What Makes a Team Successful
- Forward Thinking
- Jul 15, 2020
- 3 min read
Since entering Emory University's Goizueta Business School, an idea that has constantly been drilled into both 1) the curriculum and 2) my mind is the importance of being able to work on teams. Almost every course, even ones in accounting or finance, had some component of working on teams. This was because the college felt that learning to work on a team is an extremely important skill to have; and the administration was and is and will be correct.
However, my experiences with team projects have ranged widely: I had worked on teams that synched up and truly worked together as a unit, but I also had been on teams that did not collaborate and where everyone seemed to look out for him or herself. This got me interested, as a result, in understanding what makes a team successful: and, according to Google, it is the norms.
"As they struggled to figure out what made a team successful, Rozovsky and her colleagues kept coming across research by psychologists and sociologists that focused on what are known as 'group norms' - the traditions, behavioral standards, and unwritten rules that govern how teams function when they gather... Norms can be unspoken or openly acknowledged, but their influence is often profound."
And the following norms below are considered to be the most important to an effective team by the US Marine Corps.
Dependability:
This is a norm that makes complete sense. It is the ability to get things done on time and get things done consistent to expectations. In my experiences with college team projects, there was great variability in people's abilities to be dependable. I know people who I could trust on to get work done, and I appreciated them and gave them the support needed to succeed on team projects. But I also knew people who were not, and I did not reach out to them, did not trust them, and did not give them great feedback. See the importance of dependability in the video.
Structure and Clarity:
In any organization, from corporate to governmental, goals and clear-cut roles are important. Goals define where a team wants to be in the future, and roles define who is going to do what to ensure the goals are met. In college projects, I were necessary to move a team forward. The goal, during college, was pretty clear: to create a solution that gets the highest grade possible. The roles, as a result, were then split based on interest or experience. And both combined have ultimately allowed me to do well on school projects.
Meaning:
This is when the work has significance to the members. This is related to motivation, not only starting off but also pushing through to the end. See a video here on the importance of meaning:
Impact:
This is about the work that is being done having both purpose and a positive impact. In my experiences with college team experiences, this has been about being able to have a positive impact on either a client's top-line or operational performance. For instance, the positive impact of a project, which I worked on my junior year, would lead to increasing sales for the client.
Psychological Safety:
This is an environment where individuals can ask questions or voice opinions without both fear and risk of judgement. This characteristic is probably, in my opinion, the most difficult to create within a group. To be honest, I have not always been the best at this either. Learn how to create an environment, like this, below:
Overall, these characteristics are considered most important in creating an effective team, not only according to Google but according to other reports (Such as from Forbes) as well. So I guess the question is: how can managers create these types of groups with all these characteristics? As a management consulting analyst about 1 year out of college, I am not extremely clear on how to do so. But, as I continue through my career and 1) work on teams and 2) slowly move into management positions, I will utilize the characteristics to create effective teams and will update this post with my experiences in the future.
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