TEAM

EFFECTIVENESS
Sponsored by:
TEAM
EFFECTIVENESS
Gillian Pillans and Jo Nayler

2.0
COMMENTARIES FROM: 1.0 WHAT IS AN
IMD AND LHH KEY TAKEAWAYS INTRODUCTION EFFECTIVE TEAM

3 6 8 10

3.0 4.0
BUILDING CONCLUSIONS AND 5.0
EFFECTIVE TEAMS RECOMMENDATIONS APPENDIX

24 33 35
© CRF. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

IMD COMMENTARY

Over the last years, the landscape of teamwork in organisations has The difference between groupwork and teamwork is best seen at the top of an organisation.
drastically changed. At IMD, our work with thousands of senior executives While people at the helm are typically referred to as top teams, this can be a misnomer
as in reality, these often operate as working groups. Top teams can be characterised by
and top teams has shown that we have moved from teams with well- dysfunctions, and members may find it difficult to address underlying tensions and conflicts.
defined boundaries to temporary and often more fluid teams; from External interventions can help top teams to get unstuck, but to seek help, members must
functional compositions to cross-functional ones; and broadly – from first acknowledge (and agree) that there are issues to be resolved.
defined interactions to highly dynamic interdependencies. At the same Finally, at IMD we have also explored what most aspiring teams get wrong. Our findings point
time, organisations and their teams have moved from spontaneous and to the importance of sequencing. The main stages to becoming a high-performance team
serendipitous exchanges that often happened at the coffee machine to must build on each other: teams should start by agreeing on how to work together, proceed
highly structured and regimented agendas, where even the most trivial of to building trust, then provide and receive feedback, and finally move towards driving learning
discussions demand the scheduling of a multi-party meeting. (and thereby – improving performance). Too often, aspiring teams skip the first stages and
focus on building a feedback culture, without having properly invested in contracting or in
These developments are placing an enormous strain on employees who often belong to building solid levels of trust. It’s no wonder that feedback in these situations at best remains a
multiple teams. This strain often manifests as collaborative overload, and people struggle to shallow and formal exercise.
make intentional choices about how to organise and what to aspire to. Should they operate
as a mere working group, which privileges individual contributions and allows for speed? The importance of teamwork in sustaining performance is essential. In the words of Michael
Should they organise as a team where interdependencies are required? Should they aspire to Jordan: “Individual talent wins games, but teamwork wins championships.”
become a high-performance team? Being a high-performance team means that all members Ina Toegel, Professor of Leadership and Organisational Change, IMD Business School
must be willing to invest in their relational dynamics and requires that members feel mutual
accountability for their growth.

Therefore, organisations must be selective about teamwork, as it requires investing time and
energy into building and sustaining it. Finding the right balance between groupwork and
teamwork is critical for companies’ productivity and innovation.

3
TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

LHH COMMENTARY

Teamworking is at the heart of any business and, as highlighted in this report, this report, are the bedrock for positive team dynamics and performance. In a psychologically
we have seen a big shift in how teams operate and are structured since the safe environment where there is trust, teams are better able to own and learn from their
mistakes, which enhances team performance.
pandemic. Hence, this is a very timely report that re-examines what defines
a team, what an effective team looks like, how teamwork is changing and Hybrid working has made it harder for teams to experience the ‘competence’ and
how to support team development. ‘interpersonal’ trust required for psychological safety. However, this can be overcome by
creating strong team structures with support networks, being intentional about building in-
At LHH, we have been coaching individuals and teams for over 50 years and facilitating depth connections and addressing interpersonal dynamics healthily through team coaching.
conversations in teams to help them become more effective. Recently, we undertook a
comprehensive research project to crack the code of what makes teams more effective. Our Agility
research, which combined our experience with the academic literature, interviews, surveys When a team forms, agreeing working processes and acceptable norms and behaviours is
and evidence from our projects, highlighted three elements as the key ingredients for high- very important. If this is done well, teams know what to expect when receiving feedback, and
performing teams: Purpose, Belonging and Agility. it also builds trust and team investment.

This CRF report complements our understanding of teams beautifully and provides many Allowing time for reflection between implementing new or improved processes helps
powerful insights into how purpose, belonging and agility can be achieved in teams. teams to embrace behavioural or process change. By creating and repeating habits, teams
become more agile. This, combined with greater autonomy over how a team operates and
Purpose communicates to achieve its collective goals, is key to effectiveness.
High-performing teams are aligned on purpose. In a purpose-led team, everyone knows why
the team exists, what its goals are and how their work positively impacts wider business goals. In summary, team effectiveness is built on shared purpose, clarity, agility and through
This report raises some very important questions to help teams reflect on and clarify their understanding and repeating acceptable norms and behaviours. This requires a deliberate
purpose. Is the team actually a real team? Do the goals a team focuses on require a real team focus on team effectiveness and being intentional about the investment in team
or a working group? What is the team uniquely there to achieve as a collective? development. Therefore, it’s important for business leaders, HR departments and team
leaders to be strategic in where and how to invest in teams to maximise business impact in
Belonging the longer term.
The need to belong and connect with others has become an even bigger issue since the
Burak Koyuncu, SVP, Head of LHH Leadership Development, UK & Ireland and
pandemic. Trust and psychological safety are essential parts of belonging and, as described in
International Markets

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

ABOUT CRF ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Founded in 1994, Corporate Research Forum (CRF) is a membership

GILLIAN PILLANS is Research Director at CRF. Gillian has worked as
organisation whose purpose is to increase the effectiveness of the HR
a senior HR practitioner and OD specialist for several organisations
function, in order to drive sustained organisational performance, through including Swiss Re, Vodafone and BAA. Prior to her HR career, she was
developing the capability of HR professionals. Through more than 20 years a management consultant with Deloitte Consulting and is also a
of research and the expertise of our team, we have developed a deep qualified solicitor.
understanding of the ways HR can contribute to business outcomes, what
CONTACT
works, what doesn’t, and in what circumstances. With a network of over 230+
leading organisations, we continue to grow as the respected focal point and
knowledge source for improving corporate and individual performance.
JO NAYLER is Senior Research Executive at CRF. She is responsible for
We support our members in enhancing their personal capabilities and building organisational
publishing original research as well as adapting and developing CRF
effectiveness, guiding them through topics relevant to success, identifying actionable insights
content for use across the website and member communications.
and practical recommendations and facilitating networking opportunities. Our work helps
Prior to joining CRF, she worked for over five years as a researcher and
organisations and the HR function make sense of the environment in which they operate, and
writer, gaining experience of a range of different research methods and
develop capacity to deal with continuous uncertainty.
publishing content in a variety of formats.
For more details on how your organisation can benefit from CRF membership please contact CONTACT

Richard Hargreaves, Managing Director, at richard@[Link]. Alternatively, please visit

our website at [Link].

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

TEAM
EFFECTIVENESS

The work of setting up teams for success is more important than ever.
Team working has become more common in recent years, a phenomenon
accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. There are now more teams, more
meetings, and more people in those meetings. Yet good teamwork is elusive
– teams are often dysfunctional and even successful teams suffer from
‘process losses’ as they increase in size and complexity.

The nature of teamwork is also changing. Team boundaries have become

more fluid and dynamic, and the pandemic has also accelerated a shift
towards remote and hybrid ways of working. Teams now spend decreasing
time together in the same room, changing the ways teams build trust,
communicate, collaborate and create identities.

Teams are often perceived as unquestionably positive, yet we need to

be wary of glorifying the team at all costs. Teams can be instrumental
in driving performance, innovation and growth in organisations. However,
teams often underperform relative to the resources available to them, with
coordination and motivation chipping away at the benefits of collaboration.
Creating effective teams requires significant investment, with even effective
teams incurring costs. Therefore, if the work does not require individuals to
work together interdependently on a collective outcome, it can be the wiser
choice to design and manage the work for individual performers coordinated
as a co-acting group rather than a team. It’s important to ask the question:

KEY “Are we dealing with a real team?” before making the investment in setting it
up for effectiveness.

TAKEAWAYS 6
TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

Whilst well-managed hybrid working supports productivity and makes Optimal team size and the right mix of skills are also important elements
workers happier, these new ways of working can also create challenges of creating an effective team. As team size increases, the marginal benefit
for team effectiveness. This includes a lack of socialisation and weaker group of adding each additional team member goes down – teams and meetings
identity due to meeting less regularly in person and identity being fragmented should therefore achieve a balance between having enough people present
across multiple teams. When colleagues don’t physically meet in person, they to generate sufficient ideas, but not creating too much relational complexity.
can also miss out on key information and a shared understanding, contributing Teams should additionally be sufficiently diverse to have the full complement
to a lack of trust and psychological safety. These challenges make it all the of resources needed to perform well. For this to succeed, they also need
more important to attend to the core principles of team effectiveness and also to operate in an environment of psychological safety, where they can
increase the investment required to create successful teams. constructively learn from their differences and leverage them in carrying out
the team’s work.
The fundamentals of effective teams remain more or less constant, in
spite of the changing nature of teamwork. Clarity of direction, a clear To build an effective team, you have to not only get the right elements in
shared purpose, having the right resources and a supportive organisational place – you also have to tackle them in the right sequence. IMD Professor
context all remain essential to enable team relationships to flourish. Core Ina Toegel’s work suggests starting by building agreement around what the
models such as Hackman’s Team Effectiveness Model can be a useful team is there to do, how team members will work together and what they
reference for team effectiveness practitioners. will do when things go wrong. This forms a contract upon which trust can
be developed. Starting in the right place enables performance, feedback and
Trust and psychological safety are essential building blocks of successful learning to follow on.
teams. Trust is built as individuals understand and open up to each other
and is characterised by individuals being comfortable about being vulnerable Successful team facilitation requires a particular blend of skills,
around each other and holding each other to account. Psychological safety especially when dealing with senior teams. This includes the ability to
is also a key driver of team effectiveness and collaboration, and refers to a surface difficult issues, ensure all participants are heard and the ability to
team climate characterised by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which create psychological safety for the team. When facilitating team interventions
people are comfortable to speak up, put forward new ideas and take risks at an executive level, it is particularly important to be aware of the inherent
without fear of being blamed or punished if they make a mistake. politics (with many team members likely to want the CEO’s job) and to pay
special attention to building a bond of trust with the CEO. Part of the work
of developing the top team is to help it define its collective purpose: it is not
always clear that the top team is in fact a ‘real’ team.

