Teams are part of a larger organization system; every work team relies on resources outside the group to sustain it. A scarcity of resources directly reduces the ability of a team to perform its job effectively and achieve its goals. Important resources include timely information, proper equipment, adequate staffing, encouragement, and administrative assistance.

Teams can’t function if they can’t agree on who is to do what and ensure all members share the workload. Agreeing on the specifics of work and how they fit together to integrate individual skills requires leadership and structure, either from management or from team members themselves. In self-managed teams, members absorb many of the duties typically assumed by managers. A manager’s job then becomes managing outside (rather than inside) the team.

As mentioned before, leadership is especially important in multiteam systems. Here, leaders need to delegate responsibility to teams and play the role of facilitator, making sure the teams work together rather than against one another.20

Trust is the foundation of leadership; it allows a team to accept and commit to the leader’s goals and decisions. Members of effective teams exhibit trust in their leaders.21 They also trust each other. Interpersonal trust among team members facilitates cooperation, reduces the need to monitor each other’s behavior, and bonds individuals through the belief that members won’t take advantage of them. Members are more likely to take risks and expose vulnerabilities when they can trust others on their team. The overall level of trust in a team is important, but the way trust is dispersed among team members also matters. Trust levels that are asymmetric and imbalanced between team members can mitigate the performance advantages of a high overall level of trust—in such cases, coalitions form that often undermine the team as a whole.22

Trust is a perception that can be vulnerable to shifting conditions in a team environment. For instance, research in Singapore found that, in high-trust teams, individuals are less likely to claim and defend personal ownership of their ideas, but individuals who do still claim personal ownership are rated as lower contributors by team members.23 This “punishment” by the team may reflect resentments that create negative relationships, increased conflicts, and reduced performance.

Individual performance evaluations and incentives may interfere with the development of high-performance teams. So, in addition to evaluating and rewarding employees for their individual contributions, management should utilize hybrid performance systems that incorporate an individual member component to recognize individual contributions, and a group reward to recognize positive team outcomes.24 Group-based appraisals, profit sharing, small-group incentives, and other system modifications can reinforce team effort and commitment.

It’s true we occasionally read about an athletic team of mediocre players who, because of excellent coaching, determination, and precision teamwork, beat a far more talented group. But such cases make the news precisely because they are unusual. A team’s performance depends in part on the knowledge, skills, and abilities of individual members.26 Abilities set limits on what members can do and how effectively they will perform on a team.

Research revealed insights into team composition and performance. First, when solving a complex problem such as reengineering an assembly line, high-ability teams—composed of mostly intelligent members—do better than lower-ability teams. High-ability teams are also more adaptable to changing situations; they can more effectively apply existing knowledge to new problems.

Finally, the ability of the team’s leader matters. Smart team leaders help less intelligent team members when they struggle with a task. A less intelligent leader can, conversely, neutralize the effect of a high-ability team.27

We demonstrated in Chapter 5 that personality significantly influences individual behavior. Some dimensions identified in the Big Five personality model are particularly relevant to team effectiveness.28 Conscientiousness is especially important to teams. Conscientious people are good at backing up other team members and sensing when their support is truly needed. Conscientious teams also have other advantages—one study found that behavioral tendencies such as organization, achievement orientation, and endurance were all related to higher levels of team performance.29

Team composition can be based on individual personalities to good effect. Suppose an organization needs to create 20 teams of 4 people each and has 40 highly conscientious people and 40 who score low on conscientiousness. Would the organization be better off: (1) forming 10 teams of highly conscientious people and 10 teams of members low on conscientiousness; or (2) “seeding” each team with two people who score high and two who score low on conscientiousness? Perhaps surprisingly, evidence suggests Option 1 is the best choice; performance across the teams will be higher if the organization forms 10 highly conscientious teams and 10 teams low in conscientiousness. The reason is that a team with varying conscientiousness levels will not work to the peak performance of its highly conscientious members. Instead, a group normalization dynamic (or simple resentment) will complicate interactions and force the highly conscientious members to lower their expectations, thus reducing the group’s performance.30

What about the other traits? Teams with a high level of openness to experience tend to perform better, and research indicates that constructive task conflict enhances the effect. Open team members communicate better with one another and throw out more ideas, which makes teams with open people more creative and innovative.31 Task conflict also enhances performance for teams with high levels of emotional stability.32 It’s not so much that the conflict itself improves performance for these teams, but that teams characterized by openness and emotional stability are able to handle conflict and leverage it to improve performance. The minimum level of team member agreeableness matters, too: teams do worse when they have one or more highly disagreeable members, and a wide span in individual levels of agreeableness can lower productivity. Research is not clear on the outcomes of extraversion, but one study indicated that a high mean level of extraversion in a team can increase the level of helping behaviors, particularly in a climate of cooperation.33 Thus, the personality traits of individuals are as important to teams as the overall personality characteristics of the team.

