Introduction
In the first part of this assignment I set an objective to analyze the general dynamics and characteristics of the group, I am currently working with. Importantly, I find this experience especially interesting as the group´s profile is radically different from other work teams I used to be part of. Comprised of 6 members with very senior management positions and professional backgrounds, we work as the team of independent specialists with a formal leader of the department, 2 managers and three non-managerial members. At the same time, the team does not have an informally accepted leader or facilitator, which results in some silo thinking and conflict of interests. One of the most challenging aspects of this work is the lack of understanding and communication between the team members about the content and type of work that each of us does. This characteristic is explained by completely different NEC (Navy Enlisted Credentials), where none of the members is proficient in the field of the other to understand the work in depth.
The purpose of this exercise is to analyze the team from the structural standpoint and through the prism of X-Team Principles as well as look at the tools and key success factors, which could bring improvement to each of the individuals as well as for the organization by reaching higher performance and motivation.
X-Team Principles Analysis
Ancona and Bresman (2007) note that the maximum team effectiveness can be reached through the creation of the processes that align with people profiles and their individual work with the objectives of the group. This can be achieved only with a proper focus on the intangible group assets, such as motivation and interests and the tangible resources and information to ensure the common goals. The complexity of the work in my team made it very difficult to motivate and implement improvement with team involvement after the forming stage. Quick (1992) outlines that the key issue in the teams is the reduction of the pace at which the team shifts from one stage of the team building to the other. In our case, we never reached a storming stage and the superficial and diplomatic relationships prevented team members from building trust and open communication, which would be able to take us to performing stage. According to Ancona and Bresman (2007) the three principles of X-Team define teams that succeed and innovate. These principles include external activity, extreme execution, and flexible phases.
External Activity
The external teams engage in a great variety of external activities, such as politics and power struggles and external project coordination with in-group stakeholders. The authors argue that the external activity is comprised of scouting, ambassadorship, and coordination. In our case, scouting was an issue as the formal head of the department did not manage to take the leadership role. While each of us is proficient and extremely experienced in our fields, we never set down and took our time to really understand the individual expectations and goals of one another and, more importantly, the message about the external expectations of our superiors was not brought into the team environment. Instead, all of us “closed inside” our tasks and did not communicate the process to each other. The issue was that an individual work could only be productive if it could effectively fit into the tasks of other members. As this process was not formed, we produced a lot of waste, which affected the quality of our work, time management and, surely, the motivation.
Ambassadorship is another critical element, which we miss out. With the conflict of interest, existing among the internal members, it is difficult to present our work and address the stakeholders from the outside of the working team. It is evident that at times we not only avoid sharing the information but play a "blame game" when it comes to the evaluation of the projects and bringing the results up the organizational hierarchy. Importantly, as a team, we do not seek external support to create team goals but simply focus on people and processes. Our output is relevant due to the military environment in which the hierarchy is extremely strong. But in an alternative situation, such focus could result in misalignment of the goals with the external stakeholder and the failure to achieve an effective execution of the processes.
When it comes to coordination, the team lacks role setting and, coupled with the fact that none of us has an in-depth knowledge of the work and capabilities of the other members of the team, the process of delegation and working in sub-teams was not possible, neither effective. With the preference to work independently, we lost communication and could not respond on behalf of the team to the external environment and the direct management. Scouting is centered on the expertise of the members and the information flow. In our team, the lack of information flows vertically as well as horizontally within the team and with the outside stakeholders reduced the effectiveness of our work (Ancona and Bresman, 2007).
Extreme Execution
As a biomedical technician and professional, trained for NEC, I possess a set of tools and techniques, which help me to organize my work and implement an effective level of coordination to ensure the timely and quality delivery of the projects. This, I am confident, is a common characteristic of all the members of my team. At the same time, the major issue, which exists in our environment, is the lack of trust and the unwillingness to share the information and ask for assistance from each other. The team failed to outline the roles and internal processes within the team, leaving work of each other in silo and building on trust issues, resulting in the execution of the processes, which did not have an effective internal link. Lencione (2002) notes that effective team takes a time to communicate and facilitate the brainstorming within the team to bring the competencies and knowledge to the collective group environment. It was not the case in our team, as we did not use presentation and integrative meetings, which would allow effective and constructive feedback on our work from the senior management as well as from the peers. This demonstrates the classic failure to integrate external and internal activity through team bridge (Lencione, 2002).
Flexible Phases
The successful and innovative team, even once it is involved in effective delivery of milestones and applying techniques, which lead to effective managerial activity, should be able to have clear and coherent understanding of the desired outcome and be flexible within the team life time to adjust their roles and activities according to the changing external environment. One of the issues, which our team faced with, was the flexibility itself. As our roles in the team are very technical, none of us could partially assume the responsibilities of the others. Additionally, the self-focus on personal growth and “visibility” of individual work, did not allow us change the external focus and understand the needed shift in deliverables of our work. Our non-managerial team members were assigned with the task to explore the external environment, but they could not bring the change message across as other team members always demonstrate resistance to change. Silo thinking does not allow us to understand thoroughly the final product as we do not share knowledge effectively. As a result, we are not able to transition through exploration to exploitation and exportation and we all become “stuck “in the modes of work we perform and resist to change the way of doing things.
