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| No one doubts that high performance teams are
meant to be the engines that drive success in today’s business
environment. Though much has been written on team theory and
there is no scarcity of experiential team trainings contrived
to create “team bonding”, the pathway to team effectiveness
has remained elusive. Variables such as group pressure, social
and self-image, groupthink, management of diversity, motivation,
inclusiveness and empowerment have all been called critical
factors for the success or failure of a team. However to truly
transform a group of even highly competent individuals into
an ongoing high performance team cannot be accomplished either
by teaching team theory or by trying to engineer an emotion
based camaraderie. The weakness of most team building interventions
is that they do not cut deeply enough to the core of what keeps
intelligent people from effective cooperation in teams. As a
consequence, corporate teams are widely viewed as necessary
evils that support mediocrity. Evidence cited usually includes
meetings that waste time, cumbersome decision-making, and serious
breakdowns in trust and communication. The corporate cost of
these weaknesses, if not addressed, can be enormous. |
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