Not just one of the gang


When exploited, a good manager's intimate working relationships with the team can boost performance. Too much closeness could lead to discomfort.
 

In business, as in sports, winning teams have a well-honed sense of camaraderie that helps team members to read one another's signals, move as one, and watch each other's backs. In management circles, this sense of commitment and connection is often referred to as affiliation. Many experts consider it an essential component of effective teamwork.

The more people value their relationships with one another, the thinking goes, the better they will perform for one another and the organisation. But can you have too much of a good thing?

According to a new study of 20 executive leadership teams from Fortune 500 companies conducted by the Philadelphia-based Hay Group, you can.

While confirming that affiliation is a crucial component of effective teamwork, the study also showed that too much emphasis on positive relationships, especially by the team leader, could hamper performance.

Singing along
While leaders must foster conditions that promote trust, cooperation, and commitment, they cannot allow relationships to come before work. Instead, they should set well-defined boundaries that allow them to make the kind of clear-eyed business decisions that will put their teams in the best position to succeed.

The goal for managers of all levels is to find the right balance: cultivate enough affiliation so that team members feel a shared sense of commitment, but don't place so much emphasis on the value of relationships that your ability to make tough decisions becomes imperiled.

Leaders need to be careful to set the right tone within their own teams, and they need to keep a keen eye on how managers who report to them are striking their own balances.

Closer than close
Leaders who place too high a premium on affiliation will work to maintain smooth team relations at the expense of team performance. For example, they may prevent or shut down important discussions because they view even respectful disagreement as a threat to team harmony.

Trying to be part of the gang may also leave them unable to make dispassionate decisions for the good of the team - such as who gets to play and who gets benched.

"A leader can't value harmonious relationships more than putting the conditions in place that will allow the team to do well," explains J. Richard Hackman, professor of psychology at Harvard University. "If you are a team leader, you don't want to have the group turn into a nice, comfortable, happy, collegial setting if sharp decisions need to be made - such as who is on or off, or difficult choices around power issues."

And yet the desire to work in a comfortable setting is powerful and can lead managers to bend over backward to avoid direct conflict occurring within the team.

But closing down uncomfortable discussions can lead to business problems. Take, for example, a team rolling out a new product. At the launch a decision was made to change the company's signature colour from red to blue to distinguish it from its competitors. TV spots, coupons, and advertisements at sporting events all heralded the arrival of the new product. When it was time for the launch, the product was still in the old red package.

Why? Because when the operations manager got hot under the collar while questioning how he would budget the new packaging, the president cut off the conversation, and the issue was never resolved.

Candid conversation
"Without robust discussion, people will make assumptions that they know what the decision is when, in fact, they don't," says Mary Fontaine, Hay Group's vice-president and general manager. Encouraging truly open debate doesn't come easily to all managers, especially those who value relationships the most.

To help deal with the tensions that can emerge when leaders encourage honest conversation, Karin Mayhew, senior vice-president of organisation effectiveness at Health Net, offers the following tips for team leaders:

 
• Resist your urge to defend a point of view and minimise debate.
   
• Shift your focus to getting data from all parties involved to support their opinions.
   
• Get all the data and opinions on the table - until you do, you cannot shift to action planning.
   
• Resist the tendency to push the differences out of the room - you can always take a break, collect your thoughts and deal with it on your return.
   
• Always thank outspoken team-members for their contribution - as it sets the tone for future interaction.

Degrees of separation
Mayhew has observed that some leaders find it difficult to separate themselves from the team, as evidenced by their strong desire to include everyone in all aspects of decision-making. For example, a proxy leader may bring the entire team to a meeting meant for senior executives.

"I often hear euphemisms like, 'I've got to bring everybody up to speed,' or 'everybody's got to be onboard,'" she says. This can put a serious crimp in the decision-making process.

When leaders insist on bringing everyone in on meetings where key decisions are being made, decision makers find it more difficult to be candid. "You get a much more homogenized conversation," she says, and core issues may never surface.

Instead, Mayhew recommends that leaders gather input from their teams before entering the decision-making forum. She stresses the importance of soliciting input that goes beyond agreement or disagreement and covers the implications for the team's work.

Leaders also should clearly state how the decision will be made and by whom. "While it doesn't solve the problem of the team feeling left out of the meeting," Fontaine adds, "it does make them feel valued. Briefing the team after the meeting should also be a part of the process."

Beware the excuse-makers
One thing a leader should not do is query some team members but not others. Not only does this scream favouritism, but it also fosters an atmosphere of 'in' groups and 'out' groups. Fontaine stresses that leaders should spend an equal amount of time with all their direct reports - even the ones they may not like personally.

One more sign that a manager may place relationships over performance is when they make excuses for underperformers.

"You will hear a lot about individual efforts or stellar personal characteristics," says Mayhew. To overcome this pitfall, leaders should establish firm goals for all employees and measure results against them - the more analytical your approach to judging overall performances the less personal it will seem.


Fostering good team effort
People who work well together usually seek some level of affiliation. They may not be friends, but they do like to establish some common ground with their colleagues.

While a certain level of familiarity occurs naturally when people work in the same location, it is difficult to build within global teams, says Debra Nunes, senior vice-president, for the Hay Group. Here clear leadership is critical.

One leader Nunes worked with needed a collaborative effort from multiple teams of a recent acquisition.

To help boost this process an elaborate pre-meeting dinner was hosted but with no chairs. It forced people to move around. "They were not just talking with people they came with but with those from other locations," explains Nunes.

At the other end of the spectrum was a leader who, in launching a new business unit, was unable to get his far-flung team to collaborate. "He was trying to create synergies," says Nunes.

"But the things he asked in terms of people working together were not being put into action. People were not implementing things because they did not trust each other, and the reason they did not trust each other was because they did not know each other." The problem was that the team leader was an all-business type who did not build time into meetings for people to socialise.

Once the leader began to allot time for people to talk informally, they established some common ground around non-business topics.

"They were then able to share interests and became much more willing to work together," says Nunes.

Team members began to confer with each other between meetings, not simply during them. Tasks that were previously done in parallel were now approached collectively.

Karin Mayhew suggests that leaders raise the issue of team dynamics the first time the group meets.

"Just as you are laying out your expectations, you also talk about what it's going to be like to work together. You ask the team to define the ground rules as well as the things they think are important to do together."