The presentation gives the reader an understanding of core teamwork theory.

1. Good or Bad?
•England Football 2010?
•GB Rowing team?
• (the last 30 years!)

2. Teams
Entrepreneurship is
a team sport!
Dr Andrew Hirst Room 9339 2

3. Objective of the session
• Consider attributes of good teams
• The evolution of good teams
• Understanding how to build a teams

4. What is a Team?
• A group of people with a common purpose
• A synergy of talents that is more that the sum of the
parts
• What is a good team?
– Seeks agreement on the objective
– Has a leader and a mix of skills
– Has a balance between the task, the process and people
– Supportive atmosphere
– Learn from experience
– Its enjoyable and/or exhilarating - "Work hard and play hard"
– High success rate
– Memorable!!

5. “People are in bands, and I know in our case it’s
because we are better than we would be as
individuals’
The Edge, U2

6. Three key ideas
• Tuckman's Group development process
• Belbin Team Roles
• Guttman's basis for high performing teams

7. Why team work theory?
• Advice on best practice
• Helps when not certain about how to do it
• Speeds up synthesis of the group
• Aids higher performance and reduces
dysfunction

8. Tuckman's group
development stages
A widely accepted model of
teambuilding

9. Tuckman's Group stage
Development (simplified)
Crisis of
confidence
Crisis of
confidence

10. Stage 1 - Forming
• Underestimate complexity
– undefined role
– unsure of previous experience
– No time given to setting clear objectives
– Inadequate planning
– leadership role is unclear and challenged by group
– Ideas are not listened to or developed, dominant
members pressure team
– Abilene Paradox
• 'Matching Morons' Lemmings

11. Storming and Norming
• Enforced conformity
–Rigid processes and procedural plans
are developed
–Autocratic leadership
–Rules driven

12. Performing
• Breaks away from rules and codes
• Shared ownership
• Understand role and trust others
• Trust developed
• Solution seeking and not problem finding
• Strong identity and culture
• Ringelmann effect - Social Loafing

13. Issues with the model
• Assumes linear development
• Assumes no prior knowledge
• Ignores multiple objectives
• Difficult to determine transition between stages
• Perhaps, over simplified process, but a good
starting point
• Key Leadership Takeaway
– Teams change over time
– Crisis of confidence is a bite point,
– Expect conflict to develop

14. Guttman's (2009)
Alignment principle for High
Performance Team

15. Key Issues
• Looked at high performance organisations
– e.g Mars, Johnson and Johnson etc.
• Alignment
– "Collective deep think"
– "re-evaluation"
– "Enrol on the vision"
– Agreement
• What the team will achieve
• What will everyone contribute

16. What is Alignment?
• Business Strategy
• Business deliverables from strategy
• Roles and responsibilities at individual / SBU /
function
• Protocols/ ground rules for decisions and conflict
res.
• Interpersonal relationships and
interdependancies
• Linked to vision and values

17. Alignment stages
Testing
Infighting
Getting Organised
High Performance
Clear team goals
Right players in place
Clear role / responsibility
Agreed-upon protocols
Sense of Ownership
Comfort dealing with conflict
Periodic self assessment

18. Developing a strong identity
• Schein (1990)
– Culture A pattern of basic assumptions, invented, discovered or developed,
as it learn to cope with external problems, which has worked well enough to
be taught to new members.
• Three layers
1. We will act with integrity.
2. We will ensure clear purpose and priorities.
3. We will communicate effectively with
colleagues and stakeholders.
4. We will value colleagues' opinions and
judgement.
5. We will invest in our colleagues' development.
6. We will work collegially, exercising shared and
collective leadership.

19. The Brotherhood of the right stuff- extract from The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe (1979)
Figure 1 A film that examines the people attempting to make the first attempts to
enter Space
A young man might go into military flight training, believing that he was
entering some sort of technical school in which he was simply going to
acquire a certain set of skills. Instead, he found himself all at once enclosed
in a fraternity. And in this fraternity, even though it was military, men were
not ranked by their outward rank as ensigns, lieutenants, commanders, or
whatever. No herein the world was divided into those who had it and those
who did not. This Quality, that it, was never named, however, nor was it
talked about in anyway.
As to justify what the ineffable quality was….well, it obviously involved
bravery. But it was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk
your life. The idea seemed to be that any fool could do that, if that was all
that was required, just as any fool could throw away his life in the process.
No, the idea here (in the enclosed fraternity) seemed to be that a man
should have the ability to up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his
hide on the line and then the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the
coolness, to put it back in the last yawning moment- and then to go up again
the next day, and the next day, and every day, even if the series should
prove infinite-and, ultimately, in its best expression, do so in a cause that
means something to thousands, to a people, a nation, to humility, to god.
Nor was there a test to show whether or not the pilot had this righteous
quality. There was, instead, a seemingly infinite series of tests. A career in
flying was like climbing one of those ancient Babylonian pyramids made up
of a dizzy progression of steps and ledges, a ziggurat, a pyramid
extraordinarily high and steep; and the idea was to prove at every foot of
the way up that pyramid that you were one of the elected and anointed
ones who had THE RIGHT STUFF and could move higher and higher and even
- ultimately, god willing, one day - that you might be able to join that special
few at the very top, that elite who had the capacity to bring tears to men's
eyes, the very brotherhood of the Right Stuff itself.