As I previously mentioned, with formal leadership in place, the team members did not recognize the leadership structure. In this situation, innovation change was never part of our group culture. Individual knowledge of the team members did not become a collective group asset until the moment.
Support Structure
The four capabilities are central to the distributed leadership in a group. These capabilities include sense making, relating, visioning and action. Once our team was established, we were set a number of goals and objective as well as explained the hierarchical and report structure within the group as well as with our superiors. Taking into consideration the existence of this leadership and structural context, it is possible to argue that the sense-making capability was in place from the outset of the team activity. The track of this distributed leadership was lost, once we “stuck” in a forming stage as the internal relationships never went through the sorting phase to build the needed trust within the team members and its superiors.
The goals were set to the group, but it is evident that there is a lack of relationships between the individual goals and the group objectives. The lack of correlation and interdependence in the performance appraisal structure of each of, in my opinion, led to the competition between the members rather than cooperative environment, creating hostility and conflicts. We were capable of delivering our individual goals, but none of us feels responsible for the complexity of the combined deliverables.
The team was extremely technical and no individual within the group possessed generalist knowledge, which would allow a helicopter view of our work. This lack of leadership visioning did not allow the development of the team to the performing and norming stage. Our members never communicated to each other in effective ways and even healthy conflicts, which are normal and positive for the group development and dynamics, do not take place in this specific experience.
Tools Analysis
There are many ways to look at the tools within the team. My personal experience makes me comfortable with professional assessment tools, SWOT analysis, strategy, and empowerment. I am confident that as a collective power, our team had a lot of professional skills and tools for the analysis of the individual work. The focus of this group development and its transformation into an X-Team is the personality assessment and improvement of team building tools. One of the issues is that none of us went through diversity or emotional management training, which would build on the understanding of the importance of the collective deliverables, as opposed to an individual. The structure and the lack of feedback on a vertical level from our external superiors and the head of the department did not contribute to the sense of ownership in each of for the group deliverables and outcomes. The Team Hat and MBTI test could be a useful tool to develop the internal group relationships and create the better understanding of the profiles of individuals, who we work with (Durbin, 2008).
Infrastructure and Key Success Factors
The team infrastructure involves physical structure, provided for the teamwork, role distribution, specific strategy for team development and mental models and training. Our team is based upon strong organizational structure, where each of us is provided with tangible resources, required to complete the technical tasks. Interestingly, I could observe the lack of experience and intangible infrastructure at the time of team setting as no training or analysis of the cognitive behavioral models was made to understand the dynamic and diversity of our team. When we started working, the only formative action taken to introduce us to a team was the meeting and self-presentation. While this approach created a sense of respect for each other, it did not build on emotional infrastructure, needed to develop a collective sense of ownership of team projects.
There are several key success factors, which must be outlined for my team experience. To better understand them, I would like to summarize the central challenges (Levi, 2012);
The difficulties in interpersonal communication, arising from the seniority levels and the lack of understanding of each other work;
The lack of goal integration on team level;
Conflict of interest based on the personal objectives to maximize personal and professional growth within the organization;
No formally accepted leader, in spite of hierarchical structure;
The lack of motivation;
The lack of role selection in the team.
I can argue that the team managed to deliver the work and projects, but it is evident that inter-group process is far from being optimal and the lack of focus on the above-mentioned elements in the dynamics of the group does not only reduce its current performance level but can have distrustful consequences in a medium and the long-term. The key success factors in the given situation are:
Force the shift from forming to storming stage of the group to build trust and understanding of the team members;
Implement proper emotional and diversity training;
Set up appropriate mechanisms for team relationships, such as interactive meetings and presentation;
Build on effective vertical and horizontal feedback structure;
Improve the adherence to the X-Team Principles;
Focus on redesigning the goal setting mechanism to build cooperative and not competitive environment.
I believe that these elements are essential to the success of the team and could improve the performance and understanding of the team members as well as group effectiveness in the future.
References
Lencioni, P. (2002). The Five Dysfunction of a Team. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco
Levi, D. (2012). Group Dynamics for Teams. Sage, Washington DC
Ancona, D.and Bresman, H. (2007). X-teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate, and Succeed. (1st Edn). London: Harvard Business Review Press.
Quick, T.L. (2012). Successful Team Building. New York: Amacom Publishing.
DuBrin, A.J. (2008). Essential of Management. (8th Edn). London: South-Western Publishing.
