On sustainable team performance

In the last post, we looked at several aspects of team dynamics like coordination, conflict management etc. In this post, we will look at creating sustainable team performance.

Evaluating team performance

	Low subjective performance	High subjective performance
High objective performance	20.3%	32.6%
Low objective performance	27.2%	19.9%

• High objective + low subjective is dangerous; sustaining performance is going to be hard. 
• The team is somehow unhappy working together; they probably do not want to work together. 
• Next offer comes, they might not stay.
• Low objective + high subjective: Needs a reality check
• Low objective + low subjective: Team is struggling, needs help, and they know it 
• How do we evaluate team performance?
• Did the team achieve objective goals?
• Are teammates satisfied with the interactions in team?
• Effective teams contribute to personal satisfaction, and overall well being 
• Is the team learning?
• Teammates are challenged, and get development opportunities, improve their knowledge and skill sets.

Creativity

• The same number of individuals are better than a team at generating ideas: both in quantity and quality (research here and here). 
• Why do teams perform worse?
• Production blocking: If you take turns, you need to wait to speak, might get distracted, lose train of thought. 
• Evaluation apprehension: Not discuss ideas because you are afraid of being judged (even if no evaluation actually happens)
• Anchoring: Subconsciously influenced by teammates' ideas, and incremental thinking to a few ideas that were already proposed. "Yes and" might reduce evaluation, but also reduces diversity of ideas. 
• Social loafing: Don't work as hard in groups. Also, there is a feeling of high performance in teams (Dunning-Kruger effect). 
• Strategy to do better
• Nominal group technique
• Each teammate writes his/her ideas independently (reduces social proof, anchoring, production blocking) 
• Each teammate presents their ideas (reduces social loafing, because of the recognition), and writes them on a board
• Open discussion on the ideas. Only clarifications, no evaluation (reduces evaluation apprehension) 
• Secret vote to rank-order ideas (reduces social proof) 
• There is an illusion of high performance in teams during brainstorming. One reason is the lack of a benchmark performance. 
• One technique is to brainstorm for 10 minutes, and ask that the output be doubled in the next 10 minutes (research here). 

Psychological safety

• A shared belief that the team is safe (without negative consequences for status, careers, self-image) for interpersonal risk taking (research here). 
• More likely to raise errors
• More likely to ask questions 
• Strategies for promoting psychological safety
• Team leader behaviors set a standard for what's acceptable
• Being accessible and approachable
• Explicitly inviting feedback and input from others
• Modeling openness and fallibility; accepting responsibility instills the same in teammates. 
• Trusting relationships 
• Invest in relationships within the team, so people feel comfortable opening up in team settings. Connect with people outside of work, to be able to draw them out. 
• Practice fields
• Simulated environments/prototypes, where the cost of failure is low
• Communicates the importance of learning, it's ok to not succeed on the first try
• Organizational support 
• Access to resources and information: promotes more sharing, and lower insecurity in sharing

Transactive memory

• The institutional memory of the team, combined with the info of who knows what. 
• Benefits 
• Better search and acquisition of info (you know who to talk to for a given topic)
• Reduction of coordination effort (you instinctively know the division of labor)
• Lower common information effect (because you believe there are experts in team)
• Perform better on tasks involving memory and info retrieval
• Strategies to improve transactive memory
• Teams are better at recalling better, with fewer errors, and are seen as having more coordination (research here). This is, in part, due to transactive memory built up as a team. 
• Teams tend to build transactive memory naturally (research here). Better than individuals randomly put together, or new teams formed from preexisting teams.  
• Training with your work team helps a lot. A note for training classes, which pool employees from different teams (not going to be very effective). 
• Training on the particular task at hand; simulated experiences help, especially for execution-focused tasks like surgery, flight etc. 
• Continuity of teams helps (because of institutional memory and the loss that occurs when people leave teams). 

Team learning

• Learning is critical to maintaining high performance over time (all the earlier notes on the importance of reflection etc. support this).
• Strategies to promote learning 
• Emphasize the strategic importance of learning (make them part of SMART goals)
• Continuity in team membership 
• Important for transactive memory, psychological safety
• Post-action debriefs 
• Reflection enhances learning, even in low performing teams (research here)
• Sharing workload with all teammates 
• Con: Increases coordination costs; so make an appropriate trade-off

On team dynamics

In the last post, we looked at team structures, both formal and informal, as well as the importance of establishing norms and team charters. In this post, we will look at managing team dynamics once the team is formed: coordination, drawing out team members and unique inputs, addressing causes of underperformance like social loafing and language barriers, and managing conflict.

Coordination

• We tend to specialize to leverage different people's competencies, and then integrate to develop a product. How do we integrate these different specialities together? 
• Diagnose the interdependence the team is facing (research here)
• Pooled: Work is divided into multiple independent components; so no interdependence costs. Example: organizing an event divided into food, stage etc.
• Low interdependence: standardizing requirements for process and outputs. 
• Sequential: One team's output becomes the input for another. Example: standard assembly line.
• Medium interdependence: Careful planning and scheduling required. Centralized decision making is quite effective here. 
• Reciprocal: One team's output becomes another team's input, and vice versa (iterative, cyclical chains of tasks). 
• High interdependence: Continuous information flows, coordination meetings, multiple integration points etc. 
• Natural response is to coordinate everything in an attempt to bring order. However, this does not typically work:
• Such reciprocal tasks are not easily predictable, because feedback comes from different sources. 
• Team leader is not necessarily close to the tasks at hand, and does not have the info. required to make decisions. 
• Make sure there are incentives and relationships between specialists/integrators/customers; team leader should not be a single point of failure (SPOF). 
• Best practices for dividing work and coordination
• Have single digit teams: coordination work increases significantly for double digit teams. 
• Have clear goals and performance standards
• Minimize links in communication. Team leaders should make sure they are not SPOF. 
• Divide labor with the ultimate goal in mind. Initial division might make later integration hard. 
• Don't give important tasks to uncommitted members. Example: having private goals different from the team's, or having too much workload. 
• Preserve equity across projects, not within projects. It won't be efficient to involve all team members for everything. 