20. Understanding people in
teams

21. Good team players
• Personally accountable and hold others
accountable
• Coachable - adapt to change
• Collaborative - open and direct
• Trusting of others - able to let go
• High integrity - keep your word
• Committed - act as owner, engage and add
value

22. Personality theory
• Myers - Briggs Type dynamic indicator
– A Psychometric test
– based on Carl Jung
• The "rational" (judging) functions: thinking and
feeling
• The "irrational" (perceiving) functions: sensing
and intuition
• Issues
– 16 personalities
– Complex
– unrealistic as it anticipates a choice in team
membership

23. Belbin's Team Roles
Identifies your typical
behaviour in a team

24. What roles can we take?
• Honey, P (1984) Teams and leaders video
– Doers, thinkers, carers and leaders
• BELBIN team roles

25. Team Roles Combined
• Doers (action roles)
– Shaper, Implementer (Company Worker), Completer-
Finisher
• Carers (Social Roles)
– Co-ordinator (Chairperson), Resources Investigator,
Team-worker
• Thinkers (Creative and analytical)
– Plant, Monitor Evaluator, Specialist (not used)

26. Belbin
• Team player considerations
– Can change, can be more than 1 type
– Dynamic
– Shows preferences and biases in a team
– They are behaviours not attitudes/personality
• Key Leadership consideration
– Promotes harmony and a balance

27. Team Selection Analysis

28. Dealing with difficult people
• Difficult people can be:
– Highly creative
– Driven
– Clear thinking
But they can be:
– Aloof
– Difficult and awkward
– Divisive

29. Teamwork caveat
• A lot of contradictions in the theory
– Luck
– Conflict might stimulate superior performance
– Luis Suarez / Eric Cantona/ Di Canio?
– Donald Trump

30. GROW Mark de Rond (2012)
Acronym for team development
planning
process used in the development of the
Cambridge boat team

31. The process
• Goals
– What and When
• Reality
– Now, effect of negative influence, who thinks what
• Options
– Magic wand, what if?
• Will
– Commitment, first steps, blocks, support?

32. Summary
• What did we learn from this?
• A team must have:
– Teams go through several stages of development
– A mix of styles and skills
– High performing teams
• Clear challenging objectives that everyone wants to achieve
• A consensus on how to achieve the objectives
• Needs clear process

33. Further Reading
– Effective Teambuilding by John Adair
– Management Teams by R. Meredith Belbin
– Fire, Toast and Teamwork DVD 658.402 (ref only)
– The Leadership Pickles 658.4092 FA (ref only)
– Great Business Teams by H. Guttman (2008)
– Leadership Under Pressure by Bob Stewart

34. Belbin roles summary
Name Role Strengths Potential
Weaknesses
Chairman
Controls the way the team moves forward,
recognizes team strengths and weaknesses,
utilizes team's resources
Commands
respectinspires
enthusiasmtiming &
balance
May not possess creative or
intellectual power
Shaper Sets objectives & priorities, imposes shape
on discussion and activities Drive & self confidence Intolerant towards vague
ideas and people
Innovator Creates new ideas & strategies Independence, intelligence
imagination
May be impractical or weak
in communications
Monitor/
Evaluator Analyzes problems evaluates ideas Critical thinking Overserious, hypercritical
Company
Turns concepts into plans
worker
Carries out agreed plans systematically and
efficiently
Self discipline, realism
Practical common sense
May lack flexibility
Unresponsive to new, un-proven
ideas
Team Worker
Supports team members strengths
Underpins shortcomings, Improves internal
communications, team spirit
Humility, flexibility,
popularity & toughness,
distaste for friction &
competition
Tends to gossip if
underemployed
Resource
Investigator
Explores & reports on ideas & resources
outside the group
Creates external contacts and conducts any
subsequent negotiations
Outgoing relaxed
personality, inquisitive
strength, ability to see
possibilities in new things
May be overenthusiastic with
a lack of follow-up
Completer
Protects team from errors of commission or
omission. Actively searches for aspects
needing more attention. Sense of urgency
Combines a sense of
concern with sense of
order & purposeSelf
control.
May be impatient & intolerant
to those of casual disposition
and habits

35. How do teams develop?

36. Hypothetical Performance curve
Aided
Time P e r f o r m a n c e
Unaided
?