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TEAMS AND TEAMWORK ARE NOT NEW. Peopleare inherently social by nature and havealways collaborated together in teams,tribes or families to achieve whatindividuals alone cannot. After all, youcouldn’t kill a woolly mammoth on yourown, could you? What is relatively new,however, is the formal recognition of thevalue of teams and the focus thatpsychologists and organisations have puton attempting to understand teams andharness their power.

A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Before the 1920s, when the WesternElectric Company began a series of studiesinto work groups at its Hawthorn plant inChicago, no systematic investigations hadbeen undertaken on the performance ofgroups. The Hawthorn studies, as theybecame known, prompted decades ofsubsequent research by psychologists intogroups and group work.1 Up until and

throughout the Second World War, fewlarge organisations used recognisedgroups or teams at work, preferring tofocus on narrowly defined specialist tasksas encouraged by the ‘scientificmanagement’ approach of FrederickTaylor, which became known as‘Taylorism’.2

From the 1950s, psychologists such asAbraham Maslow, Douglas McGregor,David McCelland and Frederick Herzberg,whose theories on people’s individualmotivation coincided with their interest in‘humanistic’ psychology, began to criticisethe command and control, authoritarianapproach of organisations and calledinstead for greater ‘job enrichment’. Oneof the first significant organisations tointroduce formal work groups into some oftheir manufacturing plants was Proctor &Gamble in the 1960s. General Motors firstused assembly teams in some of its USplants in the early 1970s. Notice that theterms ‘teams’ and ‘teamwork’, althoughcommon in sports, did not commonlybecome used within organisations untilthe 1970s.

In addition, as early as the 1950s socialpsychologists carried out studies which

revealed that within construction crews,those crews that selected members fromamong their circle of friends performedbetter than those construction crews thatlacked such a social network.3 In otherwords, when friends work together theyare more productive than teams of peoplewho are not friends.

THE CONCEPT OF GROUP DYNAMICS

We know that people are complex, madeup of diverse personality traits, desires,motivations, beliefs, values, and varyingdegrees of inter-personal and intra-personal awareness. This individualcomplexity, multiplied by the number ofpeople in a team, is one of the reasonswhy psychologists are still struggling toreally understand how teams work andhow to ‘fix them’ when they don’t work orhave become dysfunctional.

In one of the earliest theories of groupdynamics, Sigmund Freud suggested thatthe fundamental basis of group formationand cohesion was an individual’s sense ofidentification with the leader of thegroup.4 Taylor went on to explore theeffect that personal attachments

Fiona Beddoes-Jones, with Julia Miller, gives ahistorical perspective of groups in the

workplace, then looks at some concepts,models and dynamics.

Fiona Beddoes-Jones is a training and development consultant who specialises inhelping individuals and teams develop their cognitive and behavioural flexibility. Sheis the author of Thinking Styles, Think Smart and Cognitive Team Roles.Fiona can be contacted on +44 (0)1476 861010 or at fiona.bj@cognitivefitness.co.uk

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Julia Miller is director of Marketing for The Cognitive Fitness Consultancy.She can be contacted atjulia@cognitivefitness.co.uk

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T A B L E 1 :T H E T E N C H A R A C T E R I S T I C S O F E F F E C T I V E T E A M SThe most effective and successful teams the authors of this article have encountered have thefollowing characteristics.

1. They share certain beliefs and values and a common objective.2. They have a clearly defined goal, which is often time critical.3. They encourage everyone to work to their cognitive and behavioural strengths.4. They make some decisions by consensus, while others are made by the functional or nominal

leader.5. They enjoy themselves when they are working and are energised by being part of the team.6. They are visually aware; team members see that something needs to be done and just do it

without needing to be asked.7. They are mutually supportive and rely on each other for success. They listen to each other,

help each other out and coach each other whenever necessary.8. They like each other, trust each other and spend time together as friends.9. They share a sense of pride in the work they do and the organisation they are a part of.10. They celebrate achievement.

The group dynamics of teams arerarely stable for very long owing tochanges in team membership andchanging objectives

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within groups had on individualperformance, finding that performancewas positively correlated with attachment.In other words, people work harder withina team for leaders they like.

One of the most well-known and widelyused theories of group dynamics is BruceW Tuckman’s 1965 four-stage model offorming, storming, norming andperforming.5 According to Tuckman’s

model, when people come together theyfirst form some kind of a group. Then theyexplore the boundaries of the group,which often involves a degree of conflictto establish roles and hierarchies and toidentify people’s personalitycharacteristics, strengths and possiblyweaknesses. This is the storming stage.Once group members have establishedthe boundaries, they begin to feelcomfortable with each other and theirbehaviours become normalised. Only thencan the group really begin to perform andbecome a team that achieves itsobjectives. When the dynamics change thegroup will revert to the beginning of themodel and will experience forming andstorming again.

