Top Teams: Why Some Work and Some Do Not

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Top Teams Why Some Work and Some Do Not

• Five Things the Best CEOs Do To Create
  Outstanding Executive Teams

Based on the Working Paper prepared by Hay Group
in partnership with R. Hackman of Harvard
University and R. Wageman of Darthmouth College,
2001
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Top teams can work effectively and bring a lot
of value to the organization.

• But too many fail.
• And often the reason many CEOs are not going to
  like hearing this is the Team Leader.

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Two benefits of effective Top Teams

• They advance the team leaders agenda much more
  quickly
• They allow an organization to weather tough times
  more effectively

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A Real Team

• has a collective task that demands a high level
  of interdependency among its members, something
  that can only be accomplished together and clear
  and stable boundaries, so that membership is not
  constantly changing, and it is easy to tell who
  is on the team.

R.Hackman in Groups That Work and Those Who
Dont
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Five Conditions For Top team Success
support
Leadership
RESULTS
development
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1.Establish a clear compelling vision

• Teams, even ones with high-level people who are
  leaders themselves, really want a leader. They
  need a framework of ground rules to operate in.
• In outstanding teams, the leader gave far clearer
  direction than in average or poor-performing teams

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Six factors that determine organizational climate
which affect team performance

• Flexibility
• Responsibility
• Standards
• Rewards
• Clarity
• Team Commitment

Of all the factors influencing team climate,
clarity is the one that really distinguished
great teams from average one.
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Organizational Climate Teams
Typical vs. Outstanding Teams Gap Between
Actual and Desired Performance
58
Clarity distinguishes great teams from average
ones.
Typical
Percentage Gap
18
Outstanding
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Why is clarity so important?

• Because when the team leader does not provide it,
  a leadership vacuum is created, one that all
  members rush to fill with their own individual
  priorities and goals.

• High-performing individuals i.e., people who
  tend to be on top teams needs goals and
  direction.

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How Managerial Styles Impact Team Performance
In outstanding teams, the dominant styles were
Democratic (74) and Authoritative (63)

In poor teams, the dominant styles were Coercive
(77) and Pacesetting (69)
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Setting a compelling challenge for the Team

• CEOs should never ask the teams top take upon
  challenges that could be accomplished by
  lower-level managers or executives.
• The executive teams mission must be
  consequential, requiring deep experience and
  skills of top team members.

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2. Create an appropriate structure

• The CEO who hopes to create a successful team
  must also put in place an appropriate structure
  for the team.

• To do so, the CEO must set team size and
  boundaries, establish its procedures and spell
  out norms of conduct the team will follow.

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Team Size

• A successful team should generally have 6 to 8
  members.
• More members mean more competing interests, more
  personality clashes and a greater risk that
  competing factions will form.

• Why do teams grow too large? Top executives
  fearful of leaving key players off the team and
  perhaps offending them, often invite too many
  people to the party.
• Organizations are not democracies, and full
  representation is not always necessary.

The appropriate question is Given the teams
goal, which individuals bring the expertise
required to achieve that goal?
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Procedures

• CEOs must periodically review procedures followed
  by their executive teams and continually ask
  whether the procedures impede or advance the
  teams efforts.
• On one team the CEO allowed the meeting agenda to
  begin with tactical items and end with strategic
  ones. Not surprisingly, meetings got bogged down
  on the early items while strategy the real
  purpose of the team almost always got short
  shrift.

• Another CEO had his team begin its executive
  meeting at 400 in the afternoon and let it go on
  until 11 in the evening. As a result, after about
  9 oclock, no one dare raise an important issue
  for fear that it would prolong the meeting.

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Norms

• Too often, team leaders overlook one important
  factor that they have to establish norms, the
  ground rules for determining what is acceptable
  behaviour by team members and what is not.

• No universal norms apply to all teams.
• The CEO and the team together have to set the
  ones best suited to their endeavours.
• The list need not be extensive two or three
  that will enhance the teams performance will do.

