development Dimensions International (DDI), based near Pittsburgh but with offices in New York City, near my home in New Jersey. I spent three years with DDI as an external trainer and consultant. It was during this time that I first encountered many of the concepts that I address in this book. For example, the idea of team dynamics, the stages of team development, and the use of personality types with teams were all part of my DDI experience. After three grueling years on the road for DDI, I was hired by IBM as an internal leadership coach and consultant to senior management at corporate headquarters in Armonk, New York. It was during my tenure in Armonk that I learned about David McClelland's work on motives, a framework that features prominently in the team effectiveness approach I developed. It was also during this period that I decided to go back to school for a second Master's degree, this one in Organizational Development. I attended the American University/NTL program, where our class cohort was also our laboratory for studying and working on group dynamics. I stayed at IBM for three years, leaving in 2000 for Mars, Incorporated, where I remain to this day.

My almost-sole focus on team effectiveness, though, only emerged eight years into my tenure with Mars. The part of the company I was working in at the time was reorganizing and my Organization Development (OD) role was made redundant. Unknown to me, a couple of senior managers who felt I had a talent for working with groups had a plan to keep me around. They proposed to our corporate learning and development organization, Mars...