Rebuilding your team in a post-COVID world ...
Now that we are thankfully beginning to refocus on a return to work post-COVID-19, along with all the many new realities, restrictions, redesigned work practices etc. that you must consider, you will of course also need to think of your people.
If you had developed a high performing team before the shutdown, you deserve a lot of credit for that, because it is never an easy goal to deliver. Naturally, things will not immediately return to ‘normal’ team-wise once you bring your people back together, because along with the many changes that have happened in recent months, your people too will have changed – and perhaps quite fundamentally in some ways. Undoubtedly, there will be an eagerness amongst most employees to get going again, but don’t assume that this eagerness will automatically translate into a return to previous levels of high performance. It will not. In many ways the teambuilding process starts again and understanding the evolution of teams - and the fluctuations in team performance - should be an important component of your post-COVID-19 action planning.
A useful way to introduce the concept of team states of effectiveness is to explore something called the Nut Island Effect.
Nut Island was a sewage treatment plant located near Boston. For over 30 years, the plant operated effectively, so much so that senior management in the City’s Water Authority paid little attention to it. After all, the team out there on the island was clearly a strong and effective one and they had proven time and time again that they could undertake their not-so-glamorous work in a diligent and safe manner, often finding innovative solutions to problems that arose. In short they were considered to be a dream team. Then, out of the blue the plant caused the worst environmental disaster in Boston’s history, releasing billions of gallons of raw sewage into the harbour.
How could things have gone so disastrously wrong? How could a team that had performed at such a high level, for so long, suddenly fail to that extent?
Paul F. Levy, a former Massachusetts state official, examined what had happened at the plant and in an article in the Harvard Business Review (1) he first coined the term, ‘The Nut Island Effect’, which describes “a destructive organisational dynamic that pits a homogeneous, deeply committed team against its disengaged senior managers.” What essentially happened at the plant – and this is a very quick summary – was as follows.
The team out on Nut Island had proved over time that it could do the job required to a high standard. This in turn led to senior management having great confidence in the team, allowing them a high degree of autonomy and essentially leaving them to their own devices. They were considered to be self-managing. All good stuff, you might assume. After all, it is never a good idea to micro-manage high performing individuals or teams. No it is not, but complacency isn’t smart either and that is essentially what happened here over a period of time. When the team at the plant asked for assistance, or requested additional resources from their senior managers, they were largely ignored because of the belief by management that the team at the plant could sort out whatever problems might arise, and why give extra resources to something that was already working well?
This ongoing lack of attention from senior levels caused widespread resentment amongst the team at the plant, they felt ignored and isolated and an us-against-the-world mentality set in. Funnily enough, this probably strengthened the bond between the team members but essentially meant that they closed off communication with their superiors; instead, they more or less devised their own way of running the plant, dealt with problems internally as they saw fit and ultimately began to hide potential difficulties from their superiors. Senior management, believing the team to be on track and on top of things, weren’t in any way concerned at the lack of interaction; in fact their focus was elsewhere and they assumed that all was rosy at the plant when it wasn’t.
Eventually, the massive disaster happened, catching everyone off guard. As Levy said “a team can easily lose sight of the big picture when it narrowly focuses on a demanding task. The task itself becomes the big picture, crowding other considerations out of the frame.” In this case, you could argue that the ‘task’ for the team at the plant became sustaining the us-against-the-world credo; they would show everybody they could do the job without any external support. Problems were buried and eventually it all came crashing down for everyone concerned.
Putting your team back together
Okay, that is a very quick snapshot of an extreme example of what can go wrong when high performing teams are taken for granted. However, you are probably wondering what on earth this has to do with a post-COVID-19 world? Quite a lot really, because:
1. It highlights the notion that team performance is never static and fluctuates over time. Indeed, teams themselves can fluctuate between different states of effectiveness.
2. More importantly, it emphasises the need for leaders to adjust their styles to reflect the current state of their team. Mis-matching leadership styles with team states of effectiveness will have detrimental impacts on performance.
As you begin to re-engage with your teams in the weeks and months ahead, it is useful to focus first on the states of effectiveness issue.
Teams and states of effectiveness
You may at some point have come across Tuckman’s stages of team development – “forming, storming, norming and performing” – as one model to describe how teams develop, or not. Briefly, the model suggests that, all going well, teams develop in fairly predictable stages from ‘forming’ (establishment phase) to ‘storming’ (when disagreements and personality clashes emerge) onto ‘norming’ (where things settle down and rules and norms are defined) and ideally to ‘performing’ (where the team is operating at full effectiveness). Whilst this is perhaps a useful framework for a project team, where all members come together at the one time and stay in place for the duration, it is not wholly appropriate in the workplace where teams are constantly changing as individuals join and leave.
