I had an interesting conversation today with a tax consultant from a multinational consulting firm we all would recognize. He was struggling with the way his team is performing. But, as it turns out, he is really not leading a team at all.
I admit that defining terms is often arbitrary, to be taken with a grain of salt, but a common nomenclature is necessary — if only to be able to have a concerted conversation about things that matter. For Patrick Lencioni, the best-selling author of “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” the word “team” only refers to a group of people who are all equally responsible for the common outcome or performance goal of that group. This is the soccer team model. Either the whole team wins the cup or they all lose together.
This is opposed to what he calls a “work group,” which is simply a group of people who go out and perform their jobs separately and individually. They then tally up each of their individual “scores” at the end of the day to get a cumulative result. The work group does not really work together at all, except after the final tally. This is the golf team model: it is clear that one person’s horrible performance will not directly affect his teammate’s — at least until they get back to the club to figure out who owes who for the beers (in my case, I’m always the one buying).
Here’s why this is so important: if we treat these two groups the same, we will end up wasting time and resources on helping work groups increase their team work skills, when what they really need is to improve individual performance collectively. These are two very different things.
Some leaders prefer to run “work groups” instead of true teams. They keep all their respective individual department heads siloed and separate and no one gets to see the whole picture except them. This gives them an aura of omniscience and deniability that is hard to resist. But it also deprives them of the multiple points of view and perspectives that their members would have on the whole picture; this often leads to poor decisions. More minds are better than one, after all.
So, when it comes to increasing team work the first question to ask is always: “Are we really a team or just a work group?” Also, “Is this state of affairs intentional or just an accident of how things have always been?”
How about you: are you part of a real team or just a work group?