7
TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

“Most organisations are suffering from team

overload. Since the pandemic we have seen three
things happening at once: more teams, more
meetings, and more people in those meetings.”
INA TOEGEL, PROFESSOR OF LEADERSHIP AND ORGANISATIONAL
CHANGE, IMD BUSINESS SCHOOL

Teams are instrumental in driving performance, innovation and growth in

organisations. Building and sustaining effective teams that maximise the
talent and potential of team members, and deliver more than the sum
of their parts, is essential to business success in an increasingly complex
organisational environment. As work becomes increasingly interdependent,
the ability of individuals to collaborate across multiple teams is becoming
ever more important to business success. As General Stanley McChrystal
observed, learning how to reconfigure teams to confront the unknown is an
effective response to a complex environment and helps develop resilience.
Teamworking has become more common over recent years, a phenomenon which has
been turbocharged by the pandemic.

Research by Microsoft

69%
has found the number of

1.0 meetings per person has

increased by

INTRODUCTION
5o% 15o%
Since March 2o2o
Of managers
Work with five or
more teams
Over twelve years
8
TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

The nature of teamwork is changing, too. Team boundaries are becoming fluid and fuzzy.
Teams have to be externally oriented, working together with customers, partners and TEAM EFFECTIVENESS
suppliers. According to Ancona and Bresman, “Managers must expand their conception
of teams as being composed of a stable set of full-time members to one with shifting
membership and blurred boundaries.”
This paper brings together research conducted by CRF during spring 2023, and
The pace of change around teams is also increasing, with teams becoming more dynamic as also summarises the Team Effectiveness event held at IMD on 29 and 30 March
team members come and go, tasks shift and the need for expertise evolves. Virtual and hybrid 2023. At the event IMD Professors Ina Toegel, Arnaud Chevallier and Seán Meehan
working, agile ways of operating and dispersed teams are increasing the need to master explored topics related to team effectiveness, including how to define and develop
distributed leadership and distributed teamworking. a high-performing team, decision-making in teams and specific considerations for
supporting top teams.
However, good teamwork remains elusive. Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions
of a Team observed: “Teamwork comes down to mastering a set of behaviours that are
at once theoretically uncomplicated, but extremely difficult to put into practice day after
day.” A 2015 study by Benham Tabrizi at Stanford found 75% of cross-functional teams are INA TOEGEL is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change. Her executive
dysfunctional. As organisations take stock of their performance and reset their business teaching invokes experiential learning and focuses on a range of topics – from
strategies and working practices post-pandemic, there is an opportunity to invest in building leading self and leading high-performance teams, to emotion management and
team capability at all levels in the organisation. leading organisational change. Ina’s research focuses on the areas of team dynamics,
organisational change management and top management teams during corporate
The purpose of this paper is to: renewal. She is a member of the Academy of Management and of the Strategic
CONTACT Management Society, and has worked for the World Bank prior to completing her PhD
• Explore the latest thinking around the factors that differentiate high-performing teams, with in management from INSEAD.
a particular focus on senior leadership teams
• Identify where teams tend to go wrong and how HR and OD professionals can support
teams to improve their business impact, in particular the key role played by the HR Director
on the executive team ARNAUD CHEVALLIER is Professor of Strategy. He helps executives solve complex
problems and make better decisions under uncertainty. His research, teaching and
• Consider how teams make decisions and how to support them in improving their decision- consulting draw on empirical findings from diverse disciplines to provide concrete
making effectiveness tools that prepare executives to manage the strategic challenges they face in today’s
• Consider what capabilities HR and OD professionals need to support teams in their dynamic global marketplace. Chevallier has helped numerous organisations to
development. identify breakthrough solutions to complex problems including Shell, SAP, Lenovo,
Cisco, Novo Nordisk, Statkraft and the United Nations.

SEÁN MEEHAN is Professor of Marketing and Management and Dean of Faculty.

RESEARCH METHOD He is an award-winning author on customer-centricity and how organisations can
The research is based on interviews with 23 CHROs and senior HR leaders, OD deploy customer-led strategies to deliver superior performance. He works with senior
specialists, academics and experts in team development, as well as a review of executives from companies across the globe to help them deliver strong results
relevant academic and practitioner literature (see References and Reading List in the through a tireless focus on customer value creation. At IMD, Meehan has designed and
Appendix). Research participants are listed in the Appendix. delivered leadership development programmes for companies such as Air France-KLM,
Caterpillar, MasterCard International, PWC, Swiss Re, Toyota and Vodafone.

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

2.0
Hackman defined a team as a set of individuals who work interdependently towards a
common goal. He identified five conditions that foster work team effectiveness.
1 HAVING A REAL TEAM: Hackman contrasts a real team, which has collective

WHAT IS AN responsibility for team outcomes, with a co-acting group, which might have individuals
who work for the same supervisor, but completion of tasks does not depend on what
others do.

EFFECTIVE TEAM? 2 COMPELLING DIRECTION: There must be clear direction about the team’s work
and performance outcomes. According to Hackman, “authoritatively setting direction
about performance aspirations has multiple benefits: It energises team members, it
orients their attention and action, and it engages their actions.”
There are many models of team effectiveness, some more robust
3 ENABLING TEAM STRUCTURE: Three structural features are key to setting the stage
and research-based, others more observational. In this section we
for effective teamwork. First, designing the work the team performs. The team
summarise some key theories and common themes around the topic. should have responsibility for a whole piece of challenging work rather than a small
Our starting point was Richard Hackman’s work, developed over decades through routine part of a larger task, and should have autonomy around how to accomplish
research across diverse work teams in multiple contexts. While it has limitations in the task. Second, defining the core norms of conduct that guide and constrain team
today’s business context, discussed further below, it remains one of the most thoroughly behaviour, both in terms of internal team processes and how the team interacts with
researched models of team effectiveness and is still used as a key reference by team its external context. Third, the composition of the team. Key considerations around
development practitioners today. team composition include team size, diversity vs homogeneity of team members, and
managing the team dynamics and interpersonal relationships of team members.
4 SUPPORTIVE ORGANISATION CONTEXT: Hackman draws the analogy of the
FIGURE 1

HACKMAN’S TEAM EFFECTIVENESS MODEL soil in which a tree is planted. “Just as infertile soil can stunt the growth of even the
healthiest seedling, so can an unsupportive context limit the performance of even
a well-designed work team.” Considerations around organisation context include
ANISATIONA
E OR G L CO providing good information and feedback about team performance and having a
R T IV NT
PO E reward system that recognises and reinforces excellent team performance, creating a
UP clear line of sight between actions and outcomes.
XT
S

5 EXPERT TEAM COACHING: According to Hackman, team coaching supports team

TEAM effectiveness three key ways: supporting motivation and commitment; developing
CO RECT

effective team processes; and helping individuals develop knowledge and skill.
TU G

EFFECTIVENESS
RE
DI
STR ABLIN

MP ION

Different coaching interventions are likely to be required at different times in the

ELL
UC

• Product acceptable to clients team life cycle, for example focusing on collective engagement and motivation at
EN

ING

• Team grows in capability the outset, reviewing and updating work processes at the mid stage, and capturing
REAL • Individual members learnings at the end.
TEAM learn
Hackman suggested that team effectiveness can be measured according to three
criteria:
• The team creates work products that are acceptable to clients
EXPE
RT COACHING • Working together results in a growth in team capability
• The group experience is meaningful and satisfying for members.

10
TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

“What many teams models miss is they assume

teams are closed systems. You need to factor in
the external environment, your customers and
partners, who’s commissioning the work. Effective
teams also need to manage their external context.”
KAREN WARD, STRATEGIC CHANGE DIRECTOR, OPEN UNIVERSITY

Ancona, Bresman and Mortensen, in a review of how teams research has changed
after COVID-19, argue that team design needs to be updated to reflect several shifts in
assumptions around how teams operate:

OLD ASSUMPTIONS NEW / EMERGING ASSUMPTIONS

2.1
Stable set of team members for duration Team membership changes frequently as part-time and
HOW TEAMS ARE CHANGING part-cycle members come and go

Clear team boundaries Employees work across multiple, fluid teams (often
While Hackman’s model is a useful primer, we find it has limitations in some important areas. remotely). Individuals may have different understandings
about who is on the team. Use of contractors / gig
• The context for teams is more complex today. For example, multi-teaming is now a part of economy workers and inclusion of customers, suppliers
organisational life, especially in knowledge work. For example, Mortensen and Gardner’s and partners further blurs boundaries
global 2017 survey of more than 500 managers found that senior managers could work on
as many as 25 different projects a week. Focus on internal composition Increasingly important to connect to
• Hybrid, dispersed and diverse teams are the norm, particularly as the COVID-19 pandemic and dynamics of team external knowledge, work, and networks
has accelerated a shift towards remote and hybrid ways of working. Teams now spend
Employees assigned to one team at a time Employees balance multiple team memberships
decreasing time working together in the same room, fundamentally changing the ways
teams build trust, communicate, collaborate and create identities. Research shows that,
The organisation forms the boundary As organisations increasingly interact and collaborate with
when well-managed, hybrid working improves productivity and makes workers happier.
of the team’s context a broader ecosystem, teams increasingly collaborate across
Research by Nicholas Bloom at Stanford University highlights the importance of ‘organised
organisational boundaries towards an overarching goal
hybrid,’ involving ‘anchor days,’ when everyone in a team comes into the office on set days
to perform more collaborative work.
• Team structures, boundaries and ways of working are changing. Team members may not
have a clear, common understanding of who is part of their team and, with the increasing As Ancona et al state: “The nice, neat world of stable teams with known and set boundaries,
use of contracted and gig economy workers, team boundaries also often cut across an internal focus and a clear mandate was already on the wane, but with COVID-19 it
organisations and teams have to balance internal and external stakeholders. has almost been obliterated. Now it is time for our models to keep pace and explore
the complexities of ever-shifting teams working with new technologies to compete and
• Agility and pace have become priorities for team design.
collaborate across multiple boundaries.” Or, in the words of Professor Toegel: “Since the
pandemic we have seen three things happening at once: more teams, more meetings and
more people in those meetings.”

