High performing teams, and the desire for them, are common occurrences in corporations. While teams and groups are commonly used as synonyms, they are different from each other. Oxford Dictionary defines a team as a group of people who work together at a particular job while a group is defined as a number of people or things that are together in the same place. As common as teams are, it should come as no surprise that some work better than others. Dysfunction in teams is all around. Behnam Tabrizi found that nearly 75% of cross-functional teams were dysfunctional. In his book, The Five Dysfunctions of A Team, Patrick Lencioni describes the most common dysfunctions in a team. These dysfunctions are as follows:

1. Absence of trust
2. Fear of conflict
3. Lack of commitment
4. Avoidance of accountability
5. Inattention to results

Lencioni argues that trust is foundational for teams. Without the basis of trust, dysfunctions will not be able to be resolved. Research from the Harvard Business Review found that people who work in places with high trust levels reported 106% more energy at work, 76% more engagement, 74% less stress, 40% less burnout, 50% higher productivity and 29% more satisfaction with their lives compared to those at a low trust workplace. Low trust workplaces often have to deal with, and navigate, office politics. Resolving the absence of trust dysfunction is crucial to resolving the later dysfunctions. Each dysfunction is based on the resolution of the previous dysfunction and cannot be mastered out of order. For example, if your team shows lack of commitment, it is likely that there is also a fear of conflict from some, if not all of your team members. When a member doesn’t feel as though they can disagree and create conflict with a coworker, they will not be fully committed to the solution proposed because they were never able to weigh in their own opinions. 

So how can you tell which dysfunction your team is stuck at and what can you do to resolve it? Here are some examples for each level: 

Dysfunction #1 – Absence of Trust

Teams with absence of trust may:

• Not own up to mistakes made
• Not admit that they can’t do something to hide their weaknesses from other team members
• Be unwilling to go out of the realm of their job descriptions to help a coworker

What can you do to address it?

• Have team members be vulnerable and tell the team something about themselves then discuss as a team what you learned. This increases vulnerability between the team and makes it easier to continue to be vulnerable. 
• Focus on everyone’s strengths. Doing this will help team members gain confidence in themselves and their work. This could inspire coworkers to appreciate the strengths and talents of their peers

Addressing lack of trust can:

• Lead to quicker reaction to issues, now that mistakes can be admitted more openly
• Prevent mistakes before they happen if coworkers feel comfortable to ask for assistance on projects

Dysfunction #2 – Fear of Conflict

Teams that fear conflict may:

• Not listen to understand during a disagreement, rather listen to win the disagreement and argue their point.
• Not converse with a coworker they disagree with and speak behind their backs.
• Let leaders dominate a meeting and leave the meeting 
• Display artificial harmony in which there is no conflict at all

What can you do to address it?

• Suggest an obviously bad idea and see if anyone in your team argues. If they don’t, there is a blatant fear of conflict.
• Show your team having opposing views can be productive and helpful
• Have a “devil’s advocate” portion of the meeting in which an opposing view can be argued.
• Thank team members for bringing up different points of view that may conflict with the consensus. 

Addressing fear of conflict can:

• Lead to quicker resolution of issues
• A lessened about of office politics
• Allow more diverse views and lead to innovation

Dysfunction #3 – Lack of Commitment

Teams that have a lack of commitment: 

• Team members don’t commit to an idea because it’s not their idea
• Have the false impression everyone is on the same page after leaving a meeting.
• Have members that don’t contribute to the discussion because their ideas differ.

What can you do to address it?

• Ask members if they have anything to add, any other ideas or (especially) differing opinions on the topic at hand.
• Encourage team members to ask questions for clarification.
• Set a team goal and have objectives for everyone to commit to

Addressing lack of commitment can:

• Help the team understand why a goal is being addressed in a certain way 
• Feel as though members are committed to an idea after being heard out about their own
• Show the main goal of the team and what is expected of team members

Dysfunction #4 – Avoidance of Accountability

Teams that have an avoidance of accountability: 

• Peers who won’t hold each other accountable on performance and behavioral aspects
• Leave leaders with the sole responsibility of discipline 
• Are not performing to the best of their ability

What can you do to address it?

