Chapter 10 Review

Building a High-Performance Project Team


Framework for building high-performance teams

• Positive team environment creates personal ownership and strong interpersonal relationships built on trust and respect. Creating this environment has four elements:
• Ground rules that describe work patterns and values of the team
• Prime the pump with a starting list of ground rules that can be completed by the group to elicit greater ownership
• A team identity built on commitment to a shared goal
• Communicate the goals and scope of the project
• Repeat, repeat, repeat (we learn through repetition)
• Establish the project's organizational alignment
• Demonstrate management support for the project
• Build team relationships based on understanding strengths and diversity
• The ability to listen
• Employ active listening
• Mitigate natural obstacles to listening, including: physical distractions, preconceived ideas about what the speaker is saying, confusing speech styles, mental noise from other problems
• Suspend judgment
• Once you have clearly understood the speaker, you are free to disagree
• Teach your team to listen
• Look for effective listening behaviors within the team, point them out and emphasize how they contributed to a better decision
• Add active listening to ground rules
• Active Listening Tips (Erik Van Slyke, 1999)
• Focus yourself physically, eliminate environmental distrations
• Use nonverbal cues such as nodding, eye contact and leaning forward
• Provide feedback such as paraphrasing to ensure that you understand what the speaker intended
• As relevant follow-up questions
• Listen for the idea behind the facts and data
• Suspend judgment and remain neutral in your responses until you understand
• Don't try to solve the problem or give advice until it is requested
• Don't judge what you are hearing either positive or negative
• Don't shift the attention to yourself
• Be aware of resistance and defensiveness from the speaker
• The ability to effectively manage meetings
• Effective Meeting Guidelines
• Before the meeting
• Send a meeting invitation specifying: purpose, planned start and finish, location, who will attend
• Send an agenda listing purpose and major topics of discussion with timeframe by topic and topic leader; frame each topic with a specific goal for the discussion
• During the meeting
• Start on time and reward promptness
• Review the process you expect to follow. Set ground rules and define how decisions will be made.
• Have a recorder tack decisions and key points leading to decisions (these become the meeting minutes)
• Use the agenda to structure the meeting
• Drive topics to resolution
• Facilitate the group and control involvement to encourage fair participation
• After the meeting
• Send out meeting minutes
• Collaborative problem solving can be built by focusing on four team abilities:
• Problem solving skills tied to an accepted problem solving process
• Problem Analysis Steps
• Identify the problem
• Find the source of the problem
• Set solution requirements
• Generate possible alternative solutions to the problem
• Select an alternative
• Perform risk and cost-benefit analysis on the selected option
• Make a decision and action plan
• Understanding and applying multiple decision modes, these include:
• Consensus
• Guidelines for Building a Consensus Decison
• Follow a structure problem solving process
• Manage group participation
• Embrace conflict as a sing of creative thinking
• Build consensus by integrating multiple viewpoints
• Know how you'll make the final decision (if consensus fails)
• Voting
• Delegating
• Autocratic
• Conflict resolution skills
• View conflict as a source of positive creative energy and apply these guidelines:
• Prevent the conflict by attending to the components of a high-performance team
• Acknowledge the conflict and focus on the problem rather than the people
• Frame the conflict in reference to the project
• Focus on interests, not positions
• Trade places, attempt to describe the situation from the other person's perspective
• Separate identifying and selecting alternatives
• Agree on process, not outcome
• Continuous learning
• Project managers can speed up team learning by: (Amy Edmondson, October 2001)
• Being accessible
• Asking for input
• Recognizing the need to learn
• Serving as a model
• Enlisting full participation
• Eliminating fear
• Recognizing success
• Continuous learning habits include:
• Actively identify and question assumptions
• Strive for honesty over conformance
• Make learning a conscious goal on an ongoing basis
• Be disciplined in creativity
• Question the project's goal, scope, and plan
• Leadership includes the following responsibilities relative to creating a high-performance project team
• Attend to the health of the team and its members
• Maintain the strategic vision
• Attend to team members
• Exhibit and demand accountability
• Display personal energy that inspires the team through example
• Stages of team development  (Bruce Tuckman, 1965)
• Forming: members are polite and avoid conflict; leader should respond to group uncertainty by providing structure and clear direction
• Storming: power struggles emerge as team gains clarity about goals and roles; leader should respond to chaos with structure and clear direction, recognize early accomplishments, facilitate group discussion, demonstrate effective listening, ensure equitable participation
• Norming: team members begin to trust each other, rules have become internalized; leader should delegate increase authority to team, build momentum by reviewing and improving team processes
• Performing: personal relationships are strong enabling high trust, team handles challenges with ease and is highly productive; team practically manages itself, leader should focus on removing obstacles and improving team processes, share leadership more widely with team
• Adjourning: closure rituals enable team to say goodbye; leader should facilitate closure by setting up opportunities to review team's performance
• Team Process Assessments can be used to identify what's working and what can be improved
• Decide on a feedback tool
• Set a timetable
• Evaluate the tool
• Take concrete actions based on the feedback