Some trainers, myself included, add afifth stage to Tuckman’s model – that ofmourning. This involves the changingdynamics within teams. When teamcomposition alters for whatever reason,including members joining or leaving theteam, the existing group mourns the lossof its previous group dynamics or groupmembers. Mourning also relates to theshift in dynamics that occur within a teamwhen it either achieves its objectives, orthe tasks or roles within the team change.This means that group dynamics are rarelystable for very long even if the peoplewithin a team do not change.

Group dynamics and the movementbetween stages are largely unconscious inall but the most self-aware individuals andteams. And even self-aware teams will stillexperience storming and mourning forexample, as knowledge does not precludebehaviour. In other words, the process ofgroup dynamics seems to be inevitableeven if the group is consciously aware of it.A group can progress through the stagesvery quickly, or it may become stuck at aparticular stage.

Although Tuckman’s model doesn’tspecify how long each stage takes, you willknow from your own experience of beingpart of a team and observing other teamsthat some teams never get past thestorming stage to reach performing.

Conversely, some teamsseem to move very quicklyfrom forming through toperforming. Why is that? Ifthe psychologists don’tknow, what otherinformation or evidence dowe have that may shed somelight on team performance?

THE CONCEPT OFGROUPTHINK

Groupthink was a conditionof teams first suggested byIrving Janis in 1972.6 Heidentified that where groupsare very goal and taskorientated, sometimesindividuals’ need forconsensus and cohesion isso high that storming doesnot occur and poor decisionmaking goes unchallenged.

To go some way towards explaining this,in a series of experiments designed toexplore group conformity and the effectsof social pressure on individual decisionmaking Solomon Asch7 identified that inthe face of clearly incorrect evidence 33per cent of participants displaced theirestimates to match the majorityconsensus. In contrast, 25 per cent ofparticipants remained independent andnever matched the (clearly incorrect)group decision. This suggests thatindividual personality characteristics orthinking style preferences may influencewhether someone is likely to conform orchallenge and links very neatly to theteam role theory explored below.

Both Meredith Belbin’s team role of theshaper and Beddoes-Jones’ challengerrole will tend to be fulfilled by people whoare most likely to storm and challenge,and who are least likely to conform oracquiesce. Both models recognise thedanger of groupthink and the necessity ofhaving a defined role within a team thatmay prevent it. The psychometric ThinkingStyles identifies two statistically correlated‘types’ of decision maker:

■ the ‘internally referenced mismatcher’who believes s/he is right and willstand his/her ground and argue aboutit, and

■ the ‘externally referenced matcher’ whotends to believe that others are correctand will conform with the majorityopinion.8

TEAM ROLE MODELS

The purpose and objectives of using anyteam roles model are to:

■ generate beneficial understanding■ encourage dialogue between team

members, and■ create new working practices if

appropriate.

There are four primary team role modelsused within organisations today:

■ Belbin’s Team Roles9

■ Margerison-McCann’s TeamManagement Wheel

■ Myers’ MTR-i10, and■ Beddoes-Jones’ Cognitive Team Roles.11

D E V E L O P I N G Y O U R P S Y C H O L O G I C A LK N O W L E D G E B A S EThere are predominantly three ways to develop your knowledge andunderstanding of psychology.

■ The first is to take a psychology degree, which many working trainersand consultants do through the Open University (based at Milton Keynesin the UK).

■ The second is to research psychology yourself using books, journals andweb-based psychology portals such as www.sosig.ac.uk orwww.regard.ac.uk

■ The third is to study specific psychology modules via the CharteredInstitute of Personnel and Development (CIPD – see www.cipd.co.uk).

The option you choose will largely depend on:

■ your personal objectives■ your approach to self-managed learning■ the time you have available, and■ the financial resources at your disposal.

If the dynamics and performance of teams are sohard to understand and predict, what do we

actually know about effective team performance?

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Although all four models have a differentbasis in psychological theory (thecomparisons of which are outside thescope of this article), they also have anumber of similarities. All have identifiedbetween eight and ten roles that existwithin a team structure. All four modelsalso suggest that people will havedifferent degrees of preference forfulfilling each role and may avoid someroles if they can. The need for behaviouraland situational flexibility is stressedparticularly by the MTR-i and CognitiveTeam Roles. Belbin suggests that the idealteam size is five or six people, whichmeans that some people will need to takeon complementary or dual roles within ateam. Beddoes-Jones deliberately doesn’tspecify an optimal team size, as CognitiveTeam Roles principles suggest that a highperforming team can number as few astwo people just so long as, between them,they fulfil all of the ten cognitive roles (seeTable 1, page 17). Research carried outusing Cognitive Team Roles suggests thatif a team numbers eight or more people, itwill tend to divide into smaller sub-teams.

