CIPD - Teamworking

Management

Revised August 2008

This factsheet gives introductory guidance. It:

outlines the rise of teamworking and its benefits
defines a team and discusses different types and sizes
considers team selection, team roles team leadership and team development
includes the CIPD viewpoint.

Background

In the past thirty years or so, teamworking has grown in importance. Until relatively recently, roles at work were well-defined. In the traditional factory, for example, there was strict division of responsibilities and most job titles conveyed exactly what people did. But with advances in technology and education, employers began to place a growing emphasis on versatility, leading to an increasing interest in teamworking at all levels. The gradual replacement of traditional hierarchical forms with flatter organisational structures, in which employees are expected to fill a variety of roles, has also played a part in the rise of the team.

What is a team?

There are numerous definitions, but for this factsheet a team is simply defined as a limited number of people who have shared objectives at work and who co-operate, on a permanent or temporary basis, to achieve those objectives in a way that allows each individual to make a distinctive contribution.

Types of team

There are many types of teams. What follows¹ is not a comprehensive list, and there are other typologies or classifications.

Production and service teams - examples are in production, construction, sales and health care. They have a relatively long life-span, providing an ongoing product or service to customers or the organisation.
Project and development teams - including research and product development teams. They are dedicated to a particular objective, and have limited life-spans and a clear set of short-term objectives. They are often cross-functional, with members selected for the contribution their expertise can make.
Advice and involvement teams - with the aim of improving, for example, working conditions or quality. Members will not devote a great deal of time to them, and once they have achieved their objectives they should be disbanded.
Crews - such as airline crews, who may be formed from people who have rarely worked together but through prior training clearly understand their respective roles.
Action and negotiation teams - such as surgical and legal teams, consist of people who tend to work together regularly. They have well-developed processes and clear objectives.
Virtual teams - who work in separate buildings and who may even be in different countries. Such teams may also fit into one of the above categories, such as project and development. They may need to communicate by telephone, e-mail and tele-conferencing rather than face-to-face. Managing them is particularly difficult, not least because remote working can exacerbate misunderstandings.
Self-managed teams - where much decision-making is devolved from line managers to team members. (Also known as semi-autonomous or fully autonomous teams according to the degree of self-management.) Again, such teams may also fit into one of the above categories. The 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey² suggested that the positive benefits of teamworking may be largely associated with such teams, rather than teams in general. Fully or semi-autonomous teams tend to have higher than average levels of labour productivity; a lower rate of voluntary resignations; lower levels of employee dismissals, and a better than average employee relations climate.

Normally, teams will consist of people from the same employer, but sometimes there may be teams from different employers: examples are design project teams in construction, which bring together architects and engineers from different firms, or teams which include customers or suppliers.

Benefits of teamworking

Organisations have introduced teamworking for the following reasons, among others:

to improve productivity
to improve quality of products or services
to improve customer focus
to speed the spread of ideas
to respond to opportunities and threats and to fast-changing environments
to increase employee motivation
to introduce multi-skilling and employee flexibility.

There can be benefits for employees too. The most commonly-quoted outcomes are greater job satisfaction and motivation, and improved learning. But the introduction of teamworking needs skilful management and resources devoted to it, or initiatives may fail.

Stages of team development

One influential theory about team functioning proposes that when a group of people come together to achieve an objective, they go through a series of stages leading to a final 'mature' stage that equates to an effective team³.

The main stages are as follows:

Forming - or undeveloped, when people are working as individuals rather than a team.
Storming – teams need to pass through a stage of conflict if they are to achieve their potential. The team becomes more aggressive, both internally and in relation to outside groups, rules and requirements.
Norming - or consolidating, in which the team is beginning to achieve its potential, effectively applying the resource it has to the tasks it has, using a process it has developed itself.
Performing - when the team is characterised by openness and flexibility. It challenges itself constantly but without emotionally charged conflict, and places a high priority on the development of other team members.
Mourning - when the team disbands.

While this is a useful theoretical model, it should not be seen as unvarying. For example, a mature performing team may revert to an earlier stage if something happens, perhaps the loss of a key member or a threatening change in the organisation. Or a team in which the members know each other well may perform almost from the start.

Characteristics of effective teams

An effective team has the following characteristics:

a common sense of purpose
a clear understanding of the team’s objectives
resources to achieve those objectives
mutual respect among team members, both as individuals and for the contribution each makes to the team’s performance
valuing members’ strengths and respecting their weaknesses
mutual trust
willingness to share knowledge and expertise
willingness to speak openly
a range of skills among team members to deal effectively with all its tasks
a range of personal styles for the various roles needed to carry out the team’s tasks.

Team role theories and team selection

There are two requirements in selecting team members: the team should include a range of the necessary technical and specialist skills; and there should be a variety of personal styles among members to fill the different roles that are involved in successful teamwork. The pioneering work on team roles or types was carried out by Dr Meredith Belbin in the 1970s⁴. He lists nine team roles⁵:

Plant – creative, imaginative, unorthodox. Solves difficult problems.
Resource investigator – extrovert, enthusiastic, exploratory. Explores opportunities. Develops contacts.
Co-ordinator – mature, confident, a good chairperson. Clarifies goals, promotes decision making.
Shaper – dynamic, challenging. Has drive and courage to overcome obstacles.
Monitor evaluator – sober, strategic, discerning. Sees all options.
Teamworker – co-operative, mild, perceptive, diplomatic. Listens, builds, averts friction.
Implementer – disciplined, reliable, conservative. Turns ideas into practical action.
Completer – painstaking, conscientious, anxious. Searches out errors and omissions, delivers on time.
Specialist – single-minded, self-starting, dedicated. Provides knowledge and skill in rare supply.