Teams have different needs, and members should be selected to ensure all the various roles are filled. A study of 778 major league baseball teams over a 21-year period highlighted the importance of assigning roles appropriately.34 As you might expect, teams with more experienced and skilled members performed better. However, the experience and skill of those in core roles—those who handled more of the workflow of the team and were central to all work processes (in this case, pitchers and catchers)—were especially vital.35 In other words, put your most able, experienced, and conscientious workers in the most central roles in a team.

We can identify nine potential team member roles (see Exhibit 10-4). Successful work teams have selected people to play all these roles based on their skills and preferences. (On many teams, individuals will play multiple roles.) To increase the likelihood team members will work well together, managers need to understand the individual strengths each person can bring to a team, select members with their strengths in mind, and allocate work assignments that fit with members’ preferred styles.

In Chapter 9, we discussed the effect of diversity on groups. How does team diversity affect team performance? The degree to which members of a work unit (group, team, or department) share a common demographic attribute, such as age, sex, race, educational level, or length of service in the organization, is the subject of organizational demography. Organizational demography suggests that attributes such as age or the date of joining should help predict turnover. The logic goes like this: Turnover will be greater among those with dissimilar experiences because communication is more difficult and conflict is more likely. Increased conflict makes membership less attractive, so employees are more likely to quit. Similarly, the losers of a conflict are more apt to leave voluntarily or be forced out.36 The conclusion is that diversity negatively affects team performance.

Many of us hold the optimistic view that diversity should be a good thing—diverse teams should benefit from differing perspectives. Two meta-analytic reviews showed, however, that demographic diversity was essentially unrelated to team performance, while a third review suggested that race and gender diversity were actually negatively related to team performance.37 Other research findings are mixed. One qualifier is that gender and ethnic diversity have more negative effects in occupations dominated by White or male employees, but in more demographically balanced occupations, diversity is less of a problem. Diversity in function, education, and expertise are positively related to team performance, but these effects are small and depend on the situation.

We have discussed research on team diversity regarding a number of differences. But what about cultural differences? Evidence indicates cultural diversity interferes with team processes, at least in the short term,38 but let’s dig a little deeper: what about differences in cultural status? Though it’s debatable, people with higher cultural status are usually in the majority or ruling race group of their nations. Researchers in the United Kingdom, for example, found that cultural status differences affected team performance, noting that teams with more high cultural-status members than low cultural-status members realized improved performance... for every member on the team.39 This suggests not that diverse teams should be filled with individuals who have high cultural status in their countries, but that we should be aware of how people identify with their cultural status even in diverse group settings.

In general, cultural diversity seems to be an asset for tasks that call for a variety of viewpoints. But culturally heterogeneous teams have more difficulty learning to work with each other and solving problems. The good news is that these difficulties seem to dissipate with time.

Most experts agree that keeping teams small is key to improving group effectiveness.40 Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos uses the “two-pizza” rule, saying, “If it takes more than two pizzas to feed the team, the team is too big.”41 Psychologist George Miller claimed “the magical number [is] seven, plus or minus two,” for the ideal team size.42 Author and Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard writes, “Bigger teams almost never correlate with a greater chance of success” because the potential connections between people grow exponentially as team size increases, complicating communications.43

Generally speaking, the most effective teams have five to nine members. Experts suggest using the smallest number of people who can do the task. Unfortunately, managers often err by making teams too large. It may require only four or five members to develop an array of views and skills, while coordination problems can increase as others are added. When teams have excess members, cohesiveness and mutual accountability decline, social loafing increases, and people communicate less. Members of large teams have trouble coordinating with one another, especially under time pressure. When a natural working unit is larger and you want a team effort, consider breaking the group into subteams.44

Not every employee is a team player. Given the option, many employees will select themselves out of team participation. When people who prefer to work alone are required to team up, there is a direct threat to the team’s morale and to individual member satisfaction.45 This suggests that, when selecting team members, managers should consider individual preferences along with abilities, personalities, and skills. High-performing teams are likely to be composed of people who prefer working as part of a group.