11
TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

These changing ways of working present challenges for team effectiveness: In summary, teams are now more fluid and blurred than ever before, with team members,
team boundaries and even the physical space where a team works all changing. Despite these
• Lack of socialisation and weaker group identity. Researchers have long shown the
shifting dynamics, our research does not suggest that the core principles for team effectiveness
importance of socialisation for creating strong teams. However, this is harder to achieve
have substantially changed. In fact, due to the increasingly dispersed and fluid nature of teams,
when teams do not regularly meet in person, or when team identity is fragmented across
we believe these principles are actually more important than ever. However, the ways that these
multiple teams and team members may have a weaker sense of who their teammates
can be supported and fostered is changing. Recent work by Martine Haas and Mark Mortensen
are. In this scenario, teams are less likely to perceive themselves as one group, leading to
revisited the assumptions underlying Hackman’s work. They concluded that while teams today
subgroups, tension, and ultimately hindering collaboration.
are more dispersed, diverse, digital and dynamic (4D teams), a compelling direction, strong
• The Mutual Knowledge problem. Coined by Cather Cramton, this refers to colleagues structure and supportive context continue to be critical to team success. Having a shared
working together when they are not in the same room and therefore miss out on understanding of direction is especially important for 4D teams as far-flung members of disparate
information and a shared understanding that they would otherwise have if they were teams from dissimilar backgrounds can easily hold different views of the team’s purpose.
physically together. For example, due to the lack of body language and verbal cues
available in digital communication, it is easier for colleagues to misinterpret actions or not Over the rest of this section, we dig deeper into key areas that emerged from our research
realise that a colleague is struggling with a project or even just having a bad day. as important considerations in creating and sustaining effective teams, and consider what
impact the new world of work might have on them.
• Reduced psychological safety. Discussed further below, psychological safety is one of
the top drivers of team effectiveness and collaboration, and is particularly important in
unlocking the benefits of diverse teams. However, the blurred boundaries between home
and work inherent in hybrid working can negatively impact psychological safety. For
example, employees may feel pressured to discuss topics previously seen as private (such
as health or caring arrangements) in order to coordinate and structure hybrid work.
• Lack of trust. From her research into more than 3,000 senior knowledge workers, Heidi
K. Gardner identified two types of trust as essential for team effectiveness: competence
trust (the belief that team members will deliver high-quality work) and interpersonal trust
(the belief that other team members have good intentions). Both of these types of trust
are created by people receiving clear and discernible signals from colleagues, such as
observing the clearly prepared notes that a colleague brings to a meeting. However, hybrid
working has made this information harder to access as team members are less likely to
be sitting in the same room. Other changes in the way teams work, such as increasingly
dynamic teams, has also made this trust harder to create – multi-teaming means that
employees have less information about what their colleagues are working on and their
competing demands and ultimately, less trust that they will do a good job.
• Barriers to spontaneity and innovation. Before COVID-19 and the acceleration in hybrid
and remote working, many meetings happened informally (such as at the water cooler or
whilst getting coffee). These kinds of spontaneous, chance interactions drove collaboration
and innovation. However, in the post-pandemic return to the office, people are more
reluctant to spontaneously approach colleagues and instead prefer to schedule meetings.

12
TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

“Sometimes issues around team dynamics emanate

from the fact that you’re not actually dealing with a
real team. You need a group of individuals working
in parallel to deliver your objectives. So the first
question is to step back and ask: ‘Do we really need
to be functioning as a team to be successful here?’”
2.2 SARAH HAMILTON-HANNA, CHIEF PEOPLE OFFICER, TT ELECTRONICS

IS IT REALLY A TEAM? Research consistently shows that teams underperform relative to the resources available
to them. Problems with coordination and motivation typically chip away at the benefits
of collaboration. Psychologist Ivan Steiner found that groups do not perform to their full
The word ‘team’ has become a loaded word in organisations. Teams and potential because of what he called “process losses”. Factors such as coordination difficulties
teamworking are perceived as unquestionably positive – there’s cachet and social loafing (individuals exert less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group
associated with being on a team rather than just attending a meeting. than when working alone), mean that, while group productivity does increase with additional
However, we need to beware glorifying the team at all costs – sometimes team members, it does so at a decreasing rate. Process losses also accelerate as team size
increases. Therefore, the additional benefits, in terms of output, creativity and quality of ideas
designing work to be delivered by a co-acting group is more effective. that teams can deliver in ideal circumstances, needs to be greater than the additional effort
Co-acting groups involve individuals who work in proximity with each required to set up and sustain a high-performing team. As Professor Toegel observed: “When
other and have the same supervisor, but completion of individual tasks teams work, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. When teams don’t work, they
does not depend on what others do. Many teams as they are described slow us down, complicate things and make it difficult to resolve issues.”
in organisational settings are actually co-acting groups. Hackman said: Hackman identifies four features which differentiate a real team:
“There is a choice here: Either design the work for a team or design it for
1. A collective team task: the work requires team members to work together interdependently
individuals. If done well, either strategy can yield fine results. What is not fine to achieve an identifiable collective outcome.
is to send mixed signals: to use the rhetoric of teams when the work really
2. Clear boundaries: members know who is on the team and can distinguish reliably between
is performed by individuals or to directly supervise individual members when the people who share accountability for the collective outcome and others who may help
the work really is a team’s responsibility.” out in various ways but are not team members.
In other words, if the work does not require individuals to work together interdependently to 3. Clearly specified authority to manage the team’s own work processes
achieve an identifiable collective outcome, then the wise choice is to design and manage the 4. Membership stability over a reasonable period of time, although this is becoming less
work for individual performers rather than for an interacting work team. This is because even common as teams turn over more frequently.
effective teams incur costs.

13
TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

The issue of whether or not we are dealing with a ‘real’ team came up frequently in our

FIGURE 2
discussions, particularly with regards to executive teams. According to Neil Morrison, Group WHAT IS A HIGH-PERFORMANCE TEAM?
HR Director at Severn Trent Water: “Executive teams can be real teams, but it’s not a given.
You need to decide if it’s a real team, a council of elders or a group of people who come
Members are accountable for each other’s growth HIGH-PERFORMANCE
together to make decisions.” TEAM
The rise of hybrid ways of working means that, as argued by Constance Noonan Hadley and REAL
TEAM
Mark Mortensen in 2022, the costs of team collaboration are going up, and yet the benefits
are harder to achieve. Setting up and supporting successful teams has always been an

Performance impact
investment and requires substantial resources. Organisations need to coordinate schedules,
establish norms and disseminate information. The growth of hybrid working and the
increased dynamism of teams has added a greater complexity to this. For example, schedules
WORKING POTENTIAL
may now need to be coordinated across timezones and more effort is required to form a
GROUP TEAM
shared identity if the team does not regularly meet in person.

At the same time, the benefits of working in a team have also reduced. A 2021 study PSEUDO
by Microsoft found that hybrid working has negatively affected certain areas of team TEAM
collaboration, including creative work and informal, spontaneous interaction. Teams also
experience less social connection and a weaker sense of belonging. When setting up a
new team, organisations should therefore carefully consider whether a team is the best Team effectiveness © IMD
structure to complete the task at hand. For example, as suggested by Hadley and Mortensen,
organisations could instead consider co-acting groups – “loose confederations of employees
who dip in and out of collaborative interactions as a project or initiative unfolds”.

As shown in Professor Toegel’s diagram opposite, a team is not always the most impactful
way of working. In fact, a ‘psuedo team’ – a situation where a group has created the
interaction and interdependence of a team, even though the project does not actually require
it – creates inefficiencies and ineffectiveness. It is also very easy for teams to be stuck in the
pseudo team rut. In order to progress, they will need to invest significantly in relationships
in order to move further along the curve. Another legitimate, though often undervalued,
alternative is to acknowledge that investing in their team is not valuable for their context and
return to being a working group. This is why it is so important to make expectations about
identity explicit, both internally and with outside stakeholders: do you want to be a working
group, a team, or a high-performance team? Deciding this helps set expectations about how
much investment is required.

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

Real teams align around task. It’s therefore important that the team is clear
about ‘why’ it exists as a team. This means having a shared view of the
strategic goals and direction of the team, alignment of the team members
around goals and a common view of the unique purpose that only that team
can fulfil. Sometimes the behavioural issues that teams experience are not to
do with the team dynamics per se, they derive from a lack of clarity around
the team setup and what the team is there to deliver.
Purpose has become something of a buzzword in organisations, and is also a term that comes
up frequently with regard to team effectiveness. Is this just a fad or a genuine reflection of the
environment within which teams operate? With the speed of change organisations face, teams
have to be set up to both meet their objectives and be adaptable and responsive to changes
in their context. Research into organisation agility suggests that companies which have a
strong sense of shared purpose, which clearly defines ‘who we are’ and ‘what inspires us’ while
allowing enough flexibility to make strategic choices in response to environmental changes,
tend to be more successful longer term. This perspective is supported by data gathered by RHR
International, which shows that teams with a stronger sense of purpose report higher levels
of team effectiveness. “They also are found to spend less time in firefighting mode, and more
time working strategically,” said Dan Russell, Head of RHR’s Products, Data and Insights Lab.

Perhaps it is a better response to complexity to focus on identifying what the team is uniquely
there to do and to anchor to a shared purpose, which sets guardrails around the team’s
actions rather than defining prescriptive deliverables. Purpose provides a flexible framework
for action and decision-making rather than prescribing specific outcomes.

Purpose is especially important for executive teams to work out, as they often function as
committees. Barry Hoffman, formerly Chief People Officer at Landsec, said: “It’s harder where
you have a group of individuals each running their own fiefdom. You’re more likely to have
a real team at the executive level when you all have to pull together to deliver in line with
customer goals, and you have to make sure you’re all aligned.”

Jan Schlueter, Head of Executive Development at Swiss Re has addressed this issue by
working explicitly with the executive team to define a small number of ‘must wins’. “You need
to get clear on shared goals. What are we collectively responsible for? What are the results
we must drive together?”

2.3 In summary, establishing shared purpose involves getting alignment around questions such as:

SHARED PURPOSE – • What is the team uniquely there to achieve as a collective?

• What decisions must we take collectively?
DETERMINING THE ‘WHY’ • What roles do individual team members play in delivering those shared outcomes?
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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

2.4
TRUST AND
PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY
Trust is a fundamental factor in human relationships and is an essential “Trust, openness and dialogue are essential
characteristic of successful teams. Trust gives us confidence to do to building an effective executive team.”
things such as making decisions and taking actions. However it can
be hard to achieve and is easily broken, often irreparably. One of the MARIA ANTONIOU, CHIEF HUMAN RESOURCES OFFICER,
MORGAN ADVANCED MATERIALS
critical tasks of building an effective team is to establish and maintain
trust between team members.
According to Frei and Morriss’s Trust Triangle, trust has three drivers: authenticity (‘I Teams have to choose which actions to take and what to prioritise. They have to
experience the real you’), logic (‘I know you can do it; your reasoning and judgment weigh up options and strategies and select the best way forward. Individuals have to
are sound’) and empathy (‘I believe you care about me and my success’). commit to act in line with collective decisions. Sometimes individuals will disagree with
a chosen course of action, but success will require them to put aside their reservations
and act in accordance with the collective decision. According to Patrick Lencioni’s
FIGURE 3

work on team dysfunction (see further below), effective teams are those which are
TRUST TRIANGLE AUTHENTICITY capable of engaging in open, constructive, unguarded debate about ideas. Effective
I experience the real you. teams tend to be characterised by a substantial level of debate. They also need to be
able to air concerns without fear of reprisal.

