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Teams are
the workhorses of today’s businesses, but they’re
workhorses prone to many ailments, from open bickering and
sabotage to resolute conflict avoidance. And even teams
that generally plow ahead productively can be improved.
One method
more managers today are using is team coaching, says
Joseph Weintraub, codirector of the Coaching for
Leadership and Teamwork Program at Babson College in
Wellesley, Massachusetts. This article offers advice on
helping groups manage conflict.
A team in
crisis.
One believer in team coaching is Tom Posey, the senior
vice president of organizational capability at Wells’
Dairy, an ice-cream maker in
LeMars,
Iowa.
Industry
consolidation has posed challenges to the firm. By 2002,
its biggest retail customers said they would carry
products only from the largest manufacturers. Company
executives recognized that “to be viable long-term, we
needed to be one of the big three,” says Posey. Doing
that, realized CEO Gary Wells, required bringing in new
expertise. The company hired seven newcomers, including a
chief financial officer.
One of the
biggest challenges the executive team faced was conflict
avoidance. Family executives weren’t used to openly airing
conflicts. As a result, the executive team had difficulty
fully resolving issues.
Realizing
the team needed professional help, Posey brought in a
coach from the Center for Creative Leadership in
Greensboro,
North Carolina.
The coach helped team members learn to manage conflict,
leading to better decision-making. Today, sales are up and
team members challenge one another’s ideas.
Understand
group dynamics.
As Wells’ Dairy learned, team coaching emphasizes
communication, says Candice Frankovelgia, coaching
practice leader at the Center for Creative Leadership.
“The focus of team coaching is on interactions more than
individual development.”
Often
people don’t understand their colleagues’ reactions. Thus,
coaches typically give team members several assessments,
such as the Team Development Survey, a 360-degree-style
evaluation, and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. With
every member’s consent, the coach shares the findings with
the group, highlighting how each person’s natural approach
to conflict or change can both help and hinder the group
process.
After
everyone at Wells’ Dairy took several assessments, the
team coach facilitated a discussion about the day-to-day
impact of personality styles. The team learned that one
manager’s reaction to stress was to withdraw, while
another went on the attack. If the two dealt directly with
each other, the results could be disastrous.
With this
understanding came greater trust and cohesiveness. The
insights the team members gained through this exercise
allowed them to interact with one another more
empathetically and productively.
Establish
ground rules.
Setting
ground rules is especially important when team members
hail from different cultures. Michael Detlefsen, president
of Maple Leaf Foods, a Toronto-based food processing
company, went through such an effort with the company’s
global division.
Each team
member ran operations in a different country. Once per
quarter, they met and worked on issues that affected them
all. Because of different cultural norms, some team
members had trouble with their counterparts. For the
Western members, their Eastern colleagues were too
reticent in expressing their opinions. For the Eastern
members, the bluntness of their Western counterparts was
disrespectful.
To
facilitate communication, the group created a
communications template that invited people to describe
three things they liked about a proposal and three
weaknesses they saw. The idea behind the template was to
allow team members to point out potential flaws in a way
that would not be harsh.
One-on-one
coaching.
Team
coaching may need to be complemented by one-on-one
coaching, especially when abrasive personalities are
concerned. Babson’s Weintraub once worked with a team of
eight senior managers at a large manufacturing firm
charged with developing growth strategies. Two members
dominated the discussions, insulting people they disagreed
with and fighting with each other.
In
individual conversations, Weintraub asked each team
member: “What do you and each member of this team need to
(1) ‘start doing’ (2) ‘stop doing’ and (3) ‘continue
doing’?”
Although
Weintraub reviewed his findings with each member
individually, he spent more time with the problem
executives, highlighting how their behavior was holding
the team back. Weintraub even brought the company
president into the discussions. His message to the
executives: “Work together—or else.”
Do the
team’s problems originate outside?
Not every
problem evident in a team’s interactions originates within
the team. Organizational issues such as fierce competition
between two business units or misguided compensation and
rewards programs can play out in the microenvironment of a
team.
Weintraub
discovered during his discussions with the members of the
eight-person senior management team that the company’s
performance-management system had the unintended effect of
pitting departments against one another. “The two
executives were at each other’s throats partly because
they were rewarded for how much money they could make on
their own,” he says.
The
company decided to alter its system so that individuals
and business units were assessed on how well they
collaborated. By rewarding cooperation, the change
increased collaboration throughout the enterprise as a
whole. |