SOCIO-COGNITIVE DYNAMICS OF TEAMS

As previously explored, the groupdynamics of teams are rarely stable forvery long owing to changes in teammembership and changing objectives. Thesocial dynamics of teams encompass:

■ friendships■ alliances and allegiances, and■ the ways in which team members get

on with each other as people.

The cognitive dynamics of a team aregenerated from the thinkingpreferences of its members and thecognitive roles they fulfil within theteam. Therefore, the socio-cognitivedynamics of a team are the ways inwhich people’s thinking stylepreferences influence their socialinteractions and behaviours with others.Only the Cognitive Team Roles modelspecifically identifies and explores thesocio-cognitive dynamics of teams.

ELEMENTS OF EFFECTIVE TEAMS

So if the dynamics and performance ofteams are so hard to understand andpredict, what do we actually know abouteffective team performance? Even if it isnot scientifically researched, there isplenty of anecdotal and experientialevidence in the workplace about teamsthat really do achieve exceptional results,often in the face of considerabledifficulties. Table 1 (page 17) details theten characteristics of effective teams.Some of these elements come frompsychological research studies; others arebased on our research and experience ofstudying teams using Cognitive TeamRoles.

CONCLUSION

Successful teams do exist and have alwaysexisted. As trainers it is our responsibilityto share what we know with the otherpeople in our organisations to make theirworking lives more comfortable, enjoyableand effective. It amazes me that, when theresearch evidence regarding friendshipsand attachments in teams has existedsince the 1950s, half a century later thereare still supervisers, managers and leaderswithin organisations who bully and belittletheir staff in the mistaken belief that theydon’t need to be liked to get the job done.

Not only are they abusive in their style,infringing other people’s human rights andlikely to end up before a tribunal, but also ifthey were liked by their staff they couldachieve so much more. So in this sense, vastresources are being unnecessarily lost andwasted in the UK simply because we arenot harnessing the power and productivityof teams. You can help to change that andyou can make a difference. Take a fewminutes to re-read this article, highlightingor underlining any relevant information thatis not included in your organisation’straining for teams or team leaders. Makesure that you include it in the future. ■

References1. Eric Sundstrom, et al, ‘Work groups: from the Hawthorn studies to work teams of the 1990s and

beyond’, Group Dynamics: Theory, Research and Practice, 2000, vol 4, no. 1, pp. 44–67.2. Frederick W Taylor, Scientific Management: Comprising Shop Management, the Principles of Scientific

Management, Testimony Before the Special House Committee, Harper and Row, 1911.3. R H Van Zelst, ‘Sociometrically selected work teams increase production’, Personnel Psychology, 1952,

5, pp. 175–185.4. Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (originally published in 1921), Bantam

Books, 1960.5. Bruce W Tuckman, ‘Developmental sequence in small groups’, Psychological Bulletin, 1965, vol 63,

no.6, pp. 384–399.6. Irving Janis, Victims of Groupthink, Houghton Mifflin, 1972; Irving Janis, Groupthink: Psychological

Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes, Houghton Mifflin, 1982.7. Solomon E Asch, ‘Effects of group pressure upon modification and distortion of judgements’ in

G E Swanson, T M Newcomb and E L Hartley (eds), Readings in Social Psychology, Holt, Rinehart andWinston, 1952.

8. Fiona Beddoes-Jones, Thinking Styles Facilitator Training Manual, The Cognitive Fitness Consultancy,1996.

9. R Meredith Belbin, Team Roles at Work, Butterworth Heinemann, 1993; R Meredith Belbin,Management Teams: Why They Succeed or Fail, Heinemann, 1981.

10. Steve Myers, ‘MTR-i: a new arena for team roles’, Training Journal, January 2002, pp. 24-28.11. Fiona Beddoes-Jones, ‘Belbin’s team roles and cognitive team roles: a study of “two perspectives”?’

www.ukhrd.co.uk

It is our responsibility to share what we know with others in our organisations tomake their working lives more comfortable, enjoyable and effective

Key learning points■ Group dynamics are in a constant state of flux even if team membership

remains stable and the process of group dynamics seems to be inevitable.■ Teams of friends are more productive than teams of people who are not

friends and, within a team, people will work harder for a leader they like.■ People’s individual complexity, multiplied by the number of people in a team

and aggregated together, is one reason why psychologists are still strugglingto really understand how teams work and how to ‘fix them’ when they don’twork or have become dysfunctional.

■ The purpose and objectives of using any team roles model are to generatebeneficial understanding, encourage dialogue and create new workingpractices if appropriate.

■ The socio-cognitive dynamics of a team are the ways in which people’sthinking preferences influence their social interactions and behaviours withothers.

Vast resources are being unnecessarily lost andwasted in the UK simply because we are notharnessing the power and productivity of teams

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