If you’ve ever led a cross-functional team at work, chances are you can commiserate with the following scenario:
Susana is the leader of a highly experienced communications team for a fast-growing organization that provides social-service programs. She was assigned to form a new cross-functional team of eight seasoned employees (all with between 10 and 25 years of experience) for a high-profile new initiative that would provide integrated services across multiple different agencies. It was a critically important project, and Susana believed she had the right team in place.
However, six months into the initiative, Susana found herself frustrated with a project that seemed to be going off the rails. Her “crack team,” who collectively had decades of experience and were familiar with one another, floundered in trying to communicate effectively with each other. They felt rudderless, with little ability to “move the ball forward” on the project. They missed multiple project milestones, which resulted in Susana’s boss questioning whether she was the right person to lead the team.
That experience is far from unusual. In fact, it can be the norm among organizations where learning and development efforts have been primarily focused on the development of hard/technical skills. Too often, the critical elements of team effectiveness (which can be learned like any skill) are left unaddressed and under-appreciated.
It’s no wonder that even the most highly competent individuals can struggle when brought into a team environment without the right guidance. Even people in individual-contributor roles almost never operate in complete isolation. The reality is that we work in team-based environments; yet many organizations are not adequately training employees on how to work effectively in teams.
Let’s dissect the example above. How exactly did Susana’s team fall apart?
The frustrating paradox here is that most of these people had worked with each other in the past, sometimes for many years, so they were familiar with each other, perhaps even friends. Individually, everyone was committed to the success of the project, which had the potential to drastically expand the services offered to a community in need. Still, they were frustrated by their inability to work effectively in their new team structure and deliver on the collective work that was critical to the success of the overall project.
Did Susana share some of the blame? Sure, she could have identified and communicated clear objectives and expectations from the start. But it shouldn’t all fall on her.
I also argue that there was a role for this organization’s L&D team to provide the fundamental training and guidance to set this team off on the right foot. Too often L&D departments focus on the task and not the team. That results in highly competent and technically skilled individuals who are woefully ill-equipped to work with one another in a coordinated fashion.
So what can L&D leaders do to shift their focus toward equipping teams for success? Consider the following:
As the author and entrepreneur Margaret Heffernan says: “In the hyper-technical and skills-obsessed work world of today, it can be easy to forget that companies don’t have ideas; only people do. And what motivates people to share and develop those ideas are the bonds of loyalty and trust that develop between team members,” not simply respect for their individual hard skills.
The social capital from high-functioning teams is what gives organizations momentum. It’s what makes companies innovative leaders in their industries.
To quote author Will Durant, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” L&D leaders can have a big impact on how well the teams in their organization function by offering programs to train employees on how to be effective team members and team leaders, so that those behaviors become a habit of excellence.