Turning Your Group Into a Team

Perhaps the most common question I am asked by my clients is, "how do we increase productivity?".  There are numerous answers to this (leaning processes, technologu enabelemt etc) but for me the critical answer is all about the social dynamics in the group and are they such that the group is working as a team?

According to HBR:

...a team is a group of people who do collective work and are mutually committed to a common team purpose and challenging goals related to that purpose

Collective work and mutual commitment are the key characteristics. By going beyond mere cooperation and coordination, collective work produces more innovative and productive outcomes that exceed the simple sum of individual efforts.  Mutual commitment means members hold themselves and each other jointly accountable for the team's performance. They not only think and act collectively, but the social and emotional bonds among them are compelling. They share a genuine conviction that "we" — the potent concept behind every team — will succeed or fail together, and that no individual can succeed while the team fails.

The powerful ties among members of this social structure spring, first, from purpose and goals. A common, worthwhile purpose creates a sense of doing something important together, and specific, challenging team goals based on that purpose create a sense of going someplace important together. Without purpose and goals, no group will become a team.

But they're not enough. Team members also need clarity; about roles, about how the work is done, and about how members interact. When all of these crucial elements are in place, groups become teams: communities that exert strong influence on members' attitudes and behaviors. That's why the ability to transform a group of people into a true team can make you a more influential and effective manager.

HBR goes on the ask a critical question.  Have you made your people a real team bound by a genuine sense of "we"? If not, ask yourself — and your group members — these questions to understand what more you must do:

• Are we mutually committed to a compelling and worthwhile purpose? Do we know not just which task we must perform, but who will benefit from our work? Do we believe that if we disappeared today, the world would be different tomorrow?
• Are we pursuing clear goals based on that purpose, and do we have plans in place for reaching them?
• Does everyone know how the team does its work? Does everyone understand their roles and responsibilities? Are work processes clear? Do we share a set of values and beliefs about what we expect of each other and how we treat each other? Does everyone know how we're doing, both as a group and individually?

Finally (and paradoxically) don't ignore team members as individuals. It's human nature that we all want to belong to a group and we want to be recognized for our distinct contributions. Get to know and deal with each member uniquely — but always in the context of the team and its work.

Source HBR