Lencioni found that trust relies on individual team members having confidence that
the intentions of others on the team are good. Trust is built as individuals understand
and open up to each other and is characterised by individuals being comfortable about
being vulnerable around each other, and confident that their vulnerabilities will not be
TRUST used against them. It is different to dependency-based trust which is centred on the
ability to predict an individual’s behaviour based on their past experience. Vulnerability-
based trust is built through shared experiences over time, with multiple instances of
LOGIC EMPATHY follow-through and credibility. If team members are not genuinely open with each
I know you can do it; your reasoning I believe you care about me other about their objectives, motivations and concerns, it becomes impossible to
and judgment are sound. and my success. build a foundation of trust. Richard Cleverly, who’s an expert in team development,
said: “Teams need to be able to have passionate, unfiltered debate, without there
Source: Frei and Morriss, May 2020 being blood on the carpet or people feeling bruised about the experience. That’s the
foundation of trust – otherwise all you have is false harmony.”

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY
Related to trust is the concept of psychological safety. This was It is important to note that psychological safety does not correlate with differences
popularised by Professor Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business in personality – it is a feature of the workplace created and sustained by leaders.
Research by Edmondson and others suggests it is established by leaders practising the
School, who described psychological safety in the context of teams following behaviours:
as “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe
• Communicate (by words but, more importantly, through their actions) that they
for interpersonal risk-taking.” In a 1999 study, Edmondson described respect employees, and the skills and expertise they bring.
psychological safety as “a sense of confidence that the team will not
• Be fully present in conversations and focused on the interaction.
embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up. It describes a
team climate characterised by interpersonal trust and mutual respect • Actively encourage speaking up and reporting mistakes.
in which people are comfortable being themselves.” Psychological • Be accessible and approachable.
safety is based on a leadership approach that encourages people • Acknowledge that they don’t know all the answers, as this shows humility and
to voice concerns, ask questions and share ideas. People can be encourages others to follow suit.
confident that their ideas will be welcomed and built upon, not • Be inclusive in decision-making, soliciting input and feedback from team members.
ridiculed, and they will not be punished by colleagues for offering a • Acknowledge their own fallibility.
different point of view. They can experiment and take risks knowing
• Use failures or mistakes as opportunities for learning.
that it is safe to make mistakes.
• Use direct, actionable language, which creates the kind of straightforward
According to Edmondson: “In a psychologically safe workplace, people are not discussions that enable learning.
hindered by interpersonal fear. They feel willing and able to take the inherent
interpersonal risks of candour. They fear holding back their full participation more than • Set clear boundaries around what is acceptable behaviour. Vague or unpredictable
they fear sharing a potentially sensitive, threatening, or wrong idea.” boundaries make people feel less psychologically safe.
• Invite participation from all team members and actively bring in those who naturally
Edmondson’s research found that teams where participants felt able to admit to tend to hold back.
mistakes and talk about how to learn from them demonstrated higher performance.
Psychological safety has also been shown to help teams overcome the challenges • Autocratic behaviour, inaccessibility or failure to acknowledge their own vulnerability
of virtual and geographically dispersed working, and can also make or break team all work against psychological safety.
performance in diverse teams.
Subsequent research, most notably Google’s Project Aristotle (see the box on the next
page for more information) has confirmed the importance of psychological safety as a
key feature of successful teams.

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

GOOGLE’S
PROJECT ARISTOTLE
In 2012 Google kicked off an initiative to study internal teams across the organisation Psychological safety was by far the most important
and work out what differentiated the highest-performing teams. They analysed 180
teams, looking at factors such as team composition, personality factors, team member of the five key dynamics [and is] the underpinning of
backgrounds and skills, rewards and so on. They also studied the group norms of the other four.
the teams in the study to understand which group behaviours supported successful
outcomes and which worked against high performance.

The first question they sought to answer was ‘What is a team?’. The researchers [Link]: Finding a sense of purpose in either the work itself or the output was
distinguished between teams and work groups. important for team effectiveness. The meaning of work is personal and can vary:
financial security, supporting family, helping the team succeed or self-expression for
• Teams are highly interdependent – they plan work, solve problems, make decisions and each individual, for example.
review progress in service of a specific project. Team members need one another to
get work done. 5. Impact: The results of one’s work, the subjective judgement that your work is making
a difference, is important for teams. Seeing that one’s work is contributing to the
• Work groups are characterised by the least amount of interdependence. They are based organisation’s goals can help reveal impact.
on organisational or managerial hierarchy. Work groups may meet periodically to hear
and share information. According to Julia Rozovsky, who led the research at Google, “Psychological safety was by
far the most important of the five key dynamics [and is] the underpinning of the other four.”
Team effectiveness was measured using a combination of qualitative assessments and
quantitative measures, such as quarterly sales data. For qualitative assessments, the As a result of this work, Google developed a team survey that teams can use to discuss
researchers captured input from three different perspectives – executives, team leads, their performance. Survey items focus on the five effectiveness pillars and include
and team members, each of whom were asked to rate teams on similar scales. They questions such as:
also gathered employee engagement and other data including personality factors, 1. Psychological safety – ‘If I make a mistake on our team, it is not held against me.’
demographic data and tenure.
2. Dependability – ‘When my teammates say they’ll do something, they follow through
The results showed that what really mattered was less about who is on the team, and with it.’
more about how the team worked together. In order of importance, the following factors
3. Structure and Clarity – ‘Our team has an effective decision-making process.’
were significant:
4. Meaning – ‘The work I do for our team is meaningful to me.’
1. Psychological safety: In teams with high psychological safety, teammates felt safe to
take risks around their team members. They feel confident that no one on the team 5. Impact – ‘I understand how our team’s work contributes to the organisation’s goals.’
would embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question or
offering a new idea. A downloadable version of the team effectiveness discussion guide can be found here.

2. Dependability: In teams with high dependability, members reliably complete quality

work on time (vs the opposite – shirking responsibilities).
3. Structure and clarity: An individual’s understanding of job expectations, the process
for fulfilling these expectations and the consequences of one’s performance were
important for team effectiveness. Goals can be set at the individual or group level, and
must be specific, challenging and attainable.

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

2.5

FIGURE 4
TEAM CHANGES
TEAM COMPOSITION –
WHAT DO WE NEED FOR SUCCESS?
When we discussed the foundations of effective teams above, we highlighted having
a compelling direction and an enabling team structure as critical success factors.
Indeed, Google’s Project Aristotle highlighted that it is important for individual team 3 people, 3 lines 4 people, 6 lines 5 people, 10 lines 6 people, 15 lines
members to understand the performance expectations of the team, the contribution
they are expected to make to those outcomes and how the team would go about
delivering on those expectations.

In putting together the team, we would highlight two other important factors:
1. Optimal team size
2. Getting the mix of skills right.
7 people, 21 lines 8 people, 28 lines 9 people, 36 lines 10 people, 45 lines
1 TEAM SIZE
One of the most common mistakes is putting too many people on a team. As team
size increases, the marginal benefit of adding each additional team member goes
down. Psychologist Ivan Steiner’s research on the effect of group size on group
productivity found that while group productivity does increase with additional team
members, the rate of increase declines as the team gets larger. Therefore going from
two to three people will have greater marginal impact on team outputs than increasing
from 10 to 11. For very large groups, total team output can actually decrease once a 11 people, 55 lines 12 people, 66 lines 13 people, 78 lines 14 people, 91 lines
group gets too large. Research suggests that most teams with more than eight people
suffer from challenges in coordination, increased tension and reduced productivity.

Professor Toegel highlights that it is common to underestimate the impact of adding

one more person to a team or a meeting. As illustrated opposite, adding just one more
person to a team actually adds multiple communication lines and therefore vastly 2 GETTING THE MIX RIGHT
changes relationship dynamics. Another potential pitfall is creating a team that is too homogeneous. Homogeneity may
mean that team members get along together but lack the full complement of resources
Toegel recommends that teams and meetings should achieve a balance between needed to perform well. However, while a more diverse team may be more creative or
having enough people present to generate sufficient ideas, but not creating too much generate more ideas, it is likely to experience greater conflict and process losses. This
relational complexity. Her own experience at IMD has been that six is the optimal is where psychological safety becomes particularly important. It can also be beneficial
number of people to meet in person, and four to six is optimal for meeting online (as to invest in expert team coaching to help a diverse group to find ways to constructively
body language is harder to read and relationship building is therefore more difficult). In learn from their differences and exploit them in carrying out the team’s work.
large, complex meetings, she also recommends applying the ‘1-2-5-all’ approach. This
involves giving people individual time to reflect, then time in pairs to refine or validate
ideas, before moving to small groups and finally sharing with the overall group.