Common information effect

• The phenomenon of discussing mostly common information in team meetings. 
• Why?
• Higher probability that common info is discussed (multiple members can start it)
• Instantly reinforced once it comes up, as others have it as well 
• Higher probability of being recalled after meetings (research here on medical teams)
• Perceived as more credible because of its well-known nature. 
• Why is this bad?
• The whole point of teams is to leverage unique insights, expertise, and avoid group think. 
• Strategies to mitigate this effect
• Encourage norms of debate vs consensus (research here)
• Framing as a "problem to be solved" rather than "decision to be made". Draws out unique info. as ways to address the problem. 
• Rank-ordering all alternatives, instead of choosing best option. This could bring out unique info to support some alternatives lower down the order (research here). 
• Alert team to different expertise possessed by teammates. We tend to be attentive, if we believe our teammates are experts. 
• Minimize status differences amongst teammates. It's hard to draw out people who perceive their status to be low. 
• Pay attention to unique info, alert teammates on it. 
• Give a chance for everyone to speak! 3 people do 77% of talking in 8-person groups (research here). Go sequentially around table, share insights ahead of meeting etc. 

Social Loafing

• We do not work as hard in groups as individuals (Ringlemann effect here)
• Why?
• Diffusion of responsibility: we believe someone else will pick up the slack.
• Strategies to mitigate
• Have smaller teams; less possibility of social loafing 
• Address the issue early, before social loafing sets in. Hard to reverse. 
• Assign meaningful tasks, so there is intrinsic motivation (Adam Grant's research on fundraisers; earlier social loafers raised 4x more money).
• Assign unique roles, so people do not see their work as redundant 
• Make individual contributions identifiable; recognition boosts productivity
• Use hybrid reward structures (team and individual); pure socialism or pure capitalism hurt.
• Invest in relationships within the team; instills a sense of obligation to team. Offsites, social activities all help. 

Language barriers

• Language fluency is perceived as a proxy for expertise and competence (research here)
• Why is this bad?
• Wrongly dismiss valid points made by less fluent speakers 
• Dismiss less fluent speakers as incompetent (status hierarchies based on language)
• Strategies to mitigate
• For fluent speakers
• Solicit inputs from teammates before meeting, so less fluent speakers don't feel uncomfortable speaking off the cuff, and also gives them a chance to write/email their thoughts. 
• Prepare written handouts in advance and align spoken language, so less fluent speakers can follow. 
• Adjust vocabulary: to reduce idiomatic usage etc. 
• Actively engage others in the conversation. Refrain from dominating the meeting. 
• For less fluent speakers 
• Resist avoidance behaviors, like not attending meetings 
• Prepare in advance for the meeting: lay out thoughts, be prepared for off-script questions etc. 
• Ask if people understood your point 
• Ask people to repeat if you did not understand something 
• Refrain from switching to the native language; you deepen the language faultline that exists. Don't sit next to someone who speaks your language! 

Conflict management

• Two types of conflict
• Task (cognitive) conflicts 
• Disagreement about the task at hand 
• If managed well, can be beneficial
• Encourages critical thinking
• Provides for multiple viewpoints, and associated learning 
• Helps break groupthink (ineffectual consensus)
• High task conflict has negative consequences
• Implementation becomes difficult, as consensus becomes hard
• Lower satisfaction in team
• Relationship (affective) conflicts 
• Arise from interpersonal incompatibilities
• Is typically destructive, drains energy, threatens team viability
• Moderate task conflict + Low relationship conflict is ideal; all others lead to low performance
• High task conflict that escalates, can lead to relationship conflict
• Effective teams typically have low relationship conflict, and increased task conflict during the middle (when most decisions are made), while low performance teams have increasing relationship conflict over time with dangerously low levels of task conflict (team is essentially not engaged); research here. 
• Strategies to mitigate relationship conflict 
• Establish and reinforce norms for debate (discussion less likely to be personally, and makes you a better debater)
• Address conflict early: turn into a task conflict and resolve, if possible. Having a shared goal and vision is key, as divergence in goals/values lead to relationship conflict. 
• Have processes so team members can safely share their private goals/values 
• Invest in relationships within the team
• Avoid ad hominem attacks, and ask to focus on issues at hand and provide examples of bad behaviors 
• Manage task conflict, so it does not escalate into relationship conflict. Reach consensus every so often, so complete divergence does not occur. 
• Negotiate to preserve your interests, as well as the other's
• In most situations, add other issues to a negotiation, and resolve across them (interest-based negotiation)
• Be mindful of:
• Using power to resolve conflict: can jeopardize the relationships. Use sparingly. 
• Using "standards" that are not equitable 
• Compromising your way to an agreement. Might leave the parties dissatisfied.