• Start at the leadership level and call members out on their behavioral mistakes and let this trickle down to peer level.
• Regularly review team members’ individual performance and remind the team of the high standards expected.
• Have the team come together and share one thing for each member that could be improved to promote accountability between team members.

Addressing avoidance of accountability can:

• Lead to quicker and higher quality performance from the whole team
• Urge poor performers to improve performance
• Take some of the strain off of leaders

Dysfunction #5 – Inattention to Results

Teams that have an Inattention to Results:

• Don’t focus on the team as a whole when working on projects
• Attain personal goals more often than team goals. 
• Fail to develop as a team 

What can you do to address it?

• Have regular meetings to review key metrics
• Keep a scoreboard of some type that keeps the team updated on tasks that have been completed.

Addressing inattention to results can:

• Increase the amount of team goals hit
• Increase team work and minimize individualism in these settings
• Increase development as a team

All of these dysfunctions take time and effort to resolve. You have to start at the beginning of the five dysfunctions and work your way through them all to create a truly functional team. If you find that your team is exhibiting dysfunctions of one stage and they can’t seem to be overcome, try taking a step back and looking at the dysfunction level before it. You may find that your team’s problem lies there. Sometimes moving backwards is the only way to avoid an obstacle (or dysfunction) and move forward. Use these tips and ideas to work on creating the trusting, highly functioning team that businesses should aim for and see if the research done by the Harvard Business Review rings true for you.

By: Chloe Williams

The current definition of psychological safety was coined in 1999 by Amy Edmondson and is defined as, “the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.”

During her study in 1999, Edmundson recorded the number and rate of mistakes made by medical teams. In doing this, she found that the teams who made more mistakes had better performance scores, which was not the result she was expecting. After further digging, Edmondson found that the teams with more mistakes were actually reporting the mistakes while the other teams were hiding their mistakes. As a result, the teams with a culture in which they could openly admit to mistakes were the ones who ended up with better outcomes. There have been many studies since 1999 confirming this phenomenon. Some recent research includes a study from Yuanqin Ge in 2020 where he found that when employees felt there was a sense of psychological safety in their places of employment they could speak more openly and often, provide their opinions to help decision making in teams, and feel comfortable enough with their managers to share ideas. The underlying finding to many of these studies is the necessity of trust. Can your employees trust that there won’t be severe consequences for admitting mistakes? Can they openly ask questions without fear of ridicule or being looked down upon? Here are a few things to look for if you are wondering if your workplace is psychologically safe.

The Predictive Index lists 9 different signs or symptoms that may indicate low psychological safety in your organization:

1. Your employees don’t ask questions during meetings.
2. Your employees don’t feel as though they are able to admit to their mistakes, and occasionally blame these mistakes on others.
3. Your team adamantly avoids difficult or controversial conversations.
4. In meetings, leaders and executives seem to dominate discussions.
5. There is little to no feedback given or requested by employees.
6. Employees don’t go out of their way, and their job descriptions, to assist coworkers.
7. Employees don’t ask coworkers for help when it’s necessary.
8. There are few disagreements or differing opinions.
9. Employees only know each other professionally, not personally.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

If you’ve found, after reading that list, that some of these signs are prevalent in your place of work, it may be time for a change. But what can you do?  Timothy Clarke, a leader in the field of psychological safety, laid it out in four stages. He believes to have a truly psychologically safe environment, all of these types of safety need to be included and they are as follows: 

The Four Stages of Psychological Safety

1. Inclusion Safety – Inclusion safety involves making sure your employers feel like they belong and are safe with the team. This includes making employees feel as though that can be their most authentic selves and will be accepted for that.
2. Learner Safety – This stage includes making sure the workplace is an environment where questions are not frowned upon. Make the workplace a space where people feel they can ask questions to learn, give and receive feedback and even make small mistakes without fear of repercussions
3. Contributor Safety – In this stage, employees should be able to feel as though they can share their ideas without the fear of being ridiculed or embarrassed. This stage can be the most difficult stage as bringing your own ideas in front of peers can be a very vulnerable position to be in. 
4. Challenger Safety – In the final stage, employees should feel as though they can question or challenge coworkers’ (include authorities’) ideas and offer suggestions to plans or ways of working through a project.  

