Most organizations are teams. Many have cohesive ones. Go anywhere in a workplace, and you will see people in a room with a common word in their job description, who attend the same meetings, sit in the same vicinity, but act more like strangers than a team. Teamwork, the kind that adds up to more than the sum of parts, is surprisingly scarce. But it does not occur spontaneously.
Organizational behavior scholars and practitioners have long noted that the following traits are common to high-performing teams. These are not natural gifts and personal characteristics. They are learned behaviours, habits that teams can learn purposefully if they understand the significance of every one of them. These five behaviors of a cohesive team are interrelated. Skip one, and all others start to fall apart.
It’s all about trust. If not, then everything else falls apart, or it becomes a performance and not something that teams actually do.
Vulnerability-based trust is the most important type of trust in a team environment. This is more than assuming that your colleague will arrive on time for a meeting or that they will meet a deadline. It’s allowing yourself to say “I made a mistake,” “I need help,” or “I disagree with that decision” without fear of punishment, ridicule, or political repercussions.
Without such trust, teams expend a lot of energy on pretending. Individuals cover up their own shortcomings, ignore challenging dialogues, and shield their own image more than the team’s performance. Outwardly, they appear to be a well-oiled team, but they are really a dysfunctional one.
Trust comes first for leaders, and they must lead the way and model vulnerability before others will think to do so. It also needs to be consistent over time. Trust is not developed during one team retreat. It is shaped from the everyday little things that happen with honesty being treated with respect, but not judgment.
Wait, here’s a counterintuitive fact: The healthiest teams argue a lot and a lot of the time. They vigorously discuss and debate ideas, question their own assumptions, and question decisions they disagree with. They are different from dysfunctional groups in how they do it.
Conflict is not about people, it’s about ideas, facts, and plans. It’s passionate but not personal. Groups that don’t experience conflict at all are likely to use “false” consensus to make everyone feel good. During the meeting, everyone agrees, but then in the private discussions, everyone does something different or expresses frustration.
There are real costs to non-conflict. The poor choice of decisions is not challenged. Groupthink sets in. Individuals feel disinterested when they feel their sincere opinion is not being received. Ironically, those teams that run from conflict end up having much more conflict than teams that run towards conflict; the undiscussed issues just simmer under the surface.
It’s not about ‘disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing’ but about ensuring that there is a place to listen to differing points of view before a decision is made. If they know that their dissent will be taken seriously rather than silently ignored, then they are more willing to buy into the results, even if it’s not their decision.
Commitment does not require consensus. One of the key points that a team needs to get their heads around.
Team members know that within a cohesive team, they might not always achieve their preferred outcome. They may have strong opinions about a specific direction and fight to make their case. They could lose that battle. However, once a decision has been reached, they are prepared to go the full nine yards, not because they’re being forced to but because they have a real voice in the decision-making and they believe the decision was thoughtfully made.
Groups that avoid productive conflict have a great deal of trouble committing themselves. If concerns are not addressed, they leave meetings with ‘doubt’ to be addressed. They hedge their support, put one foot on each side, and rethink things that were supposed to be done in a decisive way. Progress slows to a halt.
Clarity is another element of commitment. Ambiguous decisions cannot be acted on because one party or the other leaves with a different interpretation of the agreement. In cohesive teams, people routinely discuss exactly what they agreed upon, and who will be taking what actions next.
Most teams fall on their faces when it comes to accountability. It can be a challenge to let a peer know that his/her work is not up to standard or that their actions are impacting the group. Most people would prefer not to say anything at all and would rather risk hurting a relationship.
However, when team members are not held responsible for each other, the responsibility is borne by the leader alone, and this is not sustainable or healthy. It also conveys a subtle message to all onlookers: Standards are not required, and performance deficits will be overlooked.
Accountability is a peer-to-peer practice in cohesive teams. It doesn’t involve blame or punishment. It’s being passionate about goals together and about one another to voice what’s not working. When done respectfully and consistently, this kind of peer accountability sets the standard high for all. It also fosters more trust as they understand that the standards are not applied differently across the team.
This means to differentiate the behavior from the person. It’s always about outcomes, actions, and team contribution; not about personality or drive.
The very last behavior is a simple one, but it’s deceivingly simple: the team is interested in the win as a whole, not the win as an individual.
A person’s achievement is not a bad thing. Healthy ambition, healthy personal development, and healthy personal pride. When individual success is more important than team results, individuals prioritize maximizing their visibility, departmental performance, or political positioning over what the team is trying to achieve.
Teams are cohesive and enjoy team success. They are generous in giving credit. When things go wrong, they ask “what can we do differently?” instead of “who is to blame?”. They do not want to keep their own part of the work while neglecting the rest.
Leaders promote this behaviour through making the outcome of the team a key determinant of success and through demonstrating the level of generosity and team ownership that they expect to see.
Read More – Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team: Building the Foundation for Extraordinary Results
The five behaviours are not independent. Just follow the sequence one after the other. Without trust, a team will not engage in conflict. A team with no conflict has difficulty committing. If the engagement is not committed, then there is no accountability. But when there is no accountability, results are poor.
Fortunately, these are behaviours and not personality traits. A team that is ready to look at itself with an open mind and make a commitment to enhancing its practices can change its dynamics. It’s not fast, and it’s not easy. But in the end, the rewards – a team that performs as greater than the sum of its parts are worth each tough conversation they have.
Effective teams don’t get cohesion as a bonus. This is the bedrock of all the other.
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