Leadership and management work addresses a lot of topics such as strategy work, market positioning, finance, product-related decisions, partner management, customer satisfaction, performance measurement of any kind whatsoever, leading and developing individual employees, and a lot more. However, what usually is not specifically mentioned on the agenda is team development in and of itself. Well, honestly, I do wonder, why not? Because we all know that an efficient team can achieve a lot more than what the sum of the performance of each individual team member would be. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” (abbreviated quote by Aristotle)
According to Patrick Lencioni (author of “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team”), teamwork is the one sustainable competitive advantage that remains largely unexplored.
If this is the case, it can be considered almost negligent behavior on the part of a responsible manager not to seek to develop an efficient team. But watch out: a team consists of a small group of (not more than nine) people who pursue a common mission or a common goal, and together combine preferably all skills required to achieve the common goal. If these criteria are not met, we are rather talking about a group of people who, based on their functions, make up a department and generally pursue distinct goals that are not aligned to one another. In that case, you will certainly not be able to build an efficient team, not even with your greatest effort.
But what do you need to set up an efficient team? Patrick Lencioni approached this issue from the other side, i.e. by exploring the circumstances that prevent a team from working well. He calls these circumstances “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” and classifies them by order of importance:
- Absence of trust
- Fear of conflict
- Lack of commitment
- Avoidance of accountability
- Inattention to results
These dysfunctions are built on one another. When it comes to team development, I need to address the first dysfunction first in order to be able to also eliminate the other dysfunctions. Therefore, I want to focus today only on the trust issue.
Let’s start with a definition of “trust” ... well, not an easy task. Maybe we can approach this concept by asking the following question: How do we realize that trust exists among team members? The answer to this is quite easy: Trust exists when the team members openly talk about errors and weaknesses, when – through their statements or their behavior – they lay themselves open to criticism or make themselves vulnerable. In other words: when they do their work imperfectly and without a professional disguise.
If you then make yourself aware of the fact that this situation, which describes existing trust within a team, is the basis for an efficient team according to Patrick Lencioni and hence also the basis for the desired competitive advantage, then a lot of us – at least those who have been in business for several years – have to try hard to break their old habits...
I find it really inspiring in this context that even executives have found out that acting together as a team can be quite useful. This is what happened at Otto Group (see article by Petra Scharner-Wolff, member of the executive board of Otto Group – Harvard Business manager Spezial 2021). Petra Scharner-Wolff describes the process of change toward teamwork as exhausting and tedious; this process was initiated by a working group within the executive board in which each member – equipped with a relatively strong ego – supported his or her respective area of responsibility. Interestingly enough, she first and foremost cites the necessity to build up trust in the team of executives. She also mentions that her colleagues in the executive board had to get familiar with coming together face to face as humans. This bridges the gap to the aspect of “trust exists” when the team members are actually allowed to lay themselves open to criticism and make themselves vulnerable, because that’s what we humans are.
In a nutshell: Genuine trust within a team creates an environment in which each team member can contribute his or her ideas and thoughts without safety net or false bottom, and in this way is able to exploit his or her full potential. In this connection, it becomes evident in my view that this can result in a competitive edge on executive level.
This text first appeared in my newsletter 'Innovation on Wednesday'. It is published every other Wednesday. For subscription click here