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High Functioning Teams From Project Kick-off

Written By Thomas

Identifying the right resources and pulling the team together is an important step in a project and a key aspect to successful project execution. Teams are fascinating and dynamic systems, and it can be a true source of joy to be part of a good one. If only it were simple to create and maintain that environment. In project management we don’t always have the opportunity to handpick our ideal team or the luxury of time to develop the team before the busy work begins, so where do we start if we want a high functioning team?

There are plenty of ideas floating around on team development and team building. A popular model for team development is Bruce Tuckman’s forming-storming-norming-performing(-adjourning) proposition. As Mark Mullaly points out that while being pleasing to say, this has some limitations in its application to project teams:

Application to operational teams is extrapolated as it is based on literature reviews of therapy and training groups
The stages are proposed as linear
Assumes the team is a closed system with no outside influences
Assumes a team remains the same with no new joiners or shifts in hierarchy
Provides no method for measuring which stage a team is in or a way to progress to the next stage

So what is a project manager to do?

Rather than a siloed unit following a linear rollercoaster trajectory, a team could be conceived as its own complex system, nested within and enmeshed with other systems, where the interactions and relationships within and between systems create patterns of behaviour that may be stable, emergent, or volatile. Apologies for the abstraction and messiness of this evolving, changing, growing social web, if you would prefer a simple out of the box answer on teaming, Tuckman has a nice easy model for you to follow…

Creating Conditions – Leadership matters.

We cannot see the entirety of this enmeshed system of systems, we can not directly control the outcomes, and we cannot even control many of the known, unknown, or unknowable inputs. What we can do is create conditions for an environment that will give us more of the outcomes that we want to see. This is where leadership comes in and how we have the opportunity to influence culture and team performance. We can do this through modelling and rewarding desired behaviours, creating stability and structures that enable high team performance, providing support at an individual and team level, and creating an environment where interdependencies and collaborations are not only expected, but necessary for success.

Roles and Responsibilities - Where you fit in the team matters.

Everyone should understand their contribution to the team through clear roles and responsibilities, why each is important, and understand how it fits into the bigger picture. Roles should be clear but not rigid, everyone should know where they have latitude to make choices and decisions, and where the boundaries that they are not to cross are. Escalation and approval points should be understood. Roles should also be clear but not permanently set. To keep the team engaged, you could allow individuals to be drawn to tasks that are of interest, and dynamically change the roles and responsibility to suit their unique temperaments and skillsets, ensuring that these are then made clear and communicated with the team.

Contributing - Where you bring value matters. And where you bring value that you value bringing really matters.

Everyone wants to add value to the team and these contributions should be identified and celebrated. In a high performing team, you could seek to understand where each individual values adding value and provide the opportunity for their contributions to be match. When we feel that the contribution we are making is a special unique skill we have, the feeling of value adding is exponentially increased. An attentive leader might want to line this up with the clearly stated – but changeable – roles of the team.

Mission and Goals - The direction of the team and its member’s matter.

The team goal should be clear and meaningful to each team member. In projects this is easy when we clearly define our scope and desired outcomes, but how do we make this coherent with team members goals? Finding a team full of people with coherent goals may not be possible, especially when busy BAU resources are involved, however we can harness the leadership energy of those who do find strong purpose in their work to provide the drive and direction for the whole team.

Relationships – Context appropriate interactions within the team matter.

Relationships should be context appropriate, dependent on the work being done, and ideally built through doing similar work. You may have a fantastic relationship with your significant other or best friend or mother, but is that the relationship that is most useful in a high functioning team? Possibly. Possibly not. Relationships are about interactions, and the key for a high functioning team is for those interactions to be useful for the context. Team socialising (often labelled as team building) activities can be beneficial for developing personal relationships, though this may not always enable interactions that are most useful for high performing professional teams. Team relationships should be respectful and inclusive, based on trust, supported by open communication, and nurtured through authentic leadership.

Team Evolution – Emergence from doing work matters.

As their own little complex system teams will create their own patterns of behaviour and culture as a project progresses, skills emerge, and relationships develop (in a hat tip to Tuckman call it norming and performing if you must, just remember it’s neither linear nor set). An observant leader might keep an eye on these patterns and nurture positive and useful trends while discouraging and mitigating negative or unhelpful occurrences. Interesting catalysts for emergence may come from changing of team members, project challenges, transition between phases of a project, and any multitude of external influences. These are exciting opportunities for positive change in the team and embracing opportunities can help the team evolve in useful and positive directions.

ongoing team development is a must

I’m sure you could place all of this into one or more buckets of forming, storming, norming, or performing, but there is nothing about teaming that belongs in a bucket or a silo. Certainly, when you want to form a team, you should set the goals and direction, create enabling structures, and make roles and responsibilities clear, but right from the start team development is an ongoing process full of interacting feedback loops, external inputs, and developing relationships between team members (and non-team members!). And an ongoing process requires management. Forming a team and hoping it will storm, norm, and then perform is not a recipe for success. High functioning people and teams are absolutely key to project success so get engaged and lead from project kick-off right through to project closure (or as some might call it, adjourning).