Now how do we apply this? Here are a few examples of ways to increase employees’ feelings of psychological safety.

Don’t Worry about Being the “Perfect” Team

Don’t put all the emphasis on being the “perfect” team where no mistakes are made and everything is always right. It’s understandable to strive for that as a leader, but it’s not exactly feasible. All of your employees are human and humans cannot be perfect all the time, as much as we may want to be. Studies show that a perfectionist boss has negative effects on motivation, effort, and willingness to work. Let go of your perfectionism a little and allow your employees to make mistakes and learn from them. Try to avoid anger in blaming the person and instead look for ways to rectify the situation. In doing so, you not only show your employees that you trust them enough to learn from this and not do it again but also show your team that coming to you with a mistake will not result in being berated by authority. 

Encourage All Voices

Try to create a space where everyone can say what they believe needs to be included in a discussion. Remind your team that their input is appreciated and cherished. Attempt to hear people out when they are sharing, instead of dismissing them with answers like “yes, but…” or “You don’t know enough context to understand this situation.” Instead, ask them questions and invite participation in a non threatening way such as “What point of view could we be missing?” and be willing to accept criticisms. It may help to even set up meetings with a portion for playing the devil’s advocate and addressing those concerns as a group. Making sure that your employees feel as though they are being heard can encourage them to continue speaking up and bringing unique ideas and solutions to the table. 

Focus on Building a Team Culture

Build a team where no one is afraid to ask each other for help. Make it the norm that coworkers encourage each other and have that begin with you. Try to schedule times for your team to spend time together and focus on feedback and appreciation. Make sure you let your team know you appreciate them and are supporting their development personally and professionally. Do this as well as events like happy hours or fun team building activities so your employees can let loose a little. You are with these people 35+ hours a week. Knowing more about them and feeling safe around them will make working with them more enjoyable and productive. 

Psychological safety is not a new concept nor will it become something of the past. It is an important staple of a happy and productive workplace. Applying some of these methods may help you and your workplace on the journey to becoming a high performing, psychologically safe environment. 

By Chloe Williams

If you are a leader, you probably want to be your best self when it comes to creating high performing teams where people can feel empowered and like they belong, regardless of who they are. But, often the demanding focuses of the day job can suppress the best of intentions and actions in this space. Ever wondered how to fix this?

Let’s start with why diversity and inclusion seems to be the slowest, toughest and least integrated part of most businesses.

Close to twenty five years ago in 1996, Robin Ely and David Thomas wrote an article in HBR called “Making Differences Matter” —outlining three paradigms or approaches to diversity. This is possibly the best single piece of work for companies to follow as a “how to” for creating a learning culture for effectiveness in all areas, and specifically diversity. Ely and Thomas themselves know their “learning and effectiveness paradigm” was not implemented, to the detriment of the theme, and patiently explained again to the world what needs to be done in their latest paper in November 2020 called “Getting Serious about Diversity: Enough Already with the Business Case”.

The approach that they so accurately describe is to create a learning organization, meaning —in my opinion and in plain language— do the right work, not some pretend moral endeavor which is supposed to lie in ethics, which only some are compelled by, and only to some degree even with the best of intentions. Also, stop approaching representation as counting or hiring two of each type onto Noah’s Ark, thinking you have to be a giraffe to sell to a giraffe.

Lastly, they rightfully point out to stop the fallacies of women being magical unicorns who make share prices rise alone due to their presence on boards and instead: understand the work, make mistakes and learn, integrate the work. Rinse and repeat.

Adding to this, I would say stop categorically believing women’s networks or other ERGs (employee resource groups) can take the place of a systemic change rooted in behavioral change—which needs everyone to buy in and change. Having a strategic network is different from being part of an ERG that wants to do philanthropy or overlooks the fact that it has no real authority or power, as it’s not inside the hiring or promotion discussions for every person in the firm, where the changes that actually need to happen for real outcomes take place. Lobby for change, educate and gather —as ERG’s are good for some things— but know what they are there for, and align goals and resources accordingly!