Effective teams begin by analyzing the team’s mission, developing goals to achieve that mission, and creating strategies for achieving the goals. Teams that consistently perform better have a clear sense of what needs to be done and how.48 This sounds obvious, but many teams ignore this fundamental process. Effective teams show reflexivity, meaning they reflect on and adjust their purpose when necessary. A team must have a good plan, but it needs to be willing and able to adapt when conditions call for it.49 Interestingly, some evidence suggests that teams high in reflexivity are better able to adapt to conflicting plans and goals among team members.50

Successful teams translate their common purpose into specific, measurable, and realistic performance goals. Specific goals facilitate clear communication. They help teams maintain their focus on getting results. Consistent with the research on individual goals, team goals should be challenging. Difficult but achievable goals raise team performance on those criteria for which they’re set. So, for instance, goals for quantity tend to increase quantity, goals for accuracy increase accuracy, and so on.51

Effective teams have confidence in themselves; they believe they can succeed. We call this team efficacy.52 Teams that have been successful raise their beliefs about future success, which, in turn, motivates them to work harder. In addition, teams that have a shared knowledge of individual capabilities can strengthen the link between team members’ self-efficacy and their individual creativity because members can more effectively solicit informed opinions from their teammates.53 What can management do to increase team efficacy? Two options are helping the team achieve small successes that build confidence, and providing training to improve members’ technical and interpersonal skills. The greater the abilities of team members, the more likely the team will develop confidence and the ability to deliver on that confidence.

In Chapter 9, we discussed the important role of social identity in people’s lives. When people connect emotionally with the groups they’re in, they are more likely to invest in their relationship with those groups. It’s the same with teams. For example, research with soldiers in the Netherlands indicated that individuals who felt included and respected by team members became more willing to work hard for their teams, even though as soldiers they were already called upon to be dedicated to their units. Therefore, by recognizing individuals’ specific skills and abilities, as well as creating a climate of respect and inclusion, leaders and members can foster positive team identity and realize improved team outcomes.54

Organizational identity is important, too. Rarely do teams operate in a vacuum—more often teams interact with other teams, requiring interteam coordination. Individuals with a positive team identity but without a positive organizational identity can become fixed to their teams and unwilling to coordinate with other teams within the organization.55

Have you ever been a member of a team that really “gelled,” one in which team members felt connected? The term team cohesion means members are emotionally attached to one another and motivated toward the team because of their attachment. Team cohesion is a useful tool to predict team outcomes. For example, a large study in China indicated that if team cohesion is high and tasks are complex, costly investments in promotions, rewards, training, and so forth yield greater profitable team creativity. Teams with low cohesion and simple tasks, on the other hand, are not likely to respond to incentives with greater creativity.56

Team cohesion is a strong predictor of team performance such that when cohesion is harmed, performance may be too. Negative relationships are one driver of reduced cohesion. To mitigate this effect, teams can foster high levels of interdependence and high-quality interpersonal interactions.

Effective teams share accurate mental models—organized mental representations of the key elements within a team’s environment that team members share (If the team mission and goals pertain to what a team needs to be effective, mental models pertain to how a team does its work).⁵⁷ If team members have the wrong mental models, which is particularly likely in teams under acute stress, their performance suffers.58 One review of 65 independent studies found that teams with shared mental models engaged in more frequent interactions with one another, were more motivated, had more positive attitudes toward their work, and had higher levels of objectively rated performance.59 If team members have different ideas about how to do things, however, the team will fight over methods rather than focus on what needs to be done.60

An anesthetic team in a hospital is one example of an action team with shared mental models. Research in Switzerland found that anesthetic teams communicated two distinct types of messages while in an operation: vocally monitoring each other’s performance (not to criticize but to keep a vocal record of events), and “talking to the room” (announcements to everyone such as, “Patient’s blood pressure is dropping”). The study found that high- and low-performing teams communicated in these ways equally often; what mattered to performance was the sequencing of the communication to maintain a shared mental model. High-performing teams followed up monitoring dialogue with assistance and instructions, and talking-to-the-room dialogue with further team dialogue.61 The message seems simple: to maintain shared mental models and to share in conversations about what is happening while the team is in operation!

Conflict has a complex relationship with team performance, and it’s not necessarily bad (see Chapter 14). Relationship conflicts—those based on interpersonal incompatibility, tension, and animosity toward others—are almost always dysfunctional. However, when teams are performing nonroutine activities, disagreements about task content—called task conflicts—stimulate discussion, promote critical assessment of problems and options, and can lead to better team decisions. According to one study conducted in China, moderate levels of task conflict during the initial phases of team performance were positively related to team creativity, but both very low and very high levels of task conflict were negatively related to team performance.62 In other words, both too much and too little disagreement about how a team should initially perform a creative task can inhibit performance.

As we noted earlier, individuals can engage in social loafing and coast on the group’s effort when their particular contributions (or lack thereof) can’t be identified. Effective teams undermine this tendency by making members individually and jointly accountable for the team’s purpose, goals, and approach.63 Therefore, members should be clear on what they are individually and jointly responsible for on the team.