Examples of team norms Never play politics
When you commit to something for the group,
always deliver.
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Enforcing Norms

• The norms must become part of the normal life of
  the group.
• The team leader can, and should establish new
  norms as the need arises.
• Team leaders who emphatically articulate the
  teams direction and who establish clear norms do
  not have to act coercively to hold their team
  members accountable. The team will do it for
  them.
• Teams with clear direction and norms tend to
  self-regulate.

• Norms are the glue that holds a team together.
• You should never assume that there is no need to
  establish clear norms.
• Because top teams are composed of such strong
  personalities, clear goals are even more
  important.
• And only the leader can establish and enforce
  them effectively.

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3. Select the Right People

• Emotional intelligent people are capable of
  self-control, are adaptable,and exude
  self-confidence and self-awareness, etc.
• On outstanding executive teams two attributes in
  particular distinguished members from those who
  served on less capable teams Empathy and
  Integrity.

• People on outstanding teams were neither
  brighter, more driven nor more committed than
  members of less accomplished teams.
• What people on the best teams contributed was the
  ability to work with others.
• They brought emotional intelligence to the table.

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Empathy

• The ability to understand the emotional makeup of
  others.
• Members of the outstanding teams were far more
  empathic than their counterparts on average
  teams.
• Members of a team will only buy in to the team
  process if they feel they are both heard and
  understood.
• Team members accept criticisms, even outright
  rejection, of their ideas as long as they have
  had a chance to explain them and feel that others
  understood their point of view.

• It is critical that the CEO select emotionally
  intelligent team members capable of empathy,
  people capable of mutual respect who can listen
  to others views without interrupting.
• It is equally important that the team leader
  remove anyone not willing to demonstrate this
  important attribute.

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Empathy Level of Team
Are members of your team sensitive to the
unspoken thoughts, concerns and feelings of their
fellow team members?

Percentage of team members who answered yes
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Integrity

• Encompass honesty and a strict adherence to an
  ethical code.
• A person with integrity behaves consistently with
  the organizations (or the teams) values even
  when it is personally risky to do so.

• A team whose members have that kind of integrity,
  that puts the organization first, also develop an
  extraordinary amount trust in each other.

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Integrity Level of Team
Does the team have at least one member who
challenges the group to live up to its values and
norms, even when it is personally uncomfortable
and/or professionally risky to do so?

Percentage of team members who answered yes
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Enabling Productive Conflict

• Strong leaders create an environment where team
  members understand that conflict is good, as long
  it is over ideas, not personalities.

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Achieving high integrity on a team

• Speak Your Mind The CEO should make clear that
  when members disagree with issues relating to
  team goals, they should speak out. Holding back,
  undermines the effectiveness of the team.
• Walk the Talk one you have signed on - In teams
  characterized by outstanding integrity, members
  recognize that they must subordinate their narrow
  interests to those of the group. Raise
  objections, engage in conflict over ideas, but if
  the group decides to go forward anyway, act in a
  manner that supports rather than undermines the
  initiative.

• Speak for those who are not present On teams
  with strong integrity, when a team member is
  absent the colleagues express his/her views for
  him/her.

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4. Support the top team

• CEOs who wants strong outstanding teams must
  arrange to provide them with strong organization
  support by providing members with sound data and
  forecasts.
• CEO also must see to it that team members get
  training and their efforts are adequately
  rewarded.

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5. Provide Development

• Outstanding team leaders periodically review team
  performance. They hold meetings to discuss how
  the team is doing, what it does best, what is
  doing poorly and what it and its members have
  learned.

• Outstanding team leaders provide individual
  coaching to team members.

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Outstanding team leaders provide individual
coaching to team members
How Development Impacts Performance Level of
Development (Scale of 1-5)

• The Level of Development, or coaching, was much
  higher on outstanding teams than on typical and
  poor ones.

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Conclusion

• Top teams can work, and payoff for organizations
  can be significant.
• Creating and sustaining effective top teams is
  hard work.
• Effective CEOs must nourish and renew them, as
  they would any valued organisms, since they are
  organic units.

• The five conditions offer a road map for crating
  successful top teams.
• Remember it is the members themselves who
  actually make teams work, but it is the leader
  who strongly influence team performance.