Here are 3 areas to consider on your leadership journey to grow into the leader you want to be:

#1 Know yourself

Start with you and understanding your styles and preferences regarding work. You can recognize that others have a different style to you, once you see styles for what they are and how they show up in communications, learning and thinking. How do you uncover your style? The fastest way is to work with a good executive coach who specializes in executive and leadership development, as opposed to straight career coaching.

But, if you don’t have access to that type of resource, then ask yourself: what are your style preferences when it comes to communicating and being communicated with? Are you direct and candid or do you prefer to couch your requests in sentences where the audience can hear a gentler message, sometimes amongst other messages? We are all different and there are many free versions of Myers Briggs and other great tools free online to start, such as SCARF (the neuro-leadership institute) and Emotional Agility report by Dr. Susan David. The Learning Styles Inventory (LSI) is not expensive and comes with a full explanation of how you learn and apply knowledge. Curious souls on their development journey will benefit.

We are all somewhat beholden to how we were raised in our families and societies, unless we have taken the time to disrupt that – which you can start doing today by reading Immunity to Change. Doing this with a coach, or even by yourself, will help you to understand what is stopping you from reaching goals in any sense, including D&I ones.

# 2 Take time to know others

Some cultures find it quite impolite to just ask and other cultures find it weird not to say what’s on your mind. Some people might not comply with what you culturally assume they might, so rule number one is don’t assume anything.

Regardless of which schools of thought you buy into, or where you were brought up, or the body and skin you were born into, the psychology of inclusion and high performance are the same. Simply put, nobody likes to have grind or experience hindrances and barriers in doing their job and everyone wants psychological safety. We are exploring what it means to speak up safely.

Personality-based theory from behavioral and organizational psychologists would argue that all behavior is a function of your personality (traits, that are mostly intrinsic), times or reactive to the environment you are operating in. So, if you are a less-than-calm type, stress and certain work cultures will accentuate your excitability for example and can seem volatile. We know that certain people are judged more harshly for anger in the workplace than others, with Serena Williams punished for expressing something that Novak and all the men readily get endorsed for as part of an aggressive champion brand à la John McEnroe.

Instruments like the Hogan, which you may have done via a coach or a training session, will tell you these things. For inclusion, this plays out in many ways including, for some, a skepticism when people don’t walk the talk which makes diversity fatigue kick in, or else an overly diligent approach under stress to stick to outdated playbooks because historically things were done a certain way and status quo is a safer path.

Know where you are honestly at on your own journey. Take an audit of what life experiences you have had, what exposure and connection you have had to people different from yourself. Be compassionate about it, as it is a journey and about building trust and forgiveness for ourselves and others. In a recent Pew survey about cancel culture, the highest amount of respondents believed that context is the most important factor to understanding past behaviors. We can give people room to learn and adapt and grow, educate not punish.

Take the time to ask people who they are including. Straight white men are not a homogenous group either, just as all women or LGBTQ or Asian or African Americans/Black people are not the same. We are individuals, so the career advice here is to ask questions so that people can tell and show you who they really are, what their work styles are and where their interests lie as it pertains to projects. Just because you met one person of color once or a gay cousin, doesn’t mean you know them all, we are not a melded persona and the color of one’s skin or who they take to dinner doesn’t dictate their thinking or work preferences in any way, so just ask open questions to learn more. I am spelling it out here, but are brains are wired to evaluate and label and to override. We think we have seen the movie and how it ends before, when we haven’t.

#3 Know the cultural norms in your firm

How does work get done around here? Who gets rewarded and why (which behaviors) and what is not tolerated? It is key to understand the general ocean you are swimming in and the direction of the currents to truly leverage systems, programs and processes that can help you positively impact culture and succeed in being a change leader. Going from status quo to a new world of meritocracy is a change project. Who are your allies? And who can you form coalitions with to create a more positive inclusive culture where people get to thrive, not just survive?

Start today. The journey is worth it and a leadership one. Anything less demotivates talented people, discredits true high team performance and denies the reality of the world around you. Build trust.

by Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder, Evolved People (theglasshammer.com)

If you want to be a leader, work with Nicki Gilmour – Founder of theglasshammer.com , organizational and leadership coach this summer. Book here for a free exploratory session and then decide if you want to commit to a six session pack for $2,200 this year.

