Mind Tools for Managers

Chapter 13Build a Great Team

In large companies today, a lot of work is done in teams. There are many types of teams – some have a clearly defined leader; others are deliberately nonhierarchical – but the key defining feature is some sort of collective responsibility for outcomes.

In theory, a team should be able to achieve more than a random group of individuals because team members have complementary knowledge and skills. But in reality, teams often end up making poor decisions. Studies of famous political misjudgments (for example, the Bay of Pigs fiasco) and business blunders (such as Time Warner buying America Online) have shown how easy it is for teams to make suboptimal decisions – for example, veering into groupthink or not giving enough voice to minority opinions.

Today, there is lots of research evidence for how to make teams effective. For example, a study at MIT highlighted such things as diversity of team members, equal contribution to discussion, and social skills. And a recent study at Google emphasized the importance of a supportive team environment for producing high-quality outcomes (also called psychological safety).

But even though we know how to build a great team in theory, the challenge of doing it in practice is still considerable. You need to develop real skill as a manager to get the best from your team, and the purpose of this chapter is to suggest some practical ways of building that skill.

The first challenge is to formally define the team's charter ...