#note/sourcereview/book ## What is the thesis? Successful teams have strengths in multiple areas (the 7 C's below) ## Am I convinced and why? Yes, there is no shortcut to effective teams. It is the intersection between the situation and the teams culture and qualities and skills. ## Summarize the argument - ### Part I All about Teams - 1 What Really Drives Team Effectiveness? - Capabilities: what task skills to the team members have? - Cooperation: what teaming skills do the team members have? - Coordination: how do the members work together? - Communication: how do the members and leaders share information? - Cognitions: how closely aligned is the thinking of the team members? - Conditions: what situation is the team functioning in? High certainty or high uncertainty? - Coaching: how does the team give and receive feedback to improve? - 2 Busting a Few Teamwork Myths Truths: Investing in teaming results in better outcomes _teamwork is how work gets done_ Positive team experiences beget improved teaming desire, when you have a good team experience you are more likely to want to - [[We have stronger experiences when those experiences are shared]] Myths - Like each other theory: liking teammates is not a prerequisite to team performance, having agreement about how you will work together is the key, not liking each other - Openness Theory - Magic chemistry Theory: _adaptation boosts performance, not having a magic chemistry_ - Minimize interference Theory - Strong Leader Theory - 3 Teams Are Not All the Same - Teams exist on a spectrum of interdependence: - In baseball, most plays are 1:1 (pitcher to batter then fielder to batter), there is low interdependence. Baseball team results are largely based on individual talent - In basketball, there are high levels of interdependence. Having increasing talent does result in increasing performance to an extent, but like the Frank-Starling curve, too much talent on a team like this actually degrades performance as individual stars struggle to cooperate ![[spectrum of team interdependence and performance.jpg]] - Teams exist on a spectrum of structure: - Central star vs flat hierarchy, surgical team more central star oriented, anesthesia emergency response more flat hierarchy ![[OR team structure challenge.jpg]] ### Part II The Science of Teamwork: Understanding the Drivers - 4 Capabilities: It Starts with the Right Expertise _In summary, a profile of team task abilities, team abilities, attitudes and personalities helps identify a team's capabilities._ Task work capabilities vs Team work capabilities - In stable situations with low interdependence, task work capabilities take on more importance. In dynamic situations with high interdependence, team work capabilities take on more importance Teaming capabilities include: ![[Task vs Team Capabilities.jpg]] - giving and receiving [[Feedback]] - dealing with, [[diagnosing conflict]], and constructing positives from that conflict - sending and receiving clear messages for effective communication - interpersonal skills ([[Relating]]): being aware of others psychological needs and attending to them - leadership skills ([[Leading]]): being aware of the groups needs and attending to them Positive Teammate Attributes: - [[collective orientation]] - enough individuals need to be focused on the team success for the team to be successful - Adaptability - Conscientiousness - [[Agreeability]]: A warning here, too much agreeability is associated with a difficulty with constructive conflict, this can create less than optimal feedback and reduction in team performance. A balance of agreeability is better. Negative Teammate Attributes: [[the dark triad of personality]] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad) ![[600px-The_Dark_Triad.png]] - 5 Cooperation: Attitudes and Beliefs that Emerge from the Other Drivers - An emergent state that changes dynamically and is related to beliefs about this individual team. - Trust vs psychological safety - [[trust is the currency of relationships]] = do I give you the benefit of the doubt? - Trust is more important in teams operating with high levels of interdependence and high uncertainty - [[psychological safety]] = do I believe you give me the benefit of the doubt? - collective efficacy = do we believe our team can get it done? - cohesion = to what extent do we believe we are all committed to the job at hand? - 6 Coordination: Teamwork Is about Behaviors - 7 Communication: More Is Not Better; Better Is Better - Trust and quality communication are in a dynamic loop, this can be virtuous or vicious cycle depending on if it is high quality communication or low quality. Just like [[relational coordination]]. - Team effectiveness is predication on sharing [[unique