TEAMS
MATTIAS WIHLBORG has a master’s degree in psychology and is a licensed GDQ consultant.
METTE SANDAHL is an ICF Professional Certified Coach and a licensed GDQ consultant.
The theoretical basis is Susan Wheelan’s research and her Integrated Model of Group Development (IMGD), which is both evidence-based and easy to apply. Many illustrative examples show how team members and managers can work together to become more effective and high-performing.
METTE SANDAHL > MATTIAS WIHLBORG CHRISTIAN JACOBSSON > MARIA ÅKERLUND
CHRISTIAN JACOBSSON is associate professor, consultant and co-founder of GDQ Associates.
TEAMS IN THE SPOTLIGHT
are crucial building blocks of organisations. Still, the main focus is often on individual development. To turn the spotlight on teams and release their full potential, this practical book gives you hands-on methods and tools to improve collaboration and performance.
MARIA ÅKERLUND is a licensed psychologist, consultant, co-founder and CEO of GDQ Associates.
METTE SANDAHL > MATTIAS WIHLBORG CHRISTIAN JACOBSSON > MARIA ÅKERLUND
We contribute in different ways – towards the same goal. Sarah, team member
TEAMS
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
To be honest, it took some time and effort to learn how to put the team’s needs ahead of my own. Eric, team member
A HANDBOOK FOR TEAM DEVELOPMENT We have different strengths in our team. We have realised how efficient we can be when we take advantage of our differences. Wilma, team leader
We all knew what to do. It felt as if we could accomplish anything, just bring it on! Sing, team member
ISBN 978-91-27-81899-6
Photos: Carola Björk Cover design: Maria Ulaner Cover illustration: Anna Wallin Irinarchos
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The better the teams are from day one, the more effective, mature and responsible we will become as an organisation. Christian, senior manager
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CONTENTS About the Authors – the Book’s Quartet 11 The Authors’ Prelude 13 Why Did We Decide to Write a Book Together? 13
A Practical Book for Team Development 15 The Spotlight Is on the Orchestra, Not on the Musician 16
PART 1
Teams Are Systems 18 1 Teams Are Crucial Building Blocks 19 Teams – Past, Present and Future 20 2 What Is a Team? 24
Real Teams or Pseudo Teams? 25 Effective Teams Reach Three Goals 26 The Team as a Whole Is More than the Sum of its Individual Members 27 From Person to Role 28 Team Life 29
PART 2
Team Development in Stages 34 3 Susan Wheelan’s Integrated Model of Group Development 35 The Group Development Questionnaire 36 Correlations between Developmental Stage and Sales, Productivity and Absence 37 Team Life through the Stages of Development 38
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4 STAGE I Dependency and Inclusion, and Team Formation 41
Characteristics of Stage I: Dependency and Inclusion 42 What to Work at and Develop during Stage I 45 The Leader’s Role during Stage I 45 Potential Pitfalls during Stage I 46
5 STAGE II Counter-Dependency and Fight 48
Characteristics of Stage II: Counter-Dependency and Fight 50 How to Handle Conflicts during Stage II 51 What to Work at and Develop during Stage II 53 The Leader’s Role during Stage II 54 Potential Pitfalls during Stage II 55
6 STAGE III Trust and Structure 57
Characteristics of Stage III: Trust and Structure 58 What to Work at and Develop during Stage III 60 Potential Pitfalls during Stage III 61
7 STAGE IV Work and Productivity 62
Characteristics of Stage IV: Work and Productivity 64 What to Work at and Develop during Stage IV 66 The Leader’s Role during Stage IV 66 Potential Pitfalls during Stage IV 67
8 Termination 69
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What to Work at and Develop during Termination 70 The Leader’s Role during Termination 70 Potential Pitfalls during Termination 71
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Team Fundamentals 72 9 Team Fundamentals 73 The Goal Matrix 74 Purpose 76 Member Roles 79 Stakeholders 81 Internal Standards 82 External Standards 84 Ambition 85 Goals 87 Values 88 Vision 89 Meeting Structure 90
PART 4 Tools and Practices 92 10 Introduction to Tools and Practices 93 11 Communication 96 Four Levels of Communication 96 Active Listening 100 Functional Subgrouping 103 Anyone Else? 106 Paraphrasing 107 Short Sentences 109
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12 Collaboration 111 Increased Focus and Awareness in Team Meetings 111 Artful Participation 113 Four Keys for Collaboration 116 Team Debrief 117 Force Field Analysis 120
