Great teamwork is inspiring – as a participant or as an observer. At some stage the vast majority of us will have either experienced or benefitted from it – in areas as diverse as sport, education, the arts and not forgetting business.
We may equally have experienced dysfunctional teams and the conflicted emotions and outcomes they can create.
So what is a team and what are the features of a team that can either contribute to or undermine its cohesion?
In this blog, we’ll offer a framework that you can build on or refine as you see fit.
Defining Characteristics Of A Team
Research by Google, published in 2015 and often quoted since, suggests that a defining characteristic of teams is interdependence: “Teams are highly interdependent – they plan work, solve problems, make decisions, and review progress in service of a specific project. Team members need one another to get work done.“
We find this a useful and sufficient answer for the purposes of this blog, so let’s move to consideration of the features of teams that influence cohesion.
Purpose
A cohesive team knows why it exists. It can articulate this using shared language that all of its members understand and support. Its members believe that the pursuit of this purpose is meaningful, either intrinsically or because it creates and contributes value for stakeholders beyond the team itself.
This may sound obvious yet in our experience, it isn’t. We come across surprisingly few teams in businesses that can express why they exist and even fewer that can do so with a high degree of consistency and clarity.
Identity
Identity is important to shape team members’ and stakeholders’ expectations of a team, its purpose and its place in the wider system(s) of which it is a part. Language is key here: organisational norms and precedents might suggest whether or not it is appropriate to identify a team as a leadership team, for example. How does this align with other teams and meanings in common use in the organisation?
Another facet of identity is the extent to which it accurately reflects a team’s present-day function, which may have evolved since its inception. Identity can be a powerful influence in creating a sense of belonging for team members and in either contributing to or undermining the team’s credibility.
If the identity of a team is ambiguous or somehow misaligned with organisational norms or the team’s own sense of itself, for example, we shouldn’t be surprised if its members experience a degree of misalignment either within themselves, with each other or with other stakeholders who interact with it.
Vision
A common vision – literally, a vivid mental picture of what the team’s success looks and feels like, can be a powerful cohesive force for its members. Each individual may derive unique meaning from the team’s activities, however there will ideally be a shared vision that is complementary to each individual’s notion of success.
A critical aspect will be the behaviours that the team envisions as emblematic of its successful operation.
As with purpose, it is vital that this vision and the associated behaviours are made explicit so that they can be challenged, refined if necessary and shared with new members and the wider organisation.
Operations
To realise this vision, a team will need appropriate infrastructure and ways of working: a suitable place(s) to work; equipment that facilitates the desired behaviours and mindset; and efficient systems (CRM or accounting, for example). This infrastructure might be located in one place, or at the other end of the scale be distributed and accessible globally.
It will also need management routines or rhythms that are aligned to its goals, organisational context and stakeholders (weekly meetings, periodic performance reviews, monthly reports); and behavioural norms and rituals (meeting management, communication, celebrating individual and team successes, personal milestones etc) that further reinforce this alignment.
Rituals can play an important role in the promotion of social cohesion in a team and in the reinforcement of team and company values.
Goals
Well-formed goal(s) are a vital component of team cohesion. Goals specific, measurable, appropriately challenging and yet achievable given a team’s capacity, capabilities and resources.
An interesting place to start is by first checking that the goals in question definitely require a team to be achieved. In their article “Don’t Let Teamwork Get in the Way of Agility“, published on HBR.org in May 2020, Elaine Pulakos and Robert B. Kaiser suggest we should start by considering what form and how much teamwork is needed at each stage of a project to get it done efficiently and effectively.
Equally important for an understanding of team cohesion will be to know whether goals were imposed, set in consultation with the team or defined by them. The answer can often shape the prevailing culture for better or worse.
Are the team’s goals aligned with each other and with wider organisational goals? If not, then the team may struggle to maintain cohersion internally and externally.
Another area that often gives rise to ambiguity is whether accountability for each goal is clearly assigned and understood, including the consequences for non-attainment of them. As with purpose, we are often surprised at the degree of ambiguity that surrounds accountability in teams, and the lack of understanding of the distinction between accountability and responsibility.
Capabilities
A further and critical prerequisite for cohesion will be to assemble the right team in the first place – one whose members have the individual and collective capability to deliver the results being asked of them.
Over time, the optimum blend of attributes and skills required may change, team members may leave the organisation and new employees join. As in sport when team managers make substitutions in the light of a team’s performance in a fixture, so team leaders in business must also ensure that a team remains optimally resourced and organised in the light of evolving circumstances and requirements. They too must be prepared to make changes where necessary.
Values
Values are the qualities that a team holds as important, such as speed, thoroughness, creativity, caution or diversity. This is distinct from beliefs, which describe what a team holds to be true, such as ‘the customer is always right’, that ‘views from the front-line carry the most weight’ or ‘standing up to the MD will get us nowhere’. Taken together, values and beliefs will be key in determining the mindset and behaviours of a team.
A key distinction here is whether the team’s values, beliefs and desired behaviours are implicit or explicit: have they been arrived at by default or by design? Even if by design, a periodic review should be held to confirm they are still fit for purpose and that all team members understand and support them.