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

2.6
TEAM NORMS –
HOW TO WORK TOGETHER
Norms define team behaviours that are acceptable – and unacceptable. Virtual and hybrid working has brought an additional level of complexity to team
They cover both internal team processes, i.e. the behavioural processes, and has made it all the more important for teams to agree working
practices, team norms, communication practices and decision-making processes. The
boundaries within which the team should operate, but also how the following are factors to consider in designing team norms for hybrid and virtual teams:
team interacts with its context. A core task of setting up the team is to
• Being mindful and deliberate about the types of work best suited to face-to-face
deliberately create and agree what these team norms are. Professor interaction versus virtual working.
Toegel suggests the below 8-box team contract as an example of this.
• Adapting the cadence of team communication activity to the phase of the work.
Ancona and Bresman suggest bringing team members together more frequently
MISSION AND SCOPE GOALS NORMS FUN and Play in the early stages to build the team, establish trust, compare notes and decide on
• Why do you exist? • What do you want to • What are behaviours • Spontaneity and chance future actions. Once the team is established, less frequent in-person interactions
• What is at the core achieve? we want to encourage? interactions may be sufficient to maintain relationships and momentum.
of your business • What are measureable • How we will keep each • Celebrations and
activities? performance other accountable? relaxation • Encouraging open information sharing. A 2009 meta-analysis by Mesmer-Magnus
• What is outside of your benchmarks that will • E.g. decision-making, • Team building (F2F, et al found that team performance was positively correlated with open information
scope? help you improve? conflict resolution, hybrid, virtual) sharing. Encouraging teams to share information through casual conversation at the
meeting guidelines, beginning of meetings builds team trust and develops social structures to support
ways of working etc. team effectiveness.
• Making additional effort to build psychological safety for virtual and hybrid teams.
Strengths Weaknesses ROLES VALUES Ayoko et al (2012) found certain practices have a positive effect on establishing
• What individual • What individual • What is the • What values motivate psychological safety. These include going out of your way to clarify where you are
competences (hard competences (hard contribution of each each team member? coming from to avoid confusions and misinterpretation, actively sharing knowledge
and soft skills) does the and soft skills) are team member? • What are the common and seeking out feedback rather than waiting to receive it, and sharing positivity
team have its disposal? missing? • Can you benefit from themes in your about the good things you see in others.
• How do these combine • When combined, how further clarifying your individual values?
into an asset for the do these constitute formal (and informal) • What differences do you • Consider using emoticons or using virtual tools to gauge the team’s emotional
team? a gap / blind spot for roles on the team? need to keep in mind? status. Emoticons have been shown to reduce miscommunication and bring more
the team? • What could be your energy into virtual communication. Asking employees to anonymously rate their
combined team values? emotional state can start a conversation without putting individuals on the spot.
• Phone calls can help facilitate the kinds of spontaneous interactions that are often
missing from remote, online interactions.

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

DECISION-MAKING
AND PRIORITISATION
At our IMD event, Professor of Strategy, Arnaud Chevallier facilitated a 1 FRAMING When faced with a complex strategic decision, first outline the most
session on decision-making in teams, which is summarised below. relevant questions and how they interconnect (rather than jumping straight in to
answering question you think of first). Next, identify the one overarching question that
Senior business leaders operate in an environment of uncertainty where there is not your entire project answers, ensuring that it is neither too narrow nor too broad, and
usually one right decision. Therefore, it is better to think in terms of probabilities, rather expect to modify it as you go.
than certainties, and recognise that our decision preferences are informed by subjective 2 EXPLORING This helps you to discover alternative solutions and identify evaluation
information, biases and values. Rather than asking ‘how do we make sure we make the criteria. The obvious solution is not necessarily the best, so give yourself time to
right decisions?’ a better question to ask is ‘how to make more high-quality decisions?’ consider potential alternatives. This can be achieved by first diverging and considering
As a background to making better team decisions, the session outlined a framework various ways to answer your question, before converging on the handful of alternatives
that can be used to improve the quality of both individual and collective decision- that you think are most promising. Complex problems do not have one objectively
making: Frame, Explore, Decide (FrED). right solution. Instead, what you value should dictate which alternative is the best fit.
Your team may have different opinions on what should be prioritised. Disagreements
are a feature, not a bug. An increasing body of research shows that teams that first
FIGURE 5

FRAME, EXPLORE, DECIDE (FrED) disagree, then commit, find better solutions than teams that never disagree. But you
What’s my challenge? need both – you need to disagree, and then once you have discussed, to commit. If
you all initially agree on a decision, then it is likely there is some complexity that you
FRAME collectively missing.
3 DECIDING Evaluate each alternative according to the criteria that you have selected,
remembering you will need to make tradeoffs and that your team may not draw the

FRED same conclusions from the same body of evidence. Consider what, as a group, you
are willing to let go of in order to achieve something more valuable.

DECIDE EXPLORE Making effective strategic decisions according to this framework requires iterations,
with each one enabling more substantial, evidence-based debates within the team.
How should I overcome How may I overcome Therefore it is important to constantly re-evaluate what you ‘know’ and adopt a
my challenge? my challenge? scientific mindset, where you use your team to test your intuition. If you are making
a decision under time pressure, there is no one ‘right’ way to allocate time to FrED, as
long as you iterate, allocating some time to each Fr, E and D.

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

HOW TO LEVERAGE TEAMS TO

CREATE BETTER OUTCOMES
Engaging different perspectives – such as through team decision-

FIGURE 6
making – can be a valuable way to make decisions, especially when STAKEHOLDER INPUT TO DECISIONS
the situation is particularly broad or complex. However, leveraging
this engagement requires creating an environment where people
feel safe to voice dissenting opinions. For example, the aviation

Ownership / locus of relevant EVIDENCE

OTHERS
industry uses a process called Crew Relationship Management, which
encourages crew to share different opinions or mistakes they have
made. This environment is created through colleagues establishing their
competence, acknowledging their imperfections and engaging the crew
so they realise it is ok to speak up.
The first step is deciding how much team input a decision requires. Decisions style
can be independent, consultative (where an individual asks for others input, but retains

SELF
ultimate decision-making power), or collaborative (where decision-making power is
delegated). People naturally have different preferences or styles in relation to making
group or team decisions. It’s important to know your preference, but be able to
switch to a different decision style, depending on the decision you’re facing, where
the locus of relevant evidence is, and what support you need. For example, if you LOW HIGH
require low support from stakeholders and already have the evidence you need, then Support needed from stakeholders
you can likely make the decision by yourself. It is important to remember that your
culture defines what constitutes high and low support, and therefore the axes will vary
between organisations. This can cause complexity for organisations that span different
boundaries or cultures.
Being clear about the process and how you will reach a final decision helps to
Once you have decided the level of support, next you will need to decide who are reconcile different viewpoints; research shows that people are more likely to accept an
your core stakeholders to engage. Decide whether you want to them give them a outcome if they feel that they have been listened to. This can be achieved by setting
voice, a veto or a vote. You do not need to engage all stakeholders to the same level, expectations from the outset when you elicit opinions, outlining that the outcome
and can adapt this on a case by case basis. Avoid going to the same people for every may not necessarily reflect all their priorities, but their view will be taken into account.
decision – be cognisant about who you are involving and think about where people fit Additionally return to the people you have spoken with to explain the final decision
for specific decisions. to them. The overall aim is to achieve a decision that is best for the organisation as a
whole, rather than for any specific individual or function.

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

STRAUMANN GROUP’S
“IT, WE AND I” TEAM EFFECTIVENESS METHODOLOGY
Straumann Group, the Swiss based oral care and dental solutions company, believes its The diagnostic gives us a basis for having a much
“high-performance player-learner culture” is a competitive advantage. The culture journey
in Straumann started over 7 years ago. Underpinning the change are new core beliefs more targeted and meaningful discussion, and also
which set out the cultural tenets upon which the company drives high performance. The helps us track the impact of interventions.
journey to becoming a high-performing team can also be framed as: High-performing
teams create a better “I” and a better “We” to drive a better “It”.

This is expressed as follows: Tools include meeting agendas for team workshops, addressing different types of team
situations: new members, new leaders, change in strategy or structure, and solving for
• The “I” is about us as individual leaders – the beliefs and values “I” hold and the skills, inter-relational dilemmas. There is also an inventory of exercises and activities facilitators
capabilities and experiences “I” possess underpinned by being “player learners”. might engage in, as well as standard templates for checking in and checking out at
• The “We” is about the collective – the relationships, interactions and networks that “We” regular team meetings and team pulse checks. The toolkit also covers the facilitation skills
as leaders catalyse, build and lead within our teams and cross-functionally. required to deliver different activities and preconditions to consider, as well as guidelines
around frequency and duration of interventions.
• The “It” is about the larger systems and aspirational goals we hope to achieve as high-
performance outcomes and deliver on our purpose for patients and our people. Straumann uses a survey platform to run a team diagnosis on how members are thinking
and feeling, and measure the impact of teams interventions. Based on the “It, We and I”
• “It, We and I” also forms the basis of Straumann’s leadership expectations and its
framework, it asks employees questions across the three dimensions. The “It” dimension
approach to team effectiveness.
includes questions covering the team’s shared accountability and whether it has a clear
Straumann is introducing a new team effectiveness methodology to enrich its high- team purpose that connects to the Straumann group strategy. “We” questions include
performance culture. It is being rolled out to HR and OD professionals and business items covering team relationships, communications, achievement against objectives,
leaders, with a toolkit of resources and interventions to support teams at scale across the team climate and how well the team is equipped to deal with difficult issues. “I” asks
organisation. The objective is to develop the capability in-house to deliver facilitated team about individuals’ understanding of their own role and accountability, how their mindset
dialogues to help teams navigate their own effectiveness dilemmas. Niti Khosla, Global affects the team, learning from others, feelings of belonging in the team, and whether
Head of Culture, said: “Rapid pace of change, our own aspirations and an increase in individuals find their work meaningful.
cross-functional working is driving the need to have more facilitated team conversations.
The results of the diagnostic help shape the design of team sessions and identify priorities
We were also responding to a renewed energy post-COVID for teams to have pragmatic
for team development. “The diagnostic gives us a basis for having a much more targeted
interventions that they can use themselves without the cost of running workshops with
and meaningful discussion, and also helps us track the impact of interventions,” said
external consultants. It gives teams the opportunity to quickly put together an experience
Suzanne Lee, Global Head of Talent, Learning and Organisation Development.
to talk about the complexities they are facing in a safe way.”

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

3.1
WHAT TO WORK ON
In our research we came across various models used by companies for
the purpose of diagnosing and designing interventions to support team
development. These include the Hackman model described above and
the Drexler Sibbet and Katzenbach and Smith team performance models.
Some companies have also developed their own team effectiveness model
to reflect their organisation’s values and culture. Straumann Group’s “It, We
and I” model is an example, described in more detail on page 23.
One of the most commonly cited models is Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
The Five Dysfunctions describes the common pitfalls faced by teams as they seek to deliver
results and grow together, and explores the causes of team failure. Lencioni contends that
effective teams demonstrate five behaviours:
1. They trust one another
3.0 2. They engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas

BUILDING EFFECTIVE
3. They commit to decisions and action plans
4. They hold each other accountable for delivering against those plans

TEAMS
5. They focus on the achievement of collective results.