13 Coordination 123 Task and Process Leader 123 Clarifying Member Roles 124 The Miss Tree 127
PART 5
Let the Music Play – Team Development in Practice 130 14 Examples of Team Development in Organisations 131
A Shift from the Individual to the Team 132 Teams in Different Locations and Countries 137 Building High-Performing Teams 138 Team Development in the Public Health Sector 141 What We Have Learned about Team Development 144
15 Developing Management Teams 146
The Tasks of a Management Team 146 Three Goals for a Management Team 148 Challenges for a Management Team 149 An Agenda that Leads to Great Performance 150 Unique and Generic Member Roles 150 How to Become a Well-Functioning Management Team 151 Reflections after Management Team Development 153
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PART 6 Facilitating Team Interventions 154 16 The Team Development Process – an Overview 155
1. Exploring the Assignment 156 2. First Team Assessment 158 3. A Full-Day Intervention 160 4. The Team Continues to Work as a Team 163 5. Second Intervention 163 6. The Team Continues to Work as a Team 164 7. Second Team Assessment 164 8. Final Meeting 165
17 The Role of the Facilitator 166
What Does a Facilitator Do? 166 Training Facilitators 167 Facilitators’ Experiences 168 Facilitating Many Teams at the Same Time 170
Notes 176
Additional resources are available online: www.nok.se/teamsinthespotlight
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About the Authors – the Book’s Quartet METTE SANDAHL is an organisational consultant and has a degree in journalism and a background in strategic communication. With over 20 years of experience in organisational development, she supports organisations in fulfilling their potential as successful businesses and healthy workplaces. Mette designs strategies, competence development programs and team interventions. She also facilitates, coaches, lectures and trains other facilitators in team development. She is an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and a licensed GDQ consultant. Mette has held global leadership development positions, most recently at Ikea. Mette runs her own company, Sandahl Organisational Growth. MATTIAS WIHLBORG has a master’s degree in psychology, and is a
licensed GDQ consultant, working with cognitive behavioural therapy. He has extensive experience of working with multinational organisations, also most recently at Ikea. Mattias’ main focus has been team interventions, leadership development programs and coaching leaders in performance and career changes. Over the last few years, Mattias has trained hundreds of individuals as team facilitators. Currently, his role is a work environment specialist. Mattias runs his own company as well: Mind Performance Consulting.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
MARIA ÅKERLUND is a licensed psychologist in the field of industrial
and organisational psychology. She works as a consultant, mostly with team development, management team development, leader development and coaching. Maria is also a partner and CEO of GDQ Associates, the rights holders to GDQ, an instrument that measures a team’s developmental stage and identifies areas in need of development. CHRISTIAN JACOBSSON is an associate professor and deputy head of the department of psychology, at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Christian has a background as a clinical psychologist but has mainly worked in the field of work and organisational psychology. He began his doctoral studies after being inspired by Kurt Lewin’s ideas about “action research,” and these ideas are still a source of inspiration to him. In Christian’s work as a consultant, data collection forms the basis for most of his research. His research is focused on leadership, teams and team development.
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The Authors’ Prelude WE LIVE IN FOUR DIFFERENT PARTS of Sweden and writing a book together might not have seemed like the easiest of projects. During the course of our writing, we have experienced every process that all teams go through. Although we know each other well and we all have extensive experience of teams, it has still been hard work. But it has also been rewarding to overcome the challenges and to collaborate in reality; utilising our varied competence and experience to write a book.
