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By Lynne Brenegan
Illustration: Keri Smith
 A how-to guide for anyone who may be expected to lead or operate in a team environment
Why is it that six people working as a team don't automatically outperform six people working independently? It certainly doesn't have anything to do with the number six. The answer lies more within the number 10, because one or more of the 10 variables critical to a team's success are not understood, not valued enough to be implemented or not implemented effectively.
In September we looked at what happens at each stage of a team's development ("Developing a successful team"); here we present a detailed agenda for team effectiveness — a guide for anyone expected to lead in a team situation.
1. Know your scope
This seems obvious. However, often when team leaders are asked what the mandate and scope of their team is, their response is a blank stare. Put another way, the question becomes: what is your team uniquely accountable for in this organization? What is inside the scope of this mandate? What is outside the scope of it?
The potential for success is built on a clear mandate, one that is validated at the sponsor level (the person who authorizes funding and the allocation of resources to the team) and one that is evident to all stakeholders in the organization (anyone who has a stake in, or is impacted by the work of the team). This is not advocating the use of bureaucratic or rigid terms and conditions that stultify innovative thinking and initiative. If people don't have a clear notion of expectations, they make them up — meaning they make assumptions about what is best. Why not make those expectations evident to all in the organization from the beginning? A mandate and scope statement can take less than one page of text and save team leaders and members a great deal of effort.
2. Design well
Effective team design is not a random, serendipitous process. Team leaders need to ask themselves a few probing questions:
• What is the optimal structure of this team? How many roles do I require to deliver on this team mandate?
• What is the optimal integration of the team members' work? Where are the hand-offs? How often do they occur?
• How do I design physical environments to facilitate the team's work?
• What technology will the team need to enable its work?
3. Know your team
To achieve a success factor, a leader must:
• define the measurable results that each role is required to produce in a monthly, quarterly or annual timeframe;
• create an inventory of the competency categories required to produce results common to all roles on your team;
• list three or four competencies unique to each role, by category; communicate these requirements to anyone involved in recruiting talent for your team and to the team. Use them for feedback on performance, coaching and skill development.
4. Define your goals
A leader needs to know what measurable results he or she and team members are accountable for delivering and over what time parameters. Goals are stated positively and are verified objectively. They are appropriately challenging. They exist within the boundaries of the team's and the leader's authority.
5. Define your roles
Again, this is not advocating bureaucracy. But a team must be clear on who is accountable for what, who hands off what to whom and when, who decides what and when. Confusion about these leads to low accountability, people second-guessing their own or each other's decisions, people working the back-channels to get things done under the radar so as not to be blocked or discounted by others.
6. Define your rules
Operating principles, ground rules, rules of engagement — call them whatever — are essential. They describe how people work together and individually when working beyond the team in other parts of the organization. Such a list should contain less than seven items. These need to be in people's conscious minds for them to show up in their day-to-day behaviour and must be stated positively. They need to describe behaviours, for example: "Every time I raise an issue or concern, I will make a proposal toward resolving it."
7. Know your principles
Everyone must have the same awareness about:
• How new team members are oriented (how they get up to speed)
• How people are moved out of the team (how they are informed, how to ensure nothing falls through the cracks, how a successful completion of a team members' assignment is celebrated)
• How roles, accountabilities and authority are defined (how they are revised as the team mandate evolves)
• How goals and objectives are set
• How communications go beyond the team into the organization, into external client or customer environments
• How decisions are made (when meeting as a group, when geographically dispersed)
• How problems are defined and solved (the steps followed)
• How meetings are managed (frequency, prior notice, setting agendas, purpose, minutes, chairing, punctuality)
• How projects are managed (common methodology, terms, roles and reporting formats)
• How change is managed (common methodology, terms, roles, resources)
• How team output towards goals is measured and evaluated
• How a team's ability to work together is measured and evaluated
• How, when and why feedback is given and received within the team
Being explicit about process minimizes guesswork, enables consistent practice and is a precursor to effective team relationships and efficient functioning.
8. Know your boss
If a boss or sponsor is deemed to be incompetent and it's decided the team's performance is his or her fault, think again. It is the role of the team leader to proactively escalate issues, define resource requirements and propose steps to his or her boss or the team sponsor. Managing up is a core competency requirement for team leaders, and it often includes educating bosses and sponsors about their role with respect to the team. It means providing timely information, influencing, anticipating, being politically astute and informing without condescending.
All teams and leaders operate within a set of defined constraints. Often the most valuable thing a team leader can do in adversity is to provoke conversation that clarifies what is and what is not within the team's control, without engaging in blame. Acknowledging constraints, pointing out they exist in any organization and gaining perspective on what each person can do to be creative and mitigate the negative impact of the constraints on the team is likely to be needed at least once in a team's lifecycle.
9. Be a team
Having the intention of teams doesn't carry the day. If the organization is designed so information flow, measurement and reporting processes, facilities design, shift structure, compensation practices and performance review processes are geared toward individuals not teams, a leader will have challenges managing, measuring and rewarding team performance.
10. Be in line with organization's goals
An organization undergoing a significant amount of change did an employee opinion survey. In an area where employees were most impacted by these changes, the alienation index was sobering. It turned out there were more than 50 major change initiatives ongoing in a population of 1,100 employees without a senior executive steering committee to ensure the activities, resources and interdependencies of the team-based projects were aligned to the strategic direction of the organization. Acting in isolation, the teams were generating a degree of churn that was dysfunctional, despite great intentions.
For two years after this event, a steering committee headed by the chief of the organization operated to align teams and projects to the organization's strategy. A follow-up survey indicated the reduction in alienation over this two-year period was the most significant turnaround of its kind in the history of the organization.
So there we have it, 10 critical success factors that singly or cumulatively will influence the effectiveness of any team. A team leader can control or have a measure of influence to improve the first seven factors. While one may have less influence over the last three, knowing about them will enable a leader to gain perspective and ready himself or herself to negotiate the performance expectations agreed to when embarking on a team initiative.
Lynne Brenegan, MA, is a leadership, managing change and team development consultant. She can be reached at lbren@attglobal.net
Technical Editor: Carolyn Cohen, CA, MSW, runs Training and Human Resources Consulting. She can be reached at c.cohen @sympatico.ca | 
