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Wednesday, 23 April 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
From the Centre for Executive Education (CEE Global) and Strategic Partners consulting experience in developing high performance teams in Singapore-based companies, we found that most if not all of their senior leadership team advocate teamwork. And they should.
Teamwork represents a set of values that encourage listening and responding constructively to views expressed by others, giving others the benefit of the doubt, providing support, and recognising the interests and achievements of others. Such values help teams perform, and they also promote individual performance as well as the performance of an entire organisation. But teamwork values by themselves are not exclusive to teams, nor are they enough to ensure team performance.
Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith in their groundbreaking 1993 article ‘The Discipline of Teams’ define a team as “a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable”. That definition lays down the discipline that teams must share to be effective.
Katzenbach and Smith discuss the four elements – common commitment and purpose, performance goals, complementary skills, and mutual accountability – that make teams function. They also classify teams into three varieties – teams that recommend things, teams that make or do things, and teams that run things – and describe how each type faces different challenges.
Leading teams to success
Teams have become a principal building block of the strategy of successful organisations. With teams at the core of corporate strategy, your success as an organisation can often depend on how well you and other team members operate together.
In today’s highly networked business environment, teams are critically important to getting work done. Yet not all teams are created equal. Some fail to perform, or they perform below expectations. Some start out well but later lose their focus and energy. Teams are extremely valuable if they are working well. They are very costly if they are not. It is critical for managers and team leaders to find ways to ensure their teams are working effectively and are achieving their results.
In most teams, the energies of individual members work at cross-purposes. Individuals may work extraordinarily hard, but their efforts do not translate into team effort, and this result in wasted energy. By contrast, when a team becomes more aligned, a commonality of direction emerges, and individual energies harmonise. You have a shared vision and an understanding of how to complement each other’s efforts. As jazz musicians say, “You are in the groove.”
Case study: Turnaround of a highly dysfunctional team
CEE Client, a leading Fortune 500 Information Technology company dispatched a team of highly qualified and experienced IT engineers to deliver a large-scale strategic project for one of their clients in the mobile telecommunication industry. Sustaining market leadership for this client is critical for the success of this firm. However high employee turnover especially amongst the mission critical talents had created misalignment in what was once a strong performing team. Moreover, as competitors encroached, relationship management was critical with this strategic account.
All this transcended the sound technical expertise of the IT engineers whose demonstrated primary form of communication was email. There was lack of direction and clarity on the respective project team members’ role and responsibilities compounded by the relatively poor team communication which has resulted in poor performance, and results.
We introduced the CEE ‘S.C.O.R.E.’ Framework (see Figure 1) through a series of team effectiveness meetings and workshop, the project team achieved breakthrough results in customer, company, employee, and operational value. Thanks to the team’s shortened response times and improved communication project delivery was achieved within budget and on time.
Relationship management became second nature as team members became more expansive leading to the early exploration of new business opportunities. A post customer satisfaction survey confirmed acknowledgement of the value that our client provided.
Finally, our client preserved its strategic account and strengthened the customer relationship thereby sustaining market leadership. The project team’s ultimate proof of transformation was it’s unanimous decision to distribute among all team members annual performance bonuses assigned to a select few. This presents evidence that high performance teams not only impact the organisation and marketplace but above all the gratified individuals that constitute them.
CEE ‘S.C.O.R.E.’ Framework for developing high performance teams in Singapore
From experience gathered through team effectiveness consulting engagement with Singapore and the other Asian-based organisations, it is found that a high-performing team demonstrates a high level of synergism – the simultaneous actions of separate entities that together have a greater effect than the sum of their individual efforts. It is possible, for example, for a team’s efforts to exemplify an equation such as 2+2=5!
High-performing teams require a complementary set of characteristics known collectively as ‘S.C.O.R.E.’ (see Figure 1) – strategy and purpose, clearly defined roles and responsibilities, open communication, rapid response in adapting to a changing environment, and effective and exemplary teamleadership.
The characteristics of each element of SCORE are outlined in Table 1.
Conclusion
In high-performing teams, leadership shifts during the stages of team development based on team needs. Unlike organisational leadership, which remains somewhat constant, team leadership can shift from very directing, when the team is being formed, to more delegating, when the team is functioning effectively. To transform into a high performance team, an easily implementable framework such as ‘S.C.O.R.E.’ would assist towards achieving that end goal.
(Prof. Sattar Bawany is the CEO of Centre for Executive Education (CEE Global). CEE Global offers executive development solutions including executive coaching and leadership development programs that help professionals develop the skills and knowledge to embrace change and catalyse success in their industries. Website: www.cee-global.com Email: [email protected].)