He argues that each element of the model is interrelated, and that trust is the essential
foundation of teamwork. He draws the Five Dysfunctions as a pyramid with trust as the base.
Each element builds on the others and therefore, succumbing to any one of them is likely to
In this section we explore how to build effective teams. We consider lead to issues in other areas.
selection and sequencing of team interventions, diagnosis and
evaluation of impact, and the capabilities HR leaders need to develop
to support team development. We consider the specific challenges
for top teams and the role the CHRO plays in supporting top team
development. Case studies provide a practical lens, showing how some
organisations approach team effectiveness in practice.
24
TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

“We know a lot of the elements that are necessary for

FIGURE 7

THE FIVE DYSFUNCTIONS PYRAMID team success: trust building, feedback, and so on. But
very little attention is actually paid to the sequence in
which we do things. My work suggests that to get any
Inattention
to team to a place of high performance you need to go
RESULTS through three steps in the right sequence.
Avoidance of INA TOEGEL, PROFESSOR OF LEADERSHIP AND ORGANISATIONAL
ACCOUNTABILITY CHANGE, IMD BUSINESS SCHOOL

Lack of
COMMITMENT The usefulness of the Lencioni model lies in its simplicity and its attention to team dynamics.
However, it is important to be aware that is it not based on research and its practical
Fear of recommendations lack empirical support.
CONFLICT One of its biggest limitations is the suggested sequencing of interventions. To address a
Absence of lack of trust, Lencioni recommends putting leaders through a series of personal disclosures.
However, starting here is unlikely to lead to trust building in dysfunctional work teams.
TRUST Other models suggest starting in a different place – making sure the team is set up correctly
to deliver against its objectives – and using the work the team has to deliver as the vehicle for
building trust. At the IMD event, Professor Ina Toegel shared her model of team development
ABSENCE OF TRUST – resulting from team members unwilling to be which draws on her research and work with teams over many years (see the 4-Step
vulnerable and open up to one another. Wariness of admitting weaknesses and Framework for Developing High-performance Teams on page 26.
fear of reprisals mean debate is suppressed. This leads to…
Toegel said: “We know a lot of the elements that are necessary for team success: trust
FEAR OF CONFLICT – seeking artificial harmony over open debate and building, feedback, and so on. But very little attention is actually paid to the sequence in which
constructive conflict. This results in… we do things. My work suggests that to get any team to a place of high performance you
need to go through three steps in the right sequence. Teams often get unstuck when they
LACK OF COMMITMENT – feigning buy-in to group decisions creates
don’t get the sequence right. The first is to get the contract right, whether you call it a charter,
ambiguity throughout the organisation and a lack of follow through on
psychological contract or an agreement on how to work together. You have to get that right
decisions. Leading to…
before you move to trust building, because until you have done this you can’t even know
AVOIDANCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY – hesitating to call each other out on what the other side is expecting. It’s only once you have built the foundation on the right-
actions and behaviours that are counterproductive to the team’s goals. Once hand side that you can move to feedback, which is then leveraged in a different way because
clarity and buy-in is achieved, team members can hold each other accountable it’s built on a trust base that shows you care about my development. So I understand that the
for what they signed up to do, and for high standards of performance and feedback is coming from a good place, and I am primed to listen properly and receive it in the
behaviour. Avoidance results in… right way, which then feeds the learning and performance piece.”
INATTENTION TO RESULTS – individuals put their own needs or the needs George Karseras, author of Build Better Teams, having completed an extensive review of the
of their departments above the collective goals of the team. In contrast, when academic literature on team effectiveness, concurred: “The science tells us we don’t build
everyone is focused on results, it’s difficult for egos to get out of hand. teams [by] first building vulnerability-based trust or first attending […] to the relationships in
the team. Rather we start the team development journey by getting the team on the same
page from the get-go and agreeing what’s most important for the team to achieve, and we
build relationships while we do this.”
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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

HIGH-PERFORMANCE TEAMS

FIGURE 8
4-STEP FRAMEWORK
FOR DEVELOPING HIGH-
PERFORMANCE TEAMS DRIVE
At the IMD event Professor Toegel facilitated a session on high- PERFORMANCE
performance teams, which is summarised below.
Performance can be defined by two aspects: performance relative to expectations, and
4.
performance relative to other teams in the same situation. A team of high-performers and
a high-performance team are not the same thing. In particular, in a high-performance
team there is mutual accountability for one another’s growth, which propels the team
Reflecting
Agree on 1.
to high performance. High-performance teams also require a lot of investment in how to work
and learning
relationships; teams must first decide if this investment is worthwhile for them. together BUILD
AGREEMENT
Professor Toegel introduced a 4-step framework to support high-performance teams, FEEDBACK Individual
emphasising the importance of the sequence of the steps. Each step involves an awareness
Sharing and
important jump from strong bilateral relationships to strong team level discussions
and requires significant investment. This investment is particularly important where
3. (feedback)
and team
opening up

relational dynamics within the team are critical to the team achieving its goals. As awareness
stated above, teams should first be sure that they want to make this investment.

1 BUILD AGREEMENT
This is often underestimated as a step in building high-performance teams, but is
BUILD 2.
TRUST
a critical part in building trust more naturally. As mentioned above, psychological
safety is a key part of building effective teams, and can be supported by creating a
team agreement or charter. Google research, as part of Project Aristotle described
on page 18, shows that this is supported by ‘ostentatious listening’ (where members
demonstrate that they are actively listening) and conversational turn-taking (when
everyone speaks for roughly the same amount of time). 2 BUILD TRUST

There are many different areas where you can create team agreement, eight of which Building trust requires the ability to open up and share more personal level information
are highlighted on page 20. These do not necessarily all need to be decided at once, with colleagues. Trust is reciprocal and self-reinforcing – when you open up a little,
but at least 30 minutes is required to have a meaningful discussion for each area. your team mate will also open up. Trust is also important for business outcomes.
In Toegel’s experience, it takes teams around a day and a half in total to have all the When people open up and there is trust, then they feel that it is ok to fail and this in
conversations necessary for effective set-up. turn leads to innovation.

Possible questions to consider when creating team agreement include: For businesses, the challenge is operationalising this trust. Ways to create this include
using icebreakers to build trust or using check-ins to find the emotional space that a
• What is this team uniquely positioned to do that others can’t? person is bringing to a meeting. For example, meetings could begin by team members
• How will we know when the agreed behavioural norms are being followed or not? asking each other ‘what is the weather inside like today?’ or asking ice breaker
How will we call each other out on this? questions, such as ‘what is the best thing that happened to you this past weekend?’. It’s
also important to revisit these check-ins or icebreaker questions regularly and change
• How can you create a fun team environment virtually?
them as needed. Research shows that frequency is more important than intensity –
• How to make the jump from discussing the individual level to the team level (e.g. doing one small thing every day is more impactful than doing one big event a year.
when discussing competencies or values)?
26
TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

3 FEEDBACK
NAME OF CARING FEEDBACK DARING FEEDBACK METAPHOR
Once you have team agreements and trust in place, creating a feedback culture TEAMMATE (what is a helpful behaviour (what should this person (if they were an instrument,
becomes much easier. Whilst feedback usually tends to be bilateral, high-performance by this person?) do differently?) nature, city, food, animal,
teams are able to provide multi-party feedback. Certain processes, such as the car, object...)
‘thinking styles’ model developed by Bonchek and Steele, can enable this. This premise
involves identifying the preferred thinking styles on the team and helps teams to focus
on behaviours (which are more context-specific) rather than personalities (which are
more fixed).
FIGURE 9

THE PREFERRED THINKING STYLES ON YOUR TEAM

4 DRIVE PERFORMANCE
Big picture

Explorer Planner Energiser Connector Learning through experience is the mechanism that drives performance. However,
most organisations do not have good capability at running post-mortems or after
ORIENTATION

action reviews. The ‘GROW’ framework can be a useful guide to help support team
learning and performance. Additionally, these kinds of learning exercises are not
complete until the lessons have actually been implemented.
Details

Expert Optimiser Producer Coach

FIGURE 10
THE GROW FRAMEWORK

Ideas Process Action Relationship

FOCUS G R O W
GOAL REALITY OPTIONS WILL
What do you want Where are you What options do Which choices will
This provides situational flexibility where people are not boxed into certain personality to achieve? now? you have? you make?
types and also creates space to consider what composition of thinking styles means
for the way the team operates (e.g. – what are the gaps that we need to close as a
collective?). The table below also provides an example of a feedback template. While
there is no ideal tool, each team can decide what is best for them.

27
TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

3.2 “It’s important to have the discipline of reflection time to

consider how are we operating as a team and to do that as a
PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS regular practice. This helps reinforce positive team habits and
FOR BUILDING EFFECTIVE TEAMS behaviours and make them sustainable.”
CLAIRE JORDAN, DIRECTOR, LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT SOLUTIONS, LHH

In choosing an approach to team development, academic robustness is important but

participants in team development interventions often prefer more intuitive solutions. In practice, this means that team effectiveness interventions are more impactful when they
Richard Bish, CoE Lead for Senior Executive, Leadership and Team Development at Shell are phased over a longer period of time, rather than being run as a one-off. Burak Koyuncu,
said: “As a practitioner it’s important to bring robust models and tools into the organisation SVP, Head of Leadership Development, UK/I and International at LHH, said: “Six to twelve
but introduce them in ‘user friendly’ ways. The best model in the world is only as good as months is ideal because it gives you time to do the work and agree actions and then provide
the willingness and capability of the team to work with it. It’s important to also create the ongoing coaching to both individuals and the team together so they can continue to embed
environment where difficult conversations around team dynamics and relationships can take the behaviour change.”
place safely.” Richard Cleverly said: “It’s important that whatever framework you use is simple
enough that people grasp it, and yet sophisticated enough to enable you to get into the Some teams will use a team coach to provide ongoing support. For example, one CHRO
important conversations that a team needs to have.” told us their executive team has appointed a team coach who attends executive meetings
to observe and feed back on how the team works together. Outside of the executive
Team effectiveness interventions will typically involve some form of workshop or away day meetings, the coach feeds back both individually and collectively to the team, and uses those
where the team takes time out to invest in its own development and make sure it is set up observations to facilitate the team’s development. One of the benefits of this intervention is to
for success. Post-pandemic, we have witnessed a greater appetite among senior leadership give team members a common language to diagnose and discuss their collective performance.
teams to invest in time together as a team, and to focus on purpose and shared values.
There is a pent-up demand for human connections that needs to be satisfied. However, our
research has found that, during the pandemic, leadership teams were surprised to find that
virtual and blended forms of intact team development were more effective than they may BUILDING TRUST ACROSS THE
have expected. We saw many instances of leadership teams scheduling shorter virtual team
effectiveness sessions of 90 minutes to three hours, around the flow of executive team
EXECUTIVE POPULATION AT SWISS RE
meetings, rather than taking days out. Team effectiveness practitioners reported that even
highly-relational interventions such as exploring team dynamics could work well virtually. Swiss Re has been running a leadership development programme – the Pathfinder
Experience – for several years. MDs with a track record of successful change
Team effectiveness is built and sustained through habit and repeated behaviour. A one-off leadership and specifically selected by the Group CEO, attend a three-and-a-half day
intervention may help the team get set up for success, but continued progress will require transformative workshop. Through an intense development process they reflect In
ongoing attention and commitment by the team to review and improve group processes and small coaching groups on their own leadership purpose, their personal leadership
attend to difficult team dynamics that arise. “Teams in today’s complex world need a shared strengths and shadow sides and how to connect deeper with others through sharing
understanding of their context,” said Diane Newell, Managing Director, OCM Discovery. “If defining life moments and crucial personal leadership stories. Initially designed as
regular conversations aren’t happening around that, the team is likely to get lost at some a leadership programme across the executive population, Swiss Re leveraged this
point.” Check-ins (discussed above) can help here. intervention as well as a team development intervention for their executive teams
including the Group Executive Committee (GEC). According to Jan Schlueter, who
It is important for teams to build habits such as discussing collective performance, designed the programme, this has had a significant impact on building trust and
diagnosing issues and identifying ways of working better together, into regular team psychological safety among the wider executive population. “Regardless of whether
interactions. “It is possible to help teams reach a level where they can talk about team individual executives were on the same programme or not, they had a shared
processes and solve problems,” said Neil Morrison. “However, you have to create habits experience that built trust and they were able to bring that into their interactions with
around having those conversations about how you interact. Like any habit, it takes teams and colleagues.”
commitment, consistency and practice.”