Instead, another option is for you to consider team development in a different way and rather than view it from a progressive model perspective, it is perhaps more useful to consider fluctuating ‘states of team effectiveness’. After all, a team is judged on its ability to achieve the required outcomes, not necessarily on how long it has been in existence. Three states of team effectiveness can be defined as:
Ineffective State
Teams can at times be described as ineffective from the point of view of achieving outcomes. There are many reasons why this might arise. It may simply be due to the fact that many of the members are new, so it is taking the team as a whole some time to get up to speed. Alternatively, it could result from the fact that there has been a breakdown within the team of some kind, perhaps if high levels of conflict have emerged, or maybe the problem is with you, or a decision you have taken that your people resent. Equally, a new work practice might have been introduced and the team could be considered ineffective on that particular activity until they master the new approach. In reality, there are many reasons why a team is ineffective and no team can excel on all occasions.
When you bring your teams back into place post-COVID-19, they may enter an ineffective state simply because they are out of practice, or because the dynamic amongst the team members is different than before, at least in the short term.
Excelling State
At the opposite end of the scale, a team might be deemed excelling when it is working well as a unit and outcomes are being achieved which consistently surpass expectations. At times, all teams can go through a purple patch where everything just runs to perfection and of course the goal is to build your team back up to this level over time.
Effective State
In the middle, a team can be described as effective, which means it is generally working well and delivering on expectations. This is where most teams spend the greater proportion of their time. Getting your team back to an effective state again should be your number one priority once you are back up and running post COVID-19.
These three states are perhaps a more accurate portrayal of what happens in the real world, and rather than progress through definable stages, your employees as a team can, and do, actually shift back and forth through these three states of effectiveness. Viewing teams as having the capacity to fluctuate between different states of effectiveness can be very useful as it offers you some guidance as to what management style to apply at different stages, because you obviously need to treat an excelling team in a different way from an ineffective one.
Adapting your leadership style
Thinking about the state of effectiveness of your team post-COVID-19 and how you should interact with them will be an important component in getting up and running again, and subsequently in returning your business to the level of success it had previously enjoyed. Clearly, there will be a huge focus on redesigning your products and experiences to fit the new consumer mindset – and that will be vital work – but don’t underestimate the workload involved in rebuilding your team and leading them back to a high state of effectiveness. A useful conceptual framework to think about how your leadership style must adapt is shown below:
It will be important that your leadership style matches the current state of effectiveness of your team depending upon the balance between the levels of Direction and Control versus Involvement and Autonomy:
Steering:: A Steering style means you need to exercise high direction and control over your whole team, or on individuals within it. This does not mean being aggressive, that’s never a recommended approach. As an aside, any so-called leaders who are overtly aggressive are bullies, plain and simple – and usually they are weak individuals who try to mask their insecurity through some outward show of ‘toughness’. An aggressive management style has no place in the modern workplace. Okay, rant over.
Steering does mean you need to ‘steer’ your team in the direction you want them to go and post-COVID-19 there will be a lot of steering required just to help your people adjust to different work practices and regimes.
Engaging: Naturally, as the team moves to a more effective state, you should always reduce direction and control and increase involvement and autonomy because a failure to do so only creates employees who act like robots – they will not use their own initiative. The best leaders try to adopt the engaging style most of the time because they know by its very nature it helps to build the engagement levels of employees. Leaders who micro-manage are again examples of insecure and ineffective individuals.
Facilitating: Of course, the Holy Grail for any leader is to develop a high performing team and give them high levels of involvement and autonomy. When you have a team at this state you should step backwards most of the time and trust your people to make the right moves. You are always still in charge of course but you recognize that your team are ready to be essentially self-managing.
To close, along with the many things you must contend with once you reopen, it can be easy to overlook the importance to consciously rebuilding your team. Getting your team back into the groove will not just magically happen and it is important to recognise that many of your employees will have changed quite fundamentally through this crisis - and may return with a different world-view, or attitude to work, at least in the short term. How you manage that re-introduction to your business will therefore be vital.
Thanks for reading!
Source:
(1) Levy, “The Nut Island Effect: When Good Teams Go Wrong” (2001) March, Harvard Business Review, pp. 51–9.