Sometimes when our teams are finished, they are finished. The task is done or the problem is solved, the team adjourns, people go back to their other responsibilities and life goes on. Except, of course, that there are going to be other teams and other tasks and it is likely that we are going to be asked to serve on those teams and accomplish new tasks. So what did we learn about being an effective team member or team leader? What did we learn about how our organization can improve the team process? If we’re not asking ourselves those questions, we are limiting our ability to make our next team assignments as effective as they might be.
Other teams continue on. Self-managed work teams and management teams usually don’t end. There is no “adjourning” stage; they just keep going and going and going. Or do they?
What happens when someone is promoted or transferred or leaves the organization? We get a new member or make do with the members who are left. The person who left took with him skills that the group depended on. Or she filled task or maintenance roles that helped the team function effectively and now she is gone. Someone else will have to fill those roles and do those tasks. The personality and culture of the group is unavoidably changed when someone leaves or someone else joins. Like it or not, we have a new team and we can’t go on acting as if nothing has changed. The whole process of forming, storming, norming, and performing has to start all over again.
Even if the composition of the team remains constant, things are still changing. The economic or competitive environment changes, the organizational structure outside the team changes, or the task changes. When something significant in our team’s operational context changes, the team has to respond. Additionally, a team whose membership stays the same is subject to stagnation. Barring too much external change, teams must learn how to “renew” themselves or risk becoming less and less effective as time passes.
As individuals, learning how to become more effective as team members and leaders requires a process of observation, reflection, and evaluation. It necessitates that we take time periodically to think about what has happened. What has gone well and why has it? What has not gone well and why? Were there conflicts? How were they handled? Could we have done better? Most importantly, we must develop the skill of asking ourselves what steps we can take to be more effective either in our current team or as a member of future teams.
The process is no different for ongoing teams. If teams are to grow and improve, they need to take regular and periodic “process breaks” during which they reflect on what has happened or is happening. By collectively asking what is going well and what isn’t, what we can do better, and what we can learn about being more effective in our teams, we ensure that our learning will be passed along to our organizations, as we serve on other teams elsewhere.
How often do we take this time to reflect and question each other and ourselves? Most of us will agree that we don’t do it often enough. That’s why the material in the Team Learning section is included. There are four components. The first emphasizes not only the tasks that teams are required to do but also the process they go through to achieve their team goals. The second deals with the team building process: activities and processes we can undertake to strengthen our teams. The third discusses how we can “renew” our ongoing teams. How can we continuously learn and improve the team process? Finally, even when we work together in teams, someone is usually charged with leading the effort. Even if we contend that every member is equally important to the achievement of our task and that our roles complementary roles, we have all been in situations where there are “too many chiefs.” Knowing how to be a good follower is as important to ensuring the success of a team as knowing how to lead the team. That’s why the concluding portion of this section deals with “followership."