As 2023 marks the entry into what appears to be the fourth year of the Covid pandemic, the big question remains – has the world of work changed due to Covid forever? Or are we just in the messy middle with an eventual return to office building based situation for most people, most of the time?

Many CEO’s and leaders want employees back in the office building full-time and many are going into their buildings a few times per week or even close to five days per week. Other professionals never want to enter the building again and seemingly don’t have to, since 25% of Fortune 500 companies have settled on remote and hybrid work as a major way to attract talent and fuel top talent retention. Last year, PWC recognized that the office is here to stay but its role has changed.

Statistics sit at around 75% of workers, both nationally and internationally, not wanting to return to the office full-time. Adding fuel to the fire this week, there are studies that show productivity, after a counterintuitive spike in the pandemic, is now trending downwards. Economists and psychologists agree that high burnout rates, noted by social listening on sites like Glassdoor as well as traditional employees surveys, tell the story that the unsustainable pandemic period of overwork is behind it. The term “Quiet Quitting” has surfaced with a range of interpretation around what that is, exactly, from healthy boundary setting in order to hold lines between work and home in a remote world where it all blurred and work became an endless flow to doing the bare minimum as the ‘social contract’ has loosened for employees over the past three years.

Adding the fact that Generation Z have decided that airless cubicle dwelling is not for them, the future of work, or rather where work gets done, remains an exciting consideration for our times.

Is Hybrid a Blessing or a Curse?

Hybrid is only as good as its implementation. If done right, it offers great flexibility features so that people can do their best at work and even increase productivity while maintaining their mental health and running the aspects of their lives outside work successfully.

The challenge is that if a hybrid strategy is just jammed in, as if it was a complete return to work strategy without an evaluation of needs operationally and technically, and creation of a plan, then it offers the worst of flexible working. It really is all about the user experience. For example, commuting to a place to sit on a video conference inside your cubicle and see no one will negate one of the top reasons for going in- which is connection and social capital. This along with a lack of trust will seal the fate of a bad hybrid strategy outcome.

Equally, if companies do not create conditions purposefully for equitable merit rewards, regardless of where work is done, and instead fall into a schema of explicit or implicit proximity bias where you have to sit outside the boss’s door to get promoted, then hybrid will be an epic fail for productivity and engagement. Yet remote work will probably get the blame, not the lack of leadership and planning for this third way.

Leadership in a Time of Need

Many CEO’s have gotten over what Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, coins as “productivity paranoia” in their well-documented study on workplace of the future. The Microsoft CEO and Chairman goes on to state that companies must trust and empower their staff and understand more elements to make Hybrid work as a strategy. These organizational actions include re-recruiting your employees by surfacing the benefits of working there, such as internal job mobility over changing firms. 2 out of 3 employees surveyed in their 20,000 employee strong study say they would stay longer at their company if it were easier to change jobs internally and have career discussions.

Another aspect is learning and development – if employees feel that they aren’t learning, they are more likely to leave. This study points out that social capital and connection is something that people want to increase – with results pointing to desiring a flexible attitude from their managers about how and when they come in, so that they can have meaningful connections with “work friends” and hold important meetings, as opposed to having to see their boss in person or the senior leadership. Modeling is not a strong factor it seems.

Like any change initiative, there are a range of opinions that fall on a spectrum – addressing the “why” for both returning, hybrid and staying remote.

However, 73% of respondents in the Microsoft survey stated that the company’s “why” regarding return reasons didn’t resonate. Ultimately, there is legitimacy in all opinions as they are based on belief sets that are formed from starting constructs on the way it is and how we process experiences – even to the wide gamut of pandemics. No human mind is exactly alike when it comes to processing information and experiences that can feel very personal and universal at the same time.

That is where empathetic leadership comes into play as getting outside one’s own experiences and paradigms as a leader or a manager will be crucial to rise to the occasion of validating each employee’s own pandemic experience and circumstances. Recognizing that safety is still a concern and that people have trauma is key, as Poonam Sharma PhD writes in Fast Company, “Removing the real risks posed by COVID-19 has been the first step. You must then actively show people it is safe.”

Leadership is needed to navigate hybrid – with Great Place To Work stating the five prerequisite behaviors of trusting and listening to employees, as well as setting out clear structures and rules of the road for people to follow – and then empowering them while co-creating the future by design.

By Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO of theglasshammer.com

“We’re finally seeing the moment where women in leadership are voting with their feet,” said Alexis Krivkovich, a managing partner at McKinsey and cofounding report author.

In this “profound change,” women are indeed deciding to vote for the workplace they want with the most compelling power they will ever have: their presence, time and energy. Nothing short of this will shake up the workplace as we have known it. No matter the current representation, senior women are going beyond just getting access to upper levels and getting clearer on what they would like to experience and see happen there, and seeking that out. Could senior women’s participation from this place of self-empowerment catalyze greater change?

Women Aren’t Leaving, They’re Leaving For Better

“We are in the midst of a Great Breakup in corporate America. Women leaders are leaving their companies at the highest rate we’ve ever seen. They aren’t leaving the workforce entirely but are choosing to leave for companies with better career opportunities, flexibility, and a real commitment to DEI,” said Sheryl Sandberg, founder of Lean In, who leaned out of Facebook this past summer.

About 10.5% of female leaders (senior management and above) left their companies in 2021, compared to 9% of male leaders. On the average year, the spread is close with only a half-point gap.

Senior women leaders, after all the journey they have gained, aren’t walking out because they don’t think they have choices. They are walking about because they finally know they do – and they are taking their leadership assets with them in search of better opportunities. Having now recovered from pandemic job losses, women are more attuned to the relationship they want (and the ones will not tolerate) within the workplace. Women’s threshold to tolerate toxicity and inequity has been thinned, yet the broken rung is still there and the broken record of unequal outcomes plays wearingly on repeat. Women leaders are voting for the relationships they want to have with work.

Cultures That Work for Women’s Advancement

Women are as ambitious as men. Black women leaders (59%) and women of color (41%) are even more likely to want to be top executives (27%). But only 1 in 4 C-Suite leaders is a woman and only one in 20 is a woman of color. For every 100 men promoted from entry level to manager, just 87 women and 82 women of color are promoted.

And the signals that counter advancement come across in microaggressions or more overt dynamics: Female leaders are twice as likely as male counterparts to be mistaken for someone junior. 37% of women leaders said they’ve had a co-worker get credit for their idea, compared to 27% of men. Black female leaders are 1.5x more likely than women overall to have had their judgment or qualification questioned. Many women still feel undermined or passed over in the workplace.

Recognition for and Performance Consideration Of Essential Work 

While women are twice as likely to do be doing DEI-related and inclusion work that is helping with company performance, they are disproportionally carrying an increasingly ‘valued’ aspect of leadership that too often goes unrecognized and 40% say does not factor into the performance review. Meanwhile, women leaders are more burnt out (43%) than male counterparts (31%).

Flexible Work Cultures that Embody the Talk Around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Women want a better work culture. Only 1 in 10 women wants to work on-site most of the time, and women will move for flexibility. It’s not surprising considering that 52% of senior female leaders do most of the family housework and childcare compared to 13% of senior male leaders. Women who work the way they want to feel far happier, feel they have more equal opportunity to advance and are less likely to leave their job. Remote work also provides a reprieve from office-based exclusion and as McKinsey points out, that is a fundamental issue for organizations to address: “Companies cannot rely on remote and hybrid work as a solution; they need to invest in creating a truly inclusive culture.”

Over the past two years, being in a culture committed to well-being and DEI has become more important to women, and they are 1.5 more likely to have left a job because they wanted a more inclusive culture.

Better And More Supportive Managers 

Having a supportive manager is a top three criteria for women when thinking of joining or staying with an organization. Only about half of women say their manager encourages respectful behavior on their team regularly. Less than half say their manager shows interest in their career and helps them manage their workload. Black women and Latinas are particularly less likely to feel their manager shows interest in their career, checks in on their well-being or promotes inclusion on the team. They also experience less psychological safety. Women with various intersectional identities see gaps between the lip service to inclusion and what is actually happening in their experience.

Towards A Work Paradigm That Works For Women?

Female directors are becoming more sensitive to the conditions that don’t work for them, and it matters for them and future generations. Women under 30 are highly ambitious to become senior leaders, but 2/3 would be more interested if they saw senior women with a covetable work-life balance, an increasingly important career requirement for younger people.