information]] - the [[convey]] the check back when closing the loop in communication - Combat "Everybody knows" by asking, "Who else needs to know?" - Focus on [[situational awareness]] - perception - cognition - prognostication - Combat "automaticity" by asking "If it ... " questions - Effective [[boundary spanning]] requires more intentionality, closing loop, listening to understand, etc. - 8 Cognitions: Are We on the Same Page? - Refers to the development of [[shared mental model]] - Allows teams to perform better by increasing motivation, increasing efficacy. Is important even when the situation is unknown "We won't have a clear understanding of our budget for this project until ..." - Needs to be updated when conditions change - A minimum of team familiarity is helpful, but familiarity is actually a U-shaped curve for performance, none is harmful, but so is too much, because [[assumptions]] increase - Increasing communication _without_ a shared cognition actually reduces effectiveness because it just becomes noise - “a higher level of team monitoring in the absence of a similar team mental model had a negative effect on performance” (Burtscher et al., 2011, p. 257) - 9 Conditions: You Get What You Encourage . . . and Tolerate - What are the policies and oraxtices - how do they support or inhibit - [[create the conditions]] - 10 Coaching: Leadership Isn’t Just for Leaders Types of leaders: [[Transformational Leadership]]: Inspire, provoke, model - ### Part III What Should I Do? Using the Seven Drivers Specifics - dig down deeper in these chapters for special circumstances: - 11 A Quick Refresher - 12 Team Leaders: Helping Your Team Succeed - 13 Team Members: Being a Great Team Member - 14 Consultants: Enabling Teams to Improve - 15 Senior Leaders: Promoting Teamwork in Your Organization ## What is the other side of the argument? - Was it Bill Bellichek or Tom Brady? Yes. - Something as nuanced and interpersonal as teams that work or leadership cannot be isolated into a few basic skills. Any attempt to measure invariably collapses interpersonalism into false dichotomies or isolated narratives, when there are really interconnected realities between the team, the leader, the situation, and the context. This is a [[Systems]] challenge, with non-linear relationships, feedback loops, augmentation loops, and other unpredictable issues set in a dynamic context. Resist the urge to oversimplify and find solutions. The truth is, it's about [[Learning]] through work, in your context, in your situation, and what you learn in one situation won't necessarily work in the next one (see every NFL coach ever). - There is a limited time, you have your pressures, how can you work on everything? ## What else do I wonder about? - Leaders bring their own personalities, they may be more comfortable as managers when in a leadership situation so might end up being more _transactional_ in their style. Can a leader be effective if they fall out of their comfort zone? - How can you tell in any situation what are the highest yield levers to pull? [[Barbells make you stronger]], what are the barbells in this situation? - Capabilities: what task skills to the team members have? - Cooperation: what teaming skills do the team members have? - Coordination: how do the members work together? - Communication: how do the members and leaders share information? - Cognitions: how closely aligned is the thinking of the team members? - Conditions: what situation is the team functioning in? High certainty or high uncertainty? - Coaching: how does the team give and receive feedback to improve? ## Action [[Consulting skills]]: - When coming into a new situation, I need to assess the capabilities for the job and work on those, the cooperation and learning and help with [[psychological safety]] & [[Feedback]] culture. These seem like high yield topics for any group. The question is, how do you get the people there who need to be there? ## When do I want to stumble across this? #on/leadership | #on/feedback | #on/relationships | #on/team ## Sources: Tannenbaum, S. I., & Salas, E. (2020). _Teams that work: The seven drivers of team effectiveness_. Oxford University Press. Burtscher, M. J., Kolbe, M., Wacker, J., & Manser, T. (2011). Interactions of team mental models and monitoring behaviors predict team performance in simulated anesthesia inductions. _Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied_, _17_(3), 257–269. [https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025148](https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025148) ## References, Quotes, Ideas ```dataview table file.mtime.year + "-" + file.mtime.month + "-" + file.mtime.day as Modified from [[ ]] and !outgoing([[ ]]) sort file.mtime desc ```