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

NESTLÉ:
BUILDING TEAM EFFECTIVENESS AT SCALE
Nestlé, the global food and beverage company, has had in place for several years
a global team development infrastructure with a centre of competence for team
development and coaching. Dedicated team coaches support teams within the
business. One of the key drivers, according to Adeline Looi, Global Head of Integrated
3.3 Leadership Development, is the complexity of doing business in a global, matrixed
multinational organisation. “Looking at the outside world it was clear that we were
DIAGNOSTICS AND EVALUATION only going to be successful if we could operate as championship teams. We can be
a complex, networked organisation, with ever increasing numbers of cross functional
and multinational teams and multi-functional reporting. Working well together in
teams is a key enabler to make this highly-networked organisation work effectively.”
In order to target team effectiveness interventions on the most important
Post-COVID, the challenge is to scale the delivery of team effectiveness support.
issues faced by the team, it’s important to start with a diagnosis of
“People in the business see the value of team coaching but our internal and regional
the factors to be addressed. This can be done as both a qualitative team coaches get overbooked all the time,” said Looi. To address the challenge
and quantitative exercise. This might be as simple as interviewing key of delivering team coaching at scale, the company recognised the importance of
stakeholders such as the CEO, CHRO and other team members about leveraging technology and digital to drive scale. Looi’s team has recently completed a
what’s working and what’s not, using a structured interview framework. The successful pilot of a team coaching platform which focuses on team diagnostics and
conversations as part of intact team journeys.
data can then be aggregated and presented back to the team in a workshop.
The emerging themes will point towards areas where work needs to be A tech start-up worked with Nestlé to customise their technology solution, based
focused on setting the team up for success. on the company’s existing four-stage team effectiveness methodology (the stages
are Team Foundations, Team Effectiveness, Team Excellence ,Team Openness and
Many of the practitioners we interviewed also use diagnostic questionnaires, surveys and Authenticity). The app provides team diagnostics, conversation tools, team coaching
psychometrics to gather quantitative data to set a baseline for measuring team effectiveness and guidance, and also includes a virtual team facilitator. Over 12 months, the
and identifying key issues. Some of the more common tools include: underlying AI helps surface specific issues for the team and develop a practical action
plan to move the team forward. For example, a fully virtual team would be given
• Hogan Personality Inventory and Hogan Development Survey
different options to a hybrid or in-person team. The inbuilt analytics also support
• Ruth Wageman’s Team Diagnostic Survey evaluation of progress.
• Lencioni’s team assessment based on the Five Dysfunctions Individual team members complete an individual and team assessment, and can see
• Big Five psychometric instruments their own as well as the aggregated group results. The team agrees which behaviours
they want to focus on. The Habits module supports the team to contract around the
• Meyer’s Culture Map for cross-cultural teams
actions they will take to address the issues identified through the intervention. The
• Some consultancies compile individual and team profiles by with normative team data app nudges team members to rate how the team is performing against the agreed
behaviours, allowing the team to monitor progress and review what’s working and
• Many organisations also report using personality tools such as MBTI, DISC and Insights to
what’s not.
facilitate team conversations.
The results of the pilot showed that 94% of leaders reported the app had helped their
The diagnostic stage is also the moment to define impact measures that can be used to track
team improve, which also drives team engagement and team psychological safety.
the team’s progress, check it is performing at the required level, and to evaluate the impact of
And in 2023, Nestlé continues to drive this at scale, as part of the inclusive leadership
team interventions.
journey that the organisation is building and embedding.

29
TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

Facilitating team interventions requires a particular blend of skills, especially when dealing
with senior teams. Facilitators have to take the team through a well-designed development
process that addresses the specific needs of the team, while managing the relationship
dynamics between team members. The skills required include:
• Knowledge of team models and expertise in applying team development tools and
techniques to address the needs of the team. Skilled facilitators are able to adapt their
approach ‘in the moment’ and use a wide range of facilitation techniques to respond to the
team’s needs.
• Excellent facilitation skills, including the ability to surface difficult issues and make sure
all participants are heard. Rob Sayers Brown, Product Manager, Global Assessment at
LHH, said: “A good team coach can give that ‘truth talk’ in terms of sharing what they’re
observing around any reticence the team may have to tackle critical issues. Done skilfully, it
can expose any bones of contention and help the team move past them.”
• Ability to create psychological safety and hold the space for the team so they feel safe
airing concerns. This requires strong self-awareness, so the facilitator understands their own
triggers that might derail the process. “You often end up carrying a lot of the angst that
sits with the team,” said Richard Cleverly. “So you have to be confident and comfortable in
yourself to avoid bringing your own issues into the room. If the facilitator is insecure it will
lead to team members feeling unsafe.”

3.4 • Having the confidence and courage to call out bad behaviour and hold team members to
account.

BEING AN EFFECTIVE • Keeping own ego in check. Facilitators need to give participants confidence they are there
to help the team improve, not to boost their own profile or demonstrate competence.
TEAM FACILITATOR • Judgment and a sensitivity to interpersonal dynamics to know what issues to call out, when
to push participants to go further, and when to hold back. This can include assessing the
energy levels in the room and finding ways to break tension, for example through humour.
Jan Schlueter at Swiss Re, said: “You have to be solidly grounded in order to deal with the
“Successful team facilitation relies on the capability characters you are faced with and to be able to hold the space when the going gets tough.”
of the facilitator to manage dynamics in the room Sometimes, team facilitators will face resistance or team members questioning their
and create the space for the team to have the competence or authority. Often, this is less to do with the facilitator’s capability, and more to
critical conversations they need to have, which do with the discomfort the team members may be feeling. It’s important that team facilitators
have appropriate supervision in order to support them in developing their team coaching
they may have been avoiding for some time.” skills and to provide an outlet for dealing with issues that arise.
RICHARD BISH, COE LEAD FOR SENIOR EXECUTIVE, LEADERSHIP
AND TEAM DEVELOPMENT, SHELL
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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

3.6
FACILITATING TOP TEAMS
We interviewed some CHROs about the role they play in supporting the effectiveness of their
executive teams. The role often involves walking a tightrope. On the one hand they are an
equal member of their executive team, making a full contribution as a key team member.
On the other hand they play a pivotal role in ensuring that the executive team is set up for

3.5 success and functions effectively. They also tend to be the first port of call when there are
issues around the effectiveness of the top team. Maria Antoniou, Chief Human Resources

DEVELOPING AN
Officer at Morgan Advance Materials, said: “In every company where I’ve been CHRO, it’s
been part of the role to be custodian of team dynamics around the top table. But at the
same time, the CHRO has to be a confidant of the individuals around that table, and skilfully
EFFECTIVE TOP TEAM manage feedback between those individuals and the CEO.”

The CHROs we interviewed considered supporting the effectiveness of the executive team to
be a key part of their role. This has a number of implications:
“The CHRO role is a delicate one. You have to be at the same
• Sometimes they have to make a difficult call or hold people to account for their behaviour.
time an equal partner on the management team and a partner Sarah Hamilton-Hanna, Chief People Officer at TT Electronics, said: “Often I end up being
to the CEO around team direction and performance.” the one who has to say the things that nobody wants to hear.” This aspect of the role takes
courage.
ANNE VAN DASSEN MUELLER, CHIEF HR OFFICER, STOLT NIELSEN
• They have to pay special attention to building a bond of trust with the CEO. “It’s not enough
to be a technically competent HR person,” said Maria Antoniou. “You have to build intimacy
with the CEO, based on trust, so they can be your first port of call to discuss issues with
In this research we considered the particular challenge of developing top teams, and the role the executive team.” Some CHROs report that they sometimes play a proxy role on behalf
that the CHRO plays. Orla Leonard, Senior Partner and Head of Teams at RHR International, of the CEO, paying particular attention to building the right relationships across the team
said: “The top team is different because everything begins and ends with them and they are to help colleagues resolve issues without having to involve the CEO. They may also alert
dealing with a higher level of complexity. They still have to mobilise and align people around the CEO to team dynamic issues that need to be resolved or coach other members of the
strategies, goals and objectives, but they also set the tone and culture for the organisation. team to prepare for difficult conversations with the CEO.
Top teams often underestimate the extent to which their behaviours set the tone – people
follow what leaders do, not what they say.” • The CHRO also must balance independence with having a close relationship with the CEO.
Executive team colleagues need to have confidence that the CHRO’s intentions are positive
As we discussed above, it is not always clear that the top team is in fact a ‘real’ team, and they need to avoid playing a political line. “You have to be seen to be independent, and
especially where they come together as a group of individuals, each responsible for running not just the mouthpiece of the CEO,” said Kirstin Furber, People Director at Channel 4. “You
their own business or function. Part of the work of developing the top team is to help it have to be seen to be working in service of what the organisation is trying to achieve.”
define its collective purpose: what are we uniquely responsible for collectively as a leadership
• The CHRO is expected to set an example around team behaviours, especially vulnerability.
team beyond our individual responsibilities? Or are we just a committee for rubber stamping
Barry Hoffman said: “Part of the job is to be brave and set the tone. If you genuinely want
decisions? Where can we identify opportunities for synergies across business units?
people to bond, share and be vulnerable you have to be prepared to go first, to tell your
story and open up.”
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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