Why Did We Decide to Write a Book Together? Maria: “An American colleague told me about Susan Wheelan’s research on teams. I contacted her to learn more and invited her to Sweden to certify me and my colleagues as GDQ users. Later on, I was certified to train other GDQ users. I also did the first translation of the GDQ into Swedish.” Christian: “I was leading a project on team development and read an interview with Susan Wheelan in a Swedish journal. I invited her to Sweden to talk about her work. Later I was asked to scientifically validate the Swedish translation of the GDQ. Actually, Susan Wheelan brought Maria and me together through our common interest in her work.” Maria: “In 2014, Susan asked Christian and myself if we were interested in taking over the copyrights to GDQ and continuing her work, which we happily agreed to do.”
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Mattias: “Mette and I worked with leadership development at Ikea, and in 2014 we were asked to look into team development. We attended a GDQ certification training and that was when we met Maria and Christian for the first time. The GDQ training kick-started our interest in team development. We wanted to learn more – specifically about how to intervene in teams at different stages.” Mette: “The four of us developed an in-house guide, for a multinational organisation, about team development. The guide was intended to spread knowledge about teams and their development within an organisation. I was happy with our work, with how the guide turned out and with the training that we developed together. After that, we spoke about writing a book to reach a larger audience, using all the knowledge and experience we had amassed through supporting different organisations in developing their teams.” Mattias: “Yes, we felt that we had something to say. Luckily, Natur & Kultur (our publishing house) agreed that there was a market for a book that combined research with practice and that referred to our real-life experiences of different organisations, while also including suggestions from teams, leaders and facilitators.” Christian: “Combining academic research with our experiences of working with, and intervening in, teams is a new approach. Within this quartet, everyone contributes with their competence and their unique knowledge.” Mette: And this is the result of our team (or quartet) effort: a handbook for team development, with a jazz quartet conducting you through the sections. We hope and believe that this handbook will inspire teams around the world to become collaborative, creative, happy and high-performing.
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A Practical Book for Team Development Teams in the Spotlight combines practical, hands-on, methods and tools, with research-based theory, in a simple and pedagogical way. Throughout the sections of the book, you will read about real-life teams and the challenges they have faced. You will also find direct quotes from individual team members that describe their experiences of working in a team, how they have matured through collaboration and how they have worked together to improve their teams’ effectiveness and performance. Our intention with this book is to encourage organisations and managers to shine the spotlight on teams, and in so doing, to discover and access the full potential and shared wisdom that exist within teams. This book is meant to inform and inspire, while at the same time providing you with practical and hands-on suggestions. After finishing this book, you should have a good understanding of what team development can mean for a team, and for an entire organisation. We have experienced how organisations have shifted their focus, from being completely focused on the individual, to becoming increasingly aware of the team. We have witnessed the impact of this shift: a marked improvement in team effectiveness leading to better overall business results. Imagine if we were all members of teams like that. It would have such an impact – not only on productivity – but also on our individual well-being and on our lives. We believe in a team’s ability to develop and take on more responsibility. Through increased awareness, as well as practice, teams gain the ability to take charge of their own development. For this book, we have carried out in-depth interviews with members of teams at global companies, as well as in other organisations, within both the private and public sector. We have chosen not to name these organisations in order to protect their integrity. They all have their own unique story to tell and their own piece of music to play.
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We have interviewed team members who describe experiences that we hope that you as readers can relate to, be inspired by and learn from – regardless of whether you are a member of a team, if you are leading a team, if you work in HR or competence development, or if you work as an internal or external consultant. Many of the thoughts and ideas in this book are based on Susan Wheelan’s research and the theory she has developed. She has studied teams in their working environment and has carried out several empirical studies to test the Integrated Model of Group Development (IMGD). There are three major reasons as to why Wheelan’s developmental model suits our needs. Firstly, her IMGD model is well known and evidence based. Secondly, with Wheelan’s Group Development Questionnaire (GDQ), which is based on the IMGD, we can measure the effect of team interventions. Thirdly, we (the authors) have many years’ experience of working with Wheelan’s IMGD model and in applying her theory to real-life situations. This book can be read from start to finish or it can serve as a reference book, one that you can turn to as and when it is needed. Once you are familiar with the theory, the practical application can begin.
