Today’s American workplace is all about the team. In the past 60 years offices have shifted from individual suites to oceans-of-cubicles to what we have now – open spaces with moveable, adjustable desks and floor-to-ceiling whiteboards. Throw in espresso machines and a ping-pong table and it is clear that we have built veritable arenas of collaboration. People are sent a strong message: Work as a team! But the problem is most people don’t why. Or even how.
Teams can hinder. They can represent massive amounts of locked-up potential. Lack of common purpose, inability to address differences, and pig-headed members who don’t look beyond their own agenda abound. But the opposite is also true. High performance teams harness the collective creativity, learnings, and energy of their members. They do what no one person can do. Great teams are multipliers.
5 Disciplines of a Team
Peter Hawkins, a leading scholar and expert on team function, says that effective teams must focus on five disciplines: Good teams have a clear commission, defined team roles, defined team behaviors, capability to improve and learn as a team, and strong connections with those outside the team. We hear about the first four profusely; they are the basics covered by any team-building workshop, they are part of countless “team health” assessments, and best-selling business authors, like Lencioni, have made careers writing about them.
But the fifth, outward connection, is the hardest, the most contrary to human behavior, is rarely addressed, and is almost never taught. And it alone can make or break a team’s success.
Communication
Teams that create strong connections outside of their team and within their organization communicate well. They share information and they draw it in. This sounds straightforward, but for too many otherwise well-functioning teams it is where things go sour. When a team is too isolationist they end up with projects that are not funded and managers who put their efforts in other directions.
I surveyed people who work in different fields, asking them to think of one team they are on and consider their communications with someone, or some other group, outside of their team but within their organization. Examples of this could be a team of third grade teachers and their principal, or a product innovation team and the marketing team. Those who rated their communication as problematic had one main differentiator – teams having trouble simply did not communicate enough. When asked what would help fix the problem they said that both more one-on-one communication time and having a greater understanding of the benefits of communication would help.
With that in mind, I will lay out a framework to guide project teams in thinking through the different factors that lead to effective communication within their organization. This framework parses out the who, how, and why of connecting with others in the organization. The result is greater awareness which can translate to a more thought-out approach. Teams can work through this framework in a planning session. For a team that has struggled in the past or has a complex task ahead, I suggest working with someone to facilitate the process.
Start With Who
A team should start by mapping out key stakeholders in their organization (stakeholders are defined as anyone affected by the team and their activities in some way). Use arrows to identify who is “above” (as in managers) and to the “side” (peers) of the team. A stakeholder map could look very linear depending on the size and stability of an organization, or it could look more like a constellation, especially in an innovative or agile and team-heavy workplace. Having a pictorial representation is the first step to understanding organizational information flow and using it to plan the patterns and methods of connection.
As a team identifies each individual, they need to consider that person’s “salience”. Classic models of stakeholder salience are defined by three factors which I have adapted to better reflect communication needs: Power, Alignment and Interest.
Power: A more powerful stakeholder can get people to do things, either because of their position or their ability to woo. Their decisions are influential.
Alignment: The degree that the stakeholder is bought-in, agrees with, or is excited about the team’s project.
Interest: A measure of how close the stakeholder is to the results of the project. Does your team’s output affect them, and if so, how much?
Stakeholder Map
High salience stakeholders are the ones you want to engage the most. Upwardly positioned and highly salient stakeholders are usually managers. Your team relies on them for resources. A key managerial role is to keep the business in control. When faced with the “unknown,” people tend to tighten reins, become more conservative toward risk and therefore withhold resources. Communication serves to fill the gaps in knowledge and release the pressure of staying in control. Highly salient sideward stakeholders are those with whom you need to carefully coordinate connected activities. Communication again fills the gaps in knowledge, and allows for decisions that move all teams forward.
To plan for effective communication over a project life, a team should start by mapping all stakeholders and noting key relationships at the beginning of the project (see illustration). Since stakeholder salience changes over the course of a project, it may be necessary to have different maps for different project stages. For example, a team might need to work to gain the buy-in of the head of R&D at the inception of a project, but once they have the “go” other stakeholders are more salient.
When determining who the stakeholders are, we also need to remember the uniqueness of each individual. Each stakeholder will have habits (effective or detrimental), preferences, and styles. These may reflect their generation or family culture, or even whatever we can glean from their Myers Briggs. The bottom line is a team needs to have a general sense of who they are talking with, and how they best perceive and receive information.
Think About How
As teams plan their patterns of communication there are a few helpful concepts to keep in mind. First, communication falls into two camps, personal and codified.
Codified is anything structured, such as meeting minutes, a Gantt Chart or written report. It is pushed outward from a team to share information. This kind of communication is efficient and can create a predictable flow of information. It tends to not influence or sway but update, which can create a sense of reassurance.
Personal communication means the mechanism for information sharing is human-to-human interaction. It is the most impactful. The most effective personal communication is two way, with information flowing interactively between two parties, face-to-face. Studies show this generates the greatest knowledge sharing and builds the highest levels of trust and cooperation.
Frequency of communication is another consideration and differs depending on the stakeholder and the project stage. While timely updates are important, studies demonstrate that the quality of communication is more impactful than the frequency. Sending out information does not mean it is read. Imagine the engineering department sending a ten page highly technical product report to the hipster creatives in marketing. Match communication to the audience.
Know Why Connection Matters
Teams that fail to communicate their efforts not only have a hard time gaining support but can cause a real kink in the organizational system. Teams that effectively connect outwardly do three things right: First, they serve as ambassadors. Their communication elevates the workings of their team, promoting themselves within the organization. This builds buy-in and assures resources. Second, they are partners. They reach out across different levels of their organization and coordinate effectively with others, ensuring that “all boats rise.” Finally, they are scouts. They seek and find outside information to keep their project relevant. They pay attention to changes within their organization that may create opportunities and keep tabs on developments within their market.
The highest performing teams do all three, with an emphasis on being strong ambassadors and partners. Teams that only scout well score high on measures of team function, but they score low on measures of team performance. Scouting alone does not get you what you need inside your organization.
Teams that are purpose-driven in their connections use communication in three ways
Whether trying to generate action, increase engagement, create common understanding or build alignment, all communication activities fall within the ambassador, partner or scout functions. By scrutinizing all activities in this light, a team can ensure a balance of connecting communication behaviors.
Complications
Humans are funny. The second we are put into a team we start to form a team identity even with minimal social cues. “We are the BLUE team!” says our brain. Sociologists note the power of these in-group and out-group dynamics. If we are the blue team than that must mean RED team are our ENEMIES. What doesn’t help is that organizations are naturally political, sometimes internally fraught with conflicting interests and agendas. But organizations with high levels of intra team conflict have measurably lower organizational performance. This means that teams must push back against the natural tendency to outcast other teams, even within an environment of conflicting motives. A few things mitigate this; one is intentionally building partnerships in which resources are shared. A second is when leadership rewards collaboration by name, emphasizing shared goals and creating situations that shape group solidarity, sending the message that we are all one team. In the absence of leadership, a team can take ownership of this message.
Summary
As teams plan they need to think in terms of putting the Who, How and Why together. Like all strategy it starts with a planning session and brain dump. By first mapping out key stakeholders a team raises awareness of the overall organizational constellation and each individual within. By knowing how different kinds of communication has different results, a team can identify tactics and pacing. If the team understands how each individual can better serve as an ambassador, a partner and a scout, communication is elevated and the team’s effectiveness within the organization will increase.