At the IMD team effectiveness event, Professor of Marketing and Management Seán Meehan • If a CEO asks you to help design an intervention, they are likely enlisting support to
shared his insights on facilitating top teams. He led a discussion on the unique purpose of help them achieve a goal and overcome resistance among the team. In this scenario,
executive teams, which is summarised below. you should first satisfy yourself that the CEO’s position is a reasonable one – consider
alternatives and offer up different arguments, perhaps playing devil’s advocate. This process
Many of the characteristics that we may attribute to top teams, such as decision-making or will help you to create trust, and you will be well-prepared for the intervention. Then, meet
supporting the organisation’s growth, are not actually unique to top teams. Instead, top teams on a one-to-one basis with all parties involved to listen to their concerns and get clarity on
have two unique responsibilities. The first is managing and leading change processes. This is the issues to be resolved in the intervention. A well-designed intervention allows you to play
particularly important in today’s business environment, when external contexts are constantly a supporting rather than leading role, blending into the background as the team works to
evolving and change is constant. Their second responsibility is dealing with crises, such resolve the issues together.
as the COVID-19 pandemic, and ultimately guiding the business to emerge stronger from
these events. Therefore, where top team members really create value is by making critical • Participants in the intervention will be concerned about your role and the value you bring
decisions about where the organisation should go next, understanding the implications – you need to be prepared to be challenged on this. Your interventions should be limited
of these decisions for the organisation, and managing the change process. These unique but powerful, for example using metaphor, bringing in parallel examples or providing a
responsibilities have implications for selecting and forming top teams. Organisations often perspective that unlocks new thinking.
tend to create a top team by picking the heads of different departments (e.g. the head of
finance, the head of HR). However, organisations need to also consider whether the people
on the top team are those who are best equipped to deal with the two responsibilities
outlined above – adapting the organisation to change and dealing with crises. CONNECTING TEAMS, STRATEGY
AND TALENT AT SWISS RE
Professor Meehan highlighted the range of skills that top team members need to meet these
key responsibilities. This includes high levels of trust, belief in one another’s judgement, As part of its turnaround strategy for a specific business unit, Swiss Re has developed
commitment to the organisation, alignment around the purpose, and abandonment of their a top team intervention that takes a more strategic view of developing an effective top
own personal agenda or agenda of their function. Top team members are also always on team. Jan Schlueter, Head of Executive Development, worked with a newly appointed
display; their actions are highly visible and they role model behaviour (including possibly CEO of the business unit to work out what the business strategy meant in terms of
role modelling negative behaviour) whether they intend to or not. Considering all this, the leadership competencies and specific critical roles required within the team to drive
following steps can help with facilitating top team interventions: the strategy. Then they assessed the existing team against those competencies to
• If you are asked to facilitate a top team, first consider whether you will actually be given the identify at a team level where the strengths, weaknesses and gaps were. This included
remit to help (or will you just be taking on a ‘master of ceremonies’ role?). It’s also important using Hogan assessments to build a team profile and identify potential derailers of the
to understand the problem that you’re trying to solve and why your help is needed team. The process involves a facilitated dialogue with the business leader and their
specifically. team to discuss the composition and working practices of the team, with a particular
focus on how they leverage diversity and build psychological safety.
• Acknowledge the politics that are inherent within top teams – it’s likely that most people on
the team want the CEO’s job. Acknowledge and consider how you can work with this, but There is also an individual element which connects to succession management. Each
be willing to call it out when necessary. It’s important to leave your own political agenda team member meets individually with the leader to define their development plan.
outside the door when you are facilitating the top team. Be careful not to allow your “The difference from what you tend to see in succession management is that we are
alliances to get in the way of being an effective facilitator. not treating individual and team development as separate things,” said Schlueter. “We
• Simple frameworks, approaches and questions are impactful and can help colleagues to are looking at both team and individual at the same time.” As a result of following this
become unstuck. For example, simply asking whether they are all in agreement on the process, the leader has a clearer understanding of what is required from the team to
business’ value proposition can be very productive. deliver the strategy, as well as development plans for individuals within the team.

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

TEAM
EFFECTIVENESS
4.0
CONCLUSIONS AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
Team work has become more widespread in recent years – we are all working in more
teams, in more meetings and with more people in these meetings. Indeed, many of us are
suffering from teamworking overload. Teams themselves have also become more complex,
with a quickening pace of change, virtual, hybrid and agile working, a wider range of
stakeholders, and working on multiple teams simultaneously becoming the norm. Our
research shows that teamworking is both inevitable and essential. Therefore the skill of
building effective teams is a critical capability for HR professionals to develop.

Teams can be a driving force for growth, innovation and performance in organisations.
However, there are costs associated with developing and supporting effective teams. We
need to make informed choices about where there is business value to be gained from
investing in teams, and where the investment is not worth it.

The following recommendations emerged from our research:

1 You have to be wise about choosing where to invest in a team. It won’t be

possible to support every group, therefore you have to identify where building a
high-performing team will have greatest payback.

2 Focus your team effectiveness efforts on those areas of the business where
the potential benefits of high-performing teams will have greatest impact on
critical business outcomes, such as increased sales, cost reduction, improved time
to market or successfully launching new products and services.

3 Prioritise cross-functional, multi-disciplinary or diverse teams where individuals

may lack experience of working across organisational boundaries or may need
additional support to build trust, create psychological safety and manage conflicts.
Investment is particularly worthwhile where relational dynamics within the team are
critical to the team achieving its goals.

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

4 Teams often evolve to have more members than necessary, which exponentially
increases the number of touch points and complexity of communications. Teams
should have enough people to generate sufficient ideas, but not too many to create
unnecessary relational complexity. If possible, cap team membership at eight people
or fewer – research shows that productivity drops if team size increases above this.
Additionally ensure that teams are not too homogenous, and that team diversity is
supported by a culture of psychological safety.

5 Make expectations explicit both with team members and their stakeholders.
Do we want to be a high-performing team or are we comfortable with being an
effective working group? What does the situation demand? Are we prepared to put
in the additional effort required to move along the curve towards becoming a high-
performing team?

6 Carefully plan the right sequencing of interventions. Professor Toegel’s work

suggests that teams need to first establish a charter or agreed set of norms before
they can move to trust building. This involves finding the answers to questions such
as: What is the team uniquely here to achieve as a collective? How will we work
together and make decisions? What role does each individual play in delivering
team outcomes? How will we hold each other to account for performance? Going
through this process of developing shared norms is the first step in building trust. It’s
only once a team agreement and trust are created, that you can move to developing
a team feedback culture and, ultimately, drive team learning and performance.

7 Little and often is best in terms of team interventions. Research shows that team
effectiveness is built through sustained habits and repeated behaviours, rather than
one-off interventions. Consider regular check-ins at the start of meetings to allow
team members to share the emotional space they are experiencing, which can help
build and maintain trust.

8 Teach team leaders how to create and sustain psychological safety. It can be
established by leaders being fully present in conversations, actively encouraging
speaking up and reporting mistakes, being inclusive in decision-making,
acknowledging that they don’t know all the answers and inviting participation from
all team members.

9 Consider how your toolkit for supporting team effectiveness needs to be

updated to reflect the increased prevalence of virtual and hybrid working, which
require greater effort in terms of developing team norms, communication practices
and decision-making processes.

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

Edmondson, A. (2019) The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the

Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Wiley
Edmondson, A. (1999) Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams.
Administrative Science Quarterly. 44(2), 350
Frei, F. and Morriss, A. Begin with Trust. Harvard Business Review. May-June 2020. https://

5.0 [Link]/2020/05/begin-with-trust
Haas, M. and Mortensen, M. The Secrets of Great Teamwork. Harvard Business Review. June
2016. [Link]

APPENDIX Hackman, J. R. (2002) Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances. Harvard
Business Review Press
Hadley, C. and Mortensen, M. Do We Still Need Teams? [Link]. 26 April 2022, [Link]
org/2022/04/do-we-still-need-teams

5.1 Karseras, G. (2022) Build Better Teams: Creating Winning Teams in the Digital Age. FIU
Business Press
REFERENCES AND READING LIST Lencioni, P. (2002) The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. Jossey Bass

Ancona, D. and Bresman, H. Turn Your Teams Inside Out. MIT Sloan Management Review. McChrystal, S. (2015) Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World.
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Ancona, D., Bresman, H. and Mortensen, M. Shifting Team Research after COVID-19: Mesmer-Magnus, J. and DeChurch, L. (2009) Information Sharing and Team Performance:
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Brent, M. and Dent, F. (2017) The Leadership of Teams: How to Develop and Inspire High-
performance Teamwork. Bloomsbury Publishing, London
Cross, R., Rebele, R. and Grant, A. Collaborative Overload. Harvard Business Review.
January-February 2016. [Link]

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

5.2
RESEARCH PARTICIPANT LIST
Maria Antoniou, Chief Human Resources Officer, Morgan Advanced Materials
Richard Bish, CoE Lead for Senior Executive, Leadership and Team Development, Shell
Graham Clark, Managing Director, OCM Enable, The OCM Group
Richard Cleverly, Founder, Think Cleverly
Kirstin Furber, People Director, Channel 4
Sarah Hamilton-Hanna, Chief People Officer, TT Electronics
Barry Hoffman, formerly Chief People Officer, Landsec
Claire Jordan, Director, Leadership Development Solutions, LHH
Niti Khosla, Head of Culture, Straumann Group
Burak Koyuncu, SVP, Head of Leadership Development, UK/I and International, LHH
Suzanne Lee, Global Head of Talent, Learning and Organisation Development,
Straumann Group
Orla Leonard, Senior Partner and Head of Teams, RHR International
Adeline Looi, Global Head of Integrated Leadership Development, Nestlé
Kate Mills, Chief People Officer, Newton Europe
Neil Morrison, Group HR Director, Severn Trent Water
Diane Newell, Managing Director, OCM Discovery, The OCM Group
Sharron Pamplin, Chief People Officer, Lloyd’s Register
Dan Russell, Head of RHR’s Products, Data and Insights Lab, RHR International
Rob Sayers Brown, Product Manager, Global Assessment, LHH
Jan Schlueter, Head of Executive Development, Swiss Re
Ina Toegel, Professor of Leadership and Organisational Change, IMD
Ann van Dassen Mueller, Chief HR Officer, Stolt Nielsen
Karen Ward, Strategic Change Director, Open University

36