Belbin’s work has been criticised on the grounds that individuals rarely fit neatly into these categories – most fit into more than one, and arguably the best team workers will adapt their behaviour to fill different roles as circumstances require. However, knowing that one tends to fit a certain profile arguably has value in understanding one’s own and others’ strengths and weaknesses.

There are now many other psychological tests which result in different team type classifications. Organisations may wish to look at a sample of tests to see which might be most appropriate if they want to use them to select team members and (perhaps especially) team leaders.

However, simply looking at previous behaviours in earlier teams, asking previous team leaders, and considering appraisal records may be enough to select team members. Team selection is not an exact science and instinct should come into play as well. A mix of types is necessary, as is a mix of skills – for example, selecting a team of IT specialists to look at an IT project would be wrong (although it happens!); users of the IT system will need to be included in the team.

Teams can include senior and junior people (for the latter, team membership may also be a development opportunity) and someone relatively junior may be a team leader. To reiterate, what is most important is the team’s mix of skills and types.

Team size

Most commentators suggest that between five and eight people is the ideal size for teams. Teams need to be large enough to incorporate the appropriate range of expertise and representation of interests, but not so large that people’s participation, and hence their interest, is limited.

Team leadership

Leadership is vital for successful teams. For information on leadership issues in general, see our factsheet on leadership.

View our factsheet on Leadership

There is no one recipe for successful team leadership. Like other team members, team leaders have their own personal styles, which they need to understand and work within:

Some people, by instinct, will be directive – they will want to tell people what to do. Those with directive tendencies will need to temper their approach to avoid causing resentment; otherwise, other team members may ask 'If he knows all the answers, why are we involved?'.
Others will be democratic, and ask questions to gain commitment and get people on board, even if they themselves have clear ideas about how things should be done. Leaders with democratic tendencies will need to be aware that there is a danger of drift and lack of direction if there is too much debate.
Some leaders will be more involved, while others will let team members get on by themselves.

Whatever their personal styles, leaders should:

listen to team members
question them to understand their points of view
be responsive to feedback.

In this way they act as facilitators or coaches to get the most out of team members, and to encourage learning and creativity. The roles that leaders play, and hence the ways in which they behave may differ at different stages of team development: for example, helping to overcome conflict in the early stages and setting tasks at a later stage. It can be argued that successful team leaders need a high degree of emotional intelligence - see our factsheet on emotional intelligence for more information.

View our factsheet on Emotional intelligence

In some circumstances, leadership may rotate; for example, different individuals may take the lead at different stages of a project for which a team is responsible. Some semi-autonomous or fully autonomous teams appoint their own leaders.

Team training and learning

Team building training is often necessary to assist the move from working in a traditional hierarchy to being part of a team, and in circumstances where team members have not worked together previously and may not even know each other. Such training may consist of exercises carried out jointly under a facilitator, sometime outdoors (see our factsheet on outdoor development) to enable people to get to know each other and to work together, understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

View our factsheet on Outdoor development

Communications, knowledge-sharing and problem-solving may often be on the agenda, but the areas covered will depend on the nature and role of the team, so it is impossible to generalise.

Social events may also be used to get team members to know each other. Separate training may take place for team leaders. As projects develop, there may be additional training that emerges from the team’s needs. And, as has been said, an important role of the team leader is to act as a coach or facilitator to encourage learning.

Team reward

It is a criticism of traditional appraisal systems that they have given insufficient weight to individuals’ contributions to teams, but this is tending to change. A number of organisations have introduced team pay systems, aimed at encouraging group endeavour rather than individual performance. CIPD research has found that such schemes are less important for success than management style, culture and the working environment. If team pay is to be introduced, it should be done with great care, and the complementary impact of non-financial reward should always be acknowledged. See our factsheet on rewarding teams for more detail.

View our factsheet on Team reward

CIPD viewpoint

Teamworking is a complex subject and this factsheet has only scratched the surface. Those wishing to know more should consult the extensive literature. Teams come in many forms and exist for many purposes. Teamworking is desirable in many circumstances and, properly managed, can contribute to improved organisational performance, while improving individuals’ job satisfaction and helping to empower them. But not all teams succeed. Inadequate terms of reference, poor selection of team members, inadequate resources, the wrong mix of personality types and skills, the wrong size, inadequate training and poor leadership are among the reasons why teams fail.

References

Based, with some additions, on a typology in WEST, M.A. (2004) The secrets of successful team management. London: Duncan Baird.
CULLY, M., WOODLAND, S. and O`REILLY, A. (1999) Britain at work: as depicted by the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey. London: Routledge.
WOODCOCK, M. (1989) Team development manual. 2nd ed. Aldershot: Gower.
BELBIN, R.M. (2004) Management teams: why they succeed or fail. 2nd ed. Oxford: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann.
BELBIN, R.M. (1993) Team roles at work. Oxford: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann. Readers should be aware that Belbin has developed and slightly amended his description of team roles over the years.

Teamworking