The Spotlight Is on the Orchestra, Not on the Musician “The jazz orchestra” will serve as a metaphor for the team throughout the book. A successful jazz orchestra is the perfect example of a high-performance team. When all the musicians in an orchestra are using their full potential and playing their part in tune with the other musicians, then every instrument is part of something bigger. A musician in an orchestra does not only play for her own sake, but also for the orchestra’s sake. Sometimes a composition may include a solo, but the spotlight is still on the orchestra.
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The leader of the jazz orchestra does not have sole responsibility for the performance. All of the musicians are responsible for their part and for keeping in tune with the other musicians. It requires hard work to develop through the stages that this entails. You will soon be introduced to Susan Wheelan’s IMGD model, where each stage of the model (and section in the book) is introduced with a reference to our symbolic jazz orchestra. Musicians always do a sound check before they perform. This is just as necessary for a team. The team members need to “sound check” and “tune in” to each other. The tools in this book can be likened to tuning forks and the team fundamentals can be likened to notes. Jazz orchestras, just like teams, need to practice to perform well. This book gives you the tools and know-how necessary for your team to perform in harmony, just like the best jazz orchestra you could ever imagine.
LET THE MUSIC PLAY!
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PART 1 TEAMS ARE SYSTEMS
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CHAPTER 1
Teams Are Crucial Building Blocks TODAY, TEAMS ARE CRUCIAL BUILDING BLOCKS in most organi-
sations, as organisations face increasing demands to deliver products and services that are more complex than before, to a competitive market. Teams coordinate work to accomplish complex tasks and to reach challenging goals. An increasing number of organisations are moving towards a team-based organisational structure, within both the public and private sectors. During 2016 and 2017, researchers at consulting firm Deloitte interviewed approximately 7,000 managers worldwide about their company’s greatest challenges in the near future. Many organisations cited the need to leave strict hierarchies behind and instead form a more team-based organisational structure as a major challenge.1 In general, organisations are also more likely to invest in, and focus on, individual development, rather than on team or organisational development. Organisations expect managers and employees to collaborate, co-create and work together within well-functioning and high-performing teams. This, however, will not happen by itself. It is our experience that the potential benefits of developing effective teams are not even close to being realised in most organisations. Many organisations are also claiming that they want to be purpose-led,
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have an agile approach, and be more collaborative and flexible. How can this be possible without recognising the need for investments in team development, and without offering teams the necessary tools to become autonomous, high-performing and empowered? The quality and effectiveness of team member cooperation not only affects the output or goal achievement, it also affects the team members’ well-being in various ways. The more a team is working according to the criteria for stage four, as described in Wheelan’s model (more on this later), the higher the levels of well-being among team members.2 Members in more effective teams experience higher levels of work satisfaction and task effectiveness, while at the same time experiencing lower levels of stress and emotional exhaustion compared to members of less developed teams.
