We have all experienced times when we felt that we were working on a "team." That team may have been a sports team, a work-related group, or a group within a community organization. What were the characteristics of that group that made it a team? Probably, the group was well coordinated, everyone had a role to play, and there was a commitment to a common goal. While there is no commonly accepted definition of team, and there are probably as many definitions of teams as there are researchers who study how teams function, there is some consistency in the
characteristics generally used to differentiate teams from other types of groups.
First, the group must be committed to a common goal or purpose. In The
Wisdom of Teams, Katzenbach and Smith (1993) focus on having a meaningful
purpose as part of the glue that holds the team together. It is the motivation that makes people want to contribute at their maximum ability. Just as important as having a common purpose, these authors assert, is that teams must have specific performance goals that are centered on the team work-product, the results. For example, teams at NASA had to quickly identify and agree to the materials and the design of the space capsules that would be used to bring rock and soil samples from Mars. Even though the conditions the capsule would encounter were uncertain, the engineers had to eventually settle on some final choice. Having an overarching sense of the goals of the project is what allowed the teams to agree on technical
specifications without becoming bogged down in personal opinions and disputes (Dahle, 1999).
Second, members of the group must have clear roles and responsibilities
that are interdependent. One of the key reasons for having people work together
in a team is to be able to draw on the different knowledge, skills, and abilities that people bring to the workplace. In building a team, members must understand how they can draw on each other's experience, ability, and commitment in order to arrive at mutual goals. Moreover, task and outcome interdependence can benefit personal work outcomes and motivation (van der Vegt, Emans, and van de Vliert, 1998). Imagination Ltd., a British company that designs customer experiences, brings
together teams with skills as diverse as choreography, architecture, and graphic design. These workers know that the most important task is to share information about how they are doing their individual jobs (Fishman, 2000). Everyone does not have to know how to do all the jobs, but everyone should be clear about who is being asked to do what. Perhaps more important, people need to fully understand how their personal efforts contribute to the team work product.
Third, there is a communication structure that fosters the sharing of
information. The second characteristic indicated that one advantage of bringing
people together to work in a team is that they can share the different, and
sometimes unique, knowledge, skills, and abilities that they bring to the team. This can only happen, however, if people are willing to share their own ideas and listen carefully to the ideas of others. Larson and La Fasto (1989, p. 56) identify four characteristics of an effective communication structure: (1) The information is easily accessible; (2) the information that is available must be seen as coming from
credible sources, (3) in meetings, people must be able to raise issues of concern that may not have been on the formal agenda, and (4) there must be a system for
documenting issues that have been discussed and decisions that have been made. A corollary to these four characteristics is that the communication structure must be supported by a climate of trust. People must feel that it is safe to raise controversial or difficult issues without being accused of attacking the other team members. Again, the team cannot benefit from the diversity of ideas if there is no opportunity to openly discuss the different perspectives. Consolidated Diesel has created a communications structure that embodies these characteristics. When holding quarterly meetings with plant employees, one manager decided to switch from two 700-person meetings to fifteen smaller meetings. Such an arrangement encouraged people to ask many more questions, no matter how sensitive (Sittenfeld, 1999). Finally, the group must have a sense of mutual accountability. In many ways, this characteristic flows from the first three. If the team has common goals and members have clear roles and responsibilities, team members will have a sense of commitment to one another. They will see themselves as integral parts of the whole, with each person performing in order for the whole to excel. Moreover, when one member of the team needs help, others are ready to provide that help so that the team can accomplish the goal. An extreme form of this integration is what Lipman- Blumen and Leavitt (1999) call "hot groups." These groups care about the work and center their efforts around the accomplishment of their goals. To that end, they protect the members of the group through thick and thin, in success and failure. In this fourth characteristic, it is easy to see one of the paradoxes inherent in team functioning-that while each individual must have clear roles and responsibilities, each member must also be willing to take on the tasks of other team members in order to achieve the common performance goals. Thus, when team members are mutually accountable, they do not need to keep an "accounting system" of who has done what for whom. Individuals do not try to take personal credit for their efforts. Rather, they see their efforts as benefiting the team and, by definition, benefiting themselves. When all members understand what it means to be mutually accountable, no one takes advantage of other team members or becomes a free rider, and yet everyone reaps the benefits of the others' efforts.
Each of these four characteristics is essential to the effective functioning of the work team. The question that a managerial leader must ask, however, is: Does my work unit need to function as a team? That is, is it necessary for all members of the work unit to share a common goal or purpose? Does the nature of the work require people to be interdependent? In some sports teams, such as golf teams or gymnastics teams, individuals function quite independently. Although they may practice together and give each other pointers on how to improve their performance, there is no real
need for coordination of effort. Other sports teams, such as basketball teams or volleyball teams, require a great deal of interaction and coordination among team members. Players must be in constant communication with each other; each player must be able to "predict" the next player's moves. The same is true of work teams. In some settings, individuals function independently and the work unit would not likely benefit from attempts to turn the work group into a work team. In many settings, however, the work depends on individuals working together and using one another's experiences, abilities, and commitments. In these cases, the managerial leader, in the role of facilitator, must make special efforts to help the work group develop into a work team. In this chapter we will focus primarily on team-building efforts that help team members clarify their roles, responsibilities, and expectations.