You Can't Spell Team Without Me

Many companies organize their employees into teams by default and thus fail to recognize the peculiarity of a team. Teams are autonomous groups that work highly efficiently towards a common goal. If one of these points is missing, it is at best a group, not a team. A few prominent examples of real teams can be found in the world of sport. The Golden State Warriors, who even had to live without their head coach for the first half of the 2015-2016 season, set the record for most wins in a single season. Everyone is probably aware that such a performance requires a real team spirit.

But how does such a team come into being and are there opportunities to help a group of people to become a high-performance team through targeted measures?

Teams are highly efficient, autonomous groups. Almost no so-called team that we know from our daily work qualifies as an actual team

Prof. Kenneth Murrell, private conversation, 2016

How are teams built?

In 1964, psychologist and author Jack Gibb described a model according to which the teambuilding process consists of four essential parts. These can be summarized as follows:

1. Creating trust within the group
2. Establishing open communication
3. Finding common goals
4. Defining structures that help the team to achieve these goals

In some of my blog articles I describe these four steps and show examples of how I try to implement them in my team. These are therefore possible implementations and not the only possibility. So this article is about the first step towards building trust within the group.

How do you create an environment of trust?

1. In my experience, trust arises through recognition and being recognized. When we know how our counterpart will act, then we begin to trust him.
2. But this process is not a one-way street. Like so much in life, it is essential to reach out and give a leap of faith in the creation of trust.

The person who dares to entrust himself to others goes far in creating a climate of trust in the group

Jack Gibb, psychologist

In my team I wanted to give everyone the opportunity to get to know each other and to build trust. But really getting to know someone has a lot to do with perception: As an extrovert person one measures actions by extrovert standards, as a pessimistic person one identifies news rather negatively and as a power-oriented person one reacts negatively to supposedly abusive actions of one's counterpart.

Self-knowledge as a first step to recognize the other person

We must therefore know how we ourselves function in order to assess how the actions of the other person affect us. We also need to know how the other one functions in order to recognize the motives behind actions. This simply requires knowledge. Knowledge about oneself, knowledge about the other person, and theoretical knowledge about the functioning of people in general. That's exactly what I teach in regular workshops.

Organizational Behavior 101

Because I believe that self-knowledge is at the root of effective collaboration, I help my team members do just that.

These workshops begin with motivation and personality types.

From personal experience, the following two models in particular help to question one's own motivation and thus start a reflection process: Herzberg and McClelland.

About kicking ass and hygiene

Frederik Herzberg, one of the luminaries of motivation theory, writes in his very entertaining paper "One More Time – How do you motivate employees" about the concept KITA: Kick in the ass. He distinguishes between negative physical KITA, negative psychological KITA (physical and psychological punishments) and positive KITA (rewards). Now you probably think that the negative KITAs don't contribute to the motivation – and you are right. Punishments do not lead to motivation, but to movement. A physical or psychological kick in the ass may help to achieve the desired movement in the employee, but it does not help the employee to develop a long-term self-motivation in this direction.

The groundbreaking thing about Herzberg's studies is not that he is focusing on positive KITA, but that he claims that these do not help motivate either. Putting a sausage in front of a dog's nose might be nicer than kicking his ass. However, it is unreasonable to expect that the dog will continue to run straight even after the sausage has been reached (i.e. has learned a motivation to move forward).

So what motivates people? Herzberg found out in his studies that there are not only "unmotivated and motivated" but that the axis must be extended by two further states:

Unmotivated – not unmotivated – not motivated – motivated

Why such a petty distinction? The reason is that different "motivation factors" have different effects. So-called hygiene factors are absolutely necessary, but only bring you from "unmotivated" to "not unmotivated". Money, job security and status belong to the group of hygiene factors.

The second group are real motivators. They manage to bring you from "not motivated" to "motivated". This group includes self-realization, recognition and meaningfulness.

This model helps you to understand and actively influence your own feelings and those of others. The recognition and influence, which in the theory X-World was still the task of the managers, becomes more and more the task of all employees, which is why a training in this direction is only the logical consequence.

Maslow's research also shows similar groups, although he did not yet qualitatively distinguish between the upper and lower strata. Here is an updated form of his needs pyramid.

What Trump and Francis of Assisi have in common

A little later (1966), psychologist David McClelland found out in his research that not all people have the same motivators. People who, despite their existing abilities, had not made it into "important" positions were not considered motivated enough until then. McClelland found out that it wasn't the motivation that made the difference, but the goal. While some strive for success, others aim for power and others care about belonging. These three groups can also be very different. The need for power, for example, has not surprisingly been proven to be particularly pronounced among top politicians. But also hermits, which one would have suspected on the other side of the spectrum, show an expression of the need for power – namely over oneself.

I find this model very helpful to provide a starting point for self-reflection. So one can ask oneself, which important decisions in the past life show signs for which motives. I also ask such and other questions in the workshop, so that everyone who wants to can give a leap of faith. The colleagues learn about their motives and values, so that the first step on the way to the perfect team would be done.

Personality tests and what to think about them

Another part of the workshop covers personality tests, especially the Myers-Briggs type indicator. Here we discuss the different characteristics and also go into our own test results, which one can make free of charge in the Internet, if that is wished. It is important to note that all tests should be taken with great caution. The results tell less the truth than they also offer a starting point for questioning one's own characteristics and getting to know other characteristics than one's own.

Eustress and Distress

Stress will also be addressed in this workshop. This is to be divided into eustress (positive stress, not what the British currently have) and distress (negative stress). In addition to real relevance to work, this part is important to me, as the behaviour of others and their perception can be strongly influenced by stress. Knowing the different effects of stress not only helps to warn colleagues when they come too close to the tipping point, but also to work together more effectively in tense situations.

Trust the Process

But the teambuilding process can also be fired up without dedicated workshops. As a moderator, I occasionally start meetings with unknown participants with an advance of trust. So I chose a "moderation ball" (ball for the presentation round, whoever has it, introduces himself) a toy of my daughter, which came very close to the product of the customer. By mentioning my daughter, I asked the group to include private topics in the round of introductions. And indeed, instead of only talking about resumes and professional positions, there was a lot of talking and joking about hobbies and family.

Even in a more familiar environment, advances in trust can always be brought in. Important Scrum ceremonies (iterative appointments to improve the product and the process) stipulate that everybody is to speak. As a Scrum Master, one is free to offer additional information and thus give the others the opportunity to participate. So you can mention what you wanted to be as a child, which superhero you would be or what you are privately busy with at the moment. From my team I can say that some like to take up such opportunities again and again, while others do not bring themselves in. But not getting involved also helps the group process. The personality training makes it easier for team members to understand why some do not participate. This insight also helps in cooperation, as one has learned something about the values and needs of one's counterpart.