What makes a team?

Why teams?

Schools are people organizations and people are social animals. We live and work in relationship with others. There are therefore good reasons for organizing schools in teams.

On this page you will have an opportunity to reflect on the functions of a team.

The think piece considers what makes an effective team member.

Activator: What makes a team?

Watch this 'Heist' commercial and reflect: 'what makes them a team?'

What did you see in the video?

“How many groups could you identify in the video? The bees were a group, the butterflies were a group, and the dung beetle who got the cap off the bottle was, well, sort of a group of one. What you saw in this commercial was the transformation of individuals, small groups, and even some larger groups into a team.  In a team, the members work together toward a common goal and share responsibility for the team’s success. In our video example, no group alone could have achieved the desired outcome of getting that bottle of Coca Cola open.” (Introduction to business)

Instead of focusing on enterprising insects, our discussion will focus on a specific kind of team: the work team.

In the following video Rick DuFour explores the difference between a group and a team 

What are the functions of a team?

Watch this video that explores the function of a team:

Key messages in this video:

  • shared vision
  • trust is key
  • people share authority and responsibility
  • mutual commitment
  • team generates performance greater than the perfomance of individual members

In this video Steve Jobs speaks of the nature of teams and how people are managed at Apple:

Key messages in this video:

  • collaboration between team members
  • work towards common goals
  • touch bases frequently - communication is key
  • trust between team members to do their job
  • run the team by ideas

Charles Handy is a philosopher specializing in organizational behaviour and management.  He suggests a number of possible team functions:

  • distributing and managing work
  • problem solving
  • enabling people to take part in decision making
  • co-ordinating and listening
  • passing on information
  • negotiating or conflict resolution
  • increasing commitment and involvement
  • monitoring and evaluating

    But what do high performing teams look like? High performing teams, it is suggested:

    • have a common purpose
    • share perceptions
    • agree procedures
    • are committed to the team, its members and its goals
    • co-operate with each other
    • resolve disagreements openly
     

    Learning engagement: What makes an effective team?

    • Think about a team you work in or have worked in that you thought to be effective. What made it effective?
    • Collect attributes of effective teams on a flip chart. You will return to this later.

    'Your participation in the Universe is critical” (Nassim Haramein, world leader in unified physics)

    "This quote exposes a structural and fundamental relevance to our existence in the world. From a scientific perspective, every single atom, chemical or molecule plays a role within its environment and it is a part of something bigger. When you remove one factor from the environment, it will for sure affect the surroundings by imposing an energetic adjustment. This happens at a microscopic (cells and molecules) level as it happens at a macroscopic level (planets and other celestial bodies). Extrapolating this concept to an educational level, it means that everyone is equally important in a team, with his own uniqueness and talents, every person plays an important in role from which everybody can learn, being significant and meaningful within the whole. Understanding this, allows leaders think of the team as a unity where each member is indispensable to, together move forward with a common goal." (Amalia Marin Escobar, International School Wassenaar, The Hague)

    Learning engagement: What distinguishing features do high-performing teams have?

    In this video Simon Sinek identifies 'service' as a key characteristic of what makes the highest performing teams in the world.

    In their book ‘The Wisdom of Teams’, Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith state that for teams to be able to perform effectively there are some bottom-line requirements. All teams need:

    • a sense of purpose and a distinct mission
    • the mission to be broken down into meaningful performance goals for each team member to pursue
    • to develop the right working methods, procedures and processes to ensure that they accomplish tasks efficiently and effectively
    • to support the common mission and take their individual responsibility seriously in accomplishing the required task
    • a suitable mix of skills, experience and expertise in order to meet the challenges of the team task.

    High performing teams exhibit these same characteristics but in a deeper way. According to Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith the following characteristics exhibited by high performance teams differentiate them from ordinary teams:

    • A deeper sense of purpose and reason for being
    • Higher output and high-quality targets compared to average teams
    • Efficient working methods, excellent problem-solving skills and respectful collaboration
    • Acknowledgement of their joint accountability towards the common purpose, in addition to individual obligations to the specific roles
    • A complementary skill set, and ideally interchangeable skills
    • Managers who are well-respected for the example they set
    • Strong client orientation.

    Katzenbach and Smith discovered that 'significant performance challenges do more than anything else to foster the development of real teams’.

    Richard Beckhard’s GRPI model (1972) describes how teams are built and is a useful diagnostic tool to use when a team gets stuck - to try and understand where it is getting stuck and what needs to be done to move forward. GRPI stands for:

    Goals: What is the team trying to accomplish and what results do they wish to achieve? Goals need to be owned by all, be specific and measurable and there has to be agreement on both standards and expectations.

    Roles: Who is going to do what? Having clear boundaries and making sure gaps are filled but also that roles do not overlap (which could create conflict).

    Processes: How is the work going to get done? How are decisions going to be made and problems solved? Has the team leader and the team agreed the most appropriate leadership style to be used?

    Interpersonal Relationships: How will members of the team relate to each other, collaborate and deal with potential conflict? How are feelings and emotions to be dealt with?

    The following infographic captures many of the aspects of effective teams:

    Acknowledgement: Source

    A great resource

    Lumen's 'Introduction to business' course has a great training module on teams - worth looking at. Click HERE.

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