Measures
The well-worn saying goes that ‘you get what you measure’. What a team chooses to measure should align with its internal purpose and values and those of the wider organisation. This means that if the team values certain behaviours, evidence should be sought that each team member is exhibiting them. Measures will need to reflect qualitative as well as quantitative aspects of performance: the manner in which results were achieved as well as the results themselves.
Case studies abound of companies that have enjoyed prolonged periods of upper-quartile performance in their sectors where this has been true: Whole Foods and SouthWest Airlines being two notable examples.
The way a team and its members are recognised for their efforts, rewarded for results and equally managed in the event of under-performance are critical for the creation and maintenance of cohesion. The more this can be made transparent and the subject of regular review with a team to ensure a shared understanding and continued sense of fairness, the more likely the impact will be positive.
If measures and values are mutually reinforcing, and rewards deemed to be transparent and fair, this can create a powerful motivational framework underpinned by a guidance system for team members when faced with complexity and uncertainty.
Measures can be a powerful contributor towards the creation of both cohesion and psychological safety amongst a team’s members.
Authority
The extent to which a team is invested with a level of authority compatible with its goals and how that authority is exercised within the team, will also powerfully influence cohesion.
A key player in the exercise of authority is clearly the leader(s) of a team. Leadership can take many forms and styles, however the function is critical to the exercise of authority and to the creation and maintenance of team cohesion.
The prevailing leadership style in a team will be evident in its decision-making processes: the degree to which they are autocratic or democratic and of critical importance, whether or not they create the psychological safety necessary for constructive challenge and debate in choosing between alternative strategies and courses of action. Is the leader giving team members a voice or a vote in critical decisions, for example? Which decisions are delegated to individual team members, and which require a wider consensus?
The dysfunctional exercise of authority can dramatically reduce team cohesion and the motivation and development of its members, especially if it results in one opinion dominating all others and team members do not believe in the basis for authority of that individual.
There are numerous and notable exceptions here, however, as some teams and businesses benefit demonstrably from autocratic leadership styles, exercised by leaders whose followers believe in their exceptional skills and basis for authority: Apple in the case of Steve Jobs, for example.
Where team cohesion often comes under pressure is where authority and accountability are mis-aligned, and a team is held accountable for outcomes over which it has insufficient control.
Structure
How a leader structures their team and how this structure influences other features listed in this blog, such as its goals, operations and decision-making processes, will have a direct bearing on its cohesion.
Is the structure hierarchical or flat, does it facilitate cross-functional working, levels of communication and speed of decision-making necessary for the achievement of goals? Does the structure facilitate engagement with external stakeholders or does it leave those outside the team wondering who they should best interact with to obtain the insight or outputs they need?
In short, is the team structured to help its members deliver efficiently and effectively the outcomes they are accountable for?
Culture
In this blog, we have made numerous mentions of external influences on team cohesion, including its various stakeholders and the commercial and organisational context within which a team is operating. We have also mentioned culture, however we feel this warrants an extra mention here.
Cultures arise in organisations and teams by design or by default and are the result of the myriad choices made made every day by individuals and teams. Each of these choices contributes in one way or another to the prevailing climate in that team or business, and this climate in turn promotes or inhibits different behaviours that can be helpful or unhelpful to the team’s purposes and the performance of its members. These behaviours then result in new choices, and so the cycle repeats.
Many of those choices fall under the headings above, and because they never stop, a team and company culture is in a constant state of evolution.
Culture is a huge topic in its own right, and of course exists at all levels of any society, introducing norms in different parts of the world that again may challenge and reward team members from different cultural traditions in their efforts to work together.
If we were to focus on just one aspect to highlight here, it would be to consider the degree to which a team’s culture is aligned with its commercial goals. In short, is its culture acting as an accelerant, creating psychological safety, speeding up a team’s progress towards its goals and allowing its members to flourish; or as a brake that is inhibiting its progress and detracting from the experience and learning of its members.
Whatever the answer, engaing with the team to try to understand why will often reap rich rewards, and in the Helpful Links section below, we provide a link to the Culture Design Canvas, which is a third party tool created by Gustavo Razzetti of Fearless Culture, which we often use to help teams address this and related questions.
Summary
Teams are as fascinating as they are diverse, each being a system in its own right and a part of multiple other systems which all interact. They each have numerous attributes that promote or inhibit cohesion and performance, and these attributes are in a constant state of evolution just as each of us is individually.
In this blog we have highlighted some of the features of teams that can promote or undermine their cohesion, and we invite you to refine this as you see fit in the light of your own experience. We also invite you to follow the links within the body of the blog, and below.
For owners and leaders, creating an environment that fosters and sustains great teamwork can be one of the most challenging, frustrating and ultimately rewarding aspects of running a business in equal measure.
Next Steps
To discuss how we might be able to help you improve the cohesion of one or more teams in your business, book an introductory call below, contact us online or call 0345 222 5618 and we’ll be delighted to help you explore this further.
Helpful Links
Published Research on Team Effectiveness at Google
When Teamwork Is Good for Employees — and When It Isn’t by Chidiebere Ogbonnaya, HBR.ORG
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