People Strategies: Business teams can be manageable, productive

Linda Bower is a speaker, executive coach and human performance improvement consultant in Rogersville.

Almost everyone that has served on a team or led a team sees the business value of teams. Teams are the answer to many business problems, except for one thing: They often aren't very productive.

Most people can tell stories about people fighting, crying and storming out of team meetings. They can recall hallway agreements with team members to sabotage an idea or stonewall a decision. The team leader is either in the middle or, more often, too overwhelmed by the group's interpersonal dynamics.

There is hope in knowledge. In their book "Managing For Excellence," David Bradford and Allan Cohen describe five stages of group development. Under-standing these stages helps team leaders know why members act the way they do, what to expect next, and how to make appropriate management choices.

Stage One: membership. A new team forms. Goals are usually still fuzzy. Members find other members with like minds.

Stage Two: sub-grouping. Sub-groups are formed by like minds as relationships strengthen outside of the larger team. Infighting begins between sub-groups, though it is usually still underground.

The manager gets squeezed in the middle to make a decision, more often a choice between sub-group positions. In order to break through this stage, sub-group confrontation must occur.

Stage Three: confrontation. When enough sub-group alignment has been established behind a position, confrontation bursts forth. Sub-groups will go at each other. It may be just two people doing the talking for the silent minorities behind them. Teams can get stuck here, though.

Managers are overrun by the loudest and most aggressive sub-groups unless they manage this stage carefully.

Stage Four: differentiation. When confrontation breaks through, team members realize that every member can make a contribution. This stage can look like membership again, in that sub-groups are absent.

However, now everyone interacts with each other with confidence and respect for differing opinions. They begin solving problems together, and they agree on the team's purpose and goals.

Stage Five: shared responsibility. Now the team is humming. Members talk to each other, respect each other and solve problems together, and they become a self-managed team. All members take accountability for the team's goals and success.

Permanently functioning in the fifth stage is about as likely as finding the lost city of Atlantis. Most leaders are happy if their team makes it to differentiation!

Every time a member leaves or a new one joins, the whole team resets and may need to go through the stages again. With an established team, changes in membership are usually blips on their screen. In dysfunctional teams, changes cause major shake-ups as sub-groups often need to re-form and re-confront.

It is highly unlikely that a team will go from membership to differentiation without going through the stages in between. Sub-grouping and confrontation are human social conditions. The best thing to do is to let them happen and manage them.

Managing sub-groups involves knowing who they are and what brought them together. If a manager understands the interests behind positions that sub-groups take, he or she can guide the group through confrontation to a greater understanding of individual contributions to the team. Also, the informal leader of a sub-group can be an efficient point of influence.

Managing confrontation is really pretty easy. Don't stop it unless there is verbal abuse or any kind of physical threat. Those actions aren't acceptable.

The manager should allow each sub-group to be heard, then help the sub-groups hear each other. Sometimes it can feel a bit like marriage counseling. Keep in mind the team's purpose and priority objectives as you re-focus people.

Teams can be led to heightened productivity when the leader understands where a group begins and how it evolves. Keeping forward momentum on team issues and results is the essence of the team leader's job.