Consultants

Consultants are often asked to help boost teamwork and collaboration. This chapter is written for internal consultants, for example, people in a human resource business partner, organization development, learning and development, or quality role, as well as external consultants who supports teams across different organizations. Consultants can be called upon to help a struggling team, to coach a team leader, or to advise a senior leader on how to promote greater collaboration throughout a unit or organization. To address any of these needs, it helps to understand what really drives teamwork. This chapter offers 10 tips for applying the science of teamwork as a consultant.

Capabilities

Capabilities, one of the seven key drivers of team effectiveness, refers to fairly stable competencies and predispositions that have been shown to consistently contribute to or detract from team effectiveness. While high capability levels don’t ensure success, and adding a “star” won’t always boost performance, a significant lack of capability will hurt team effectiveness. You can’t “team” away a large capability gap. This chapter highlights 11 transportable team capabilities that are beneficial in almost any team including communicating, giving and receiving feedback, dealing with conflict, interpersonal skill, and teamwork savvy. These competencies can be developed over time. Several personal traits are usually related to team effectiveness, including collective orientation, adaptability, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. Three toxic traits, referred to as the dark triad—Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy—adversely affect teamwork. Traits are quite difficult to change, so it is worth the effort to choose the right people to join your team.

Conditions

No team works in a vacuum. Some conditions may encourage collaboration, while others can act as constraints or inhibitors. This chapter examines “conditions,” the context or environment in which a team operates. Some conditions exhibit strong situational strength that greatly influence expected behaviors; others offer only hints or nudges about collaboration. Tangible elements such as organizational policies and practices (e.g., that guide compensation and promotion decisions), resources (e.g., are enough people assigned to the team, does the team have the information it needs), and less tangible elements such as senior leader support and organizational culture are all relevant for promoting teamwork. This chapter highlights six organizational practices and three senior leadership behaviors that can influence many teams, as well as four local team-specific conditions (i.e., resource availability, time availability, authority levels, and mission). The implications of working in a broader cultural context is also considered, as behavioral norms vary around the world.

Team Leaders

Leading a team can be challenging, but fundamentally, effective team leadership is about: a) ensuring that your team has all of the drivers it needs (i.e., the right capabilities, cooperation, coordination, communication, cognition, coaching and conditions); and b) enabling them to learn and adapt as needed. This chapter offers ten tangible tips specifically intended for people who are in a designated team leader role. The tips are derived from the science of teamwork.

Coordination

This chapter is about coordination, or the behaviors that underlie effective teamwork. It is what people often think of when they use the term teamwork. As expected, research shows that whenever team members must rely on one another in any way, coordination matters. This chapter identified four key coordination behaviors that consistently influence team performance: (a) monitoring (maintaining situation awareness), (b) providing back-up/support, (c) adapting; and (d) managing team emotions and conflict. Tips are provided to help team members effectively monitor one another, the team’s performance, and the conditions in which they operate; to enable smoother backup such as assisting or filling in for one another; to encourage constructive adaptation, including how to use team debriefs to make periodic adjustments; and to promote collaborative rather than competitive conflict.

Teams Are Not All the Same

It would be great if all one needed to know were a few universal truths that apply to any team, but teamwork is not that simple. While teams can differ in countless ways, research shows that a few of the differences are particularly important. This chapter introduces five key ways that teams can differ and why these differences matter. It describes five continua and provides a matrix for assessing a team’s (a) reliance, (b) membership stability, (c) task consistency, (d) proximity, and (e) similarity. Understanding these differences allows you to apply the science of teamwork in a targeted, meaningful way. For example, teams with high reliance must continually coordinate with one another, so they are more influenced by collective efficacy than teams with lower reliance, which are more impacted by self-efficacy.

Senior Leaders

Senior leaders set the tone for teamwork and collaboration in their organization. Although most employees may not see and talk with senior leaders on a regular basis, research shows that what happens among senior leaders somehow finds its way through the organization. The actions senior leaders take (and don’t take) and the things they say (and don’t say) send signals about whether collaboration is truly valued. This chapter offers 10 pieces of advice for senior leaders who believe that teamwork is an ingredient for business and personal success, and want to reinforce that message. The tips are based on the science of teamwork.

A Quick Refresher

In the prior chapters the authors shared findings and insights from an ever-growing science of teamwork, introducing and delving into the seven drivers of team effectiveness. This chapter provides a brief summary and reminder of key points from each of the prior chapters, highlighting takeaways about each of the seven drivers.

Coaching

This chapter is about coaching or, more specifically, team leadership. We specify seven essential team leadership functions: (a) ensuring clarity and alignment; (b) holding teammates accountable; (c) removing obstacles and garnering support; (d) managing team emotions and attitudes; (e) fostering psychological safety; (f) encouraging participation and empowerment; and (g) promoting learning and adaptation. Each function has a key set of behaviors associated with it. Team members other than the leader can at times demonstrate some of those leadership behaviors. The functions and behaviors specify the “what” of effective team leadership. The authors also consider the “how” of leadership by highlighting the practical implications of four leadership theories: transformational leadership, shared leadership, servant leadership, and civil leadership.

Cognitions

Teams perform better when its members possess a shared, accurate, and complimentary understanding about key elements such as the team’s purpose, priorities, roles, and tasks—“shared cognitions.” This chapter describes eight types of shared cognitions, including an understanding of who on the team has specific expertise (sometimes called transactive memory) and if–then contingencies (what to do when certain situations arise). Shared cognitions improve routine coordination and enable faster, smarter adjustments. This chapter also reveals that team member familiarity can help up to a point, but too much familiarity may create a risk of complacency. Research shows that professional familiarity, such as knowing team members’ work-related strengths and weaknesses is more valuable than personal familiarity, such as knowing their hobbies. Methods for building shared cognitions are described related to direction setting (e.g., visioning, chartering), preparing (e.g., role clarification exercises, scenario-based training), updating (e.g., debriefs, huddles), and assimilating (e.g., onboarding).