Teams – Past, Present and Future Human beings are social creatures. We depend on others for survival and prosperity. Therefore, we have developed a variety of mechanisms to handle issues that arise in human interaction. One example is how we manage differences in status among team members. Further to this, what are the criteria for becoming a member in a team and what does it take to be excluded? What relationships should we have with other teams? These evolutionarily-conditioned and team-centred aspects of human psychology can be assumed to be general for all groups, although they are activated in a unique way for each team. The team is the smallest unit for human interaction; two or more people who form a system together. In this system, different processes and conditions arise. For instance, one person in the team becomes a leader, in charge of the others, and cohesion among members starts to develop. For many centuries, groups or teams were relatively stable over time. Team members usually only belonged to one team, for instance on a
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farm. They tended to have a common set of goals and designated roles, and they usually worked at the same physical location. In addition, the team’s main task was often quite well defined. Many teams still look like this and it is likely that they will continue along the same route if this is the most functional way for them to carry out their assignments. But for other teams, the conditions for cooperation have changed. This is the case in more volatile, dynamic and complex environments. For example, many teams continually change their members, which means they often need to learn how to cooperate with new people. In addition, members within teams are often more diverse today, coming from different backgrounds, countries and cultures. THREE MAJOR THEMES REGARDING TEAMWORK: Three major changes in teamwork have been identified.3 These changes are:
• Dynamic composition • Technology and distance leading to virtuality • Delayering in the organisation and empowerment
DYNAMIC COMPOSITION
Traditional teams consisted of a defined set of members. Although members of the team might interact with people outside their team, the boundaries were clear. Members belonged to “their” team. Although the leader sometimes needed to replace team members, the team composition remained fairly stable. Today, however, teams exhibit greater fluidity. New team members join and others leave much more frequently, and not simply because of turnover in the sense of leaving the job or the organisation. Some organisations use temporary teams as their basic structure. Engineering, information technology, and consulting firms for ex-
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ample, form project teams to work on specific tasks. This constant change also leads to multiple team memberships, especially among “knowledge workers,” and individuals are often members of more than one team at a time. The consequence of this is that they have less time to spend on one specific team’s tasks. Dynamic composition increases the need to focus on team formation, when starting a new team. This does not only involve choosing members with the right qualifications, it also means considering if they can work well together. Being clear about the purpose, goals and roles of the team, and swiftly communicating this to new members, is another crucial aspect. TECHNOLOGY AND DISTANCE LEADING TO VIRTUALITY
Technology has changed the way many teams work. Improved data storage, more advanced programs and better connectivity have made it easier for all team members to access information, regardless of their location. An example of this is that a team member or leader is able to follow other members’ work and check their availability. Team members can work on a document together, at the same time, and work can be passed on to another team member automatically, based on work flow data. This development has enabled teams to interact at a distance. For many teams, there are fewer face-to-face interactions than in the past. As automation increases, technology may even replace some team members. New technology and distance cooperation bring challenges related to being connected 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In order to prevent burnout among members, clear norms about when team members should be connected with the rest of the team and about how the team should cooperate are important. Team leaders in virtual teams also need to learn how to monitor team members’ performance and how to give constructive feedback.
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TEAMS
MATTIAS WIHLBORG has a master’s degree in psychology and is a licensed GDQ consultant.
METTE SANDAHL is an ICF Professional Certified Coach and a licensed GDQ consultant.
The theoretical basis is Susan Wheelan’s research and her Integrated Model of Group Development (IMGD), which is both evidence-based and easy to apply. Many illustrative examples show how team members and managers can work together to become more effective and high-performing.
METTE SANDAHL > MATTIAS WIHLBORG CHRISTIAN JACOBSSON > MARIA ÅKERLUND
CHRISTIAN JACOBSSON is associate professor, consultant and co-founder of GDQ Associates.
TEAMS IN THE SPOTLIGHT
are crucial building blocks of organisations. Still, the main focus is often on individual development. To turn the spotlight on teams and release their full potential, this practical book gives you hands-on methods and tools to improve collaboration and performance.
MARIA ÅKERLUND is a licensed psychologist, consultant, co-founder and CEO of GDQ Associates.
METTE SANDAHL > MATTIAS WIHLBORG CHRISTIAN JACOBSSON > MARIA ÅKERLUND
We contribute in different ways – towards the same goal. Sarah, team member
TEAMS
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
To be honest, it took some time and effort to learn how to put the team’s needs ahead of my own. Eric, team member
A HANDBOOK FOR TEAM DEVELOPMENT We have different strengths in our team. We have realised how efficient we can be when we take advantage of our differences. Wilma, team leader
We all knew what to do. It felt as if we could accomplish anything, just bring it on! Sing, team member
ISBN 978-91-27-81899-6
Photos: Carola Björk Cover design: Maria Ulaner Cover illustration: Anna Wallin Irinarchos
9789127818996_cover.indd 1,3,5
9 789127 818996
2019-05-23 08:25