The press isn’t focused on how bad this attrition of women leaders is for women. It’s focused on how bad the attrition of women leaders is for organizations. McKinsey has previously found that executives teams in the top quartile of gender diversity have a 25% greater likelihood of outperformance (above average profitability) than those in the bottom. LeanIn.Org and McKinsey have several recommendations for organizations following this recent report.

Stepping back, we are interested in what happens when women leaders take stock of their own value. All along, women have been trying to pave the way for those behind them by fighting to have a seat at the table. But increasingly, women are realizing that modeling leadership is not only about the rooms you are able to walk into, but also the rooms you are willing to walk away from. Because we need to walk towards creating organizational missions and cultures where all women (and people) are welcome and supported to lead and live their lives.

That is the power of esteeming the self. How would that mindset shift, at a collective level, give rise to more change in our workplace?

By Aimee Hansen

The authors of the paper, Manuel Sosa, Associate Professor of Technology and Operations Management at INSEAD, and Franck Marle, Associate Professor of Project Management, Laboratoire Génie Industriel, Ecole Centrale Paris write that managers should look at the quality of creative past interactions between team members. Simply knowing one another is not enough to produce good creative work – team members should have a track record of positive past creative interactions as well.

They write, “Creativity is strongly influenced by the way individuals are organized. One of the most difficult and important challenges when managing innovation is to identify the individuals within an organization who must work closely with each other to maximize the generation of creative ideas.”

By ensuring that individuals on a creative team are well suited to work with one another, managers can better hope to achieve a more productive creative teaCreative Team Familiarity

Sosa and Marl believe that organizations must take extra care when putting together creative teams – rather than creating or following through on strategic plans, creative teams work through a unique process “characterized by understanding and empathizing with target users, generating many and diverse potential solutions, and prototyping and testing preliminary solutions into a final outcome.”

Being familiar with one another may help these teams be more cooperative, they continue, but over the long term, it can create a type of groupthink that can stifle creativity. That’s why a more precise measure of famliarity is needed. They continue, “This paper addresses this limitation by introducing the notion of creative team familiarity: the degree to which team members have triggered the generation of creative ideas in one another during task-related interactions before joining the team.”

The authors present the notion of “creative team familiarity” – a qualitative measure that describes how well people have worked together in the past, not simply that they have worked together in the past.

They explain:

“We argue that it is the positive creativity-related experience associated with such prior interactions that makes team familiarity an important determinant of a supportive team atmosphere that is conducive to divergent thinking and experimentation… When some team members have experienced positive creative interactions prior to joining the team, such familiar team members are likely to act as creative catalysts again. In that sense, creative team familiarity is expected to foster team trust and motivation to generate and experiment with potentially creative ideas.”

By measuring communication patterns associated with creative team familiarity, managers can put together better teams.

Steps to Designing Productive Creative Teams

They set out to find if they could measure empirically the communicative interactions between creative team members, and to find out whether those measurements had any bearing on the success of creative teams. They studied teams of executive MBA students who were grouped by instructors to develop a product. Based on this exercise they developed – and tested their method – at a publicly traded German company.

First, managers should examine the formal and informal structure of their organization – how are people assigned to groups and who talks to whom outside of formal groups on task-related issues? Next, managers should measure interactions between people. “To do so, we suggest measuring, for each task-related interaction identified in step 1, the extent to which the recipient of such dyads has been able to generate potentially creative ideas based on his or her interactions with the source of such a dyad,” they write.

Third, they should identify candidates for creative teams based on these measurements. “This third step relies on the existence of the appropriate clustering algorithm that takes the creative interaction matrix and the needs of the NPD manager as core inputs and produces suggestions of possible creative teams with high levels of creative team familiarity,” they note.

Finally, they should examine the formal and informal links people have to other individuals not within the specific team – which can be useful for future team development.

Sosa and Marl believe their methodology will help create better creative teams. They explain:

“Our approach avoids forming teams based solely on traditional criteria: the diversity of the potential members’ backgrounds, how well members get along, and how long team members have been working together… Instead, we suggest considering the quality of the communication patterns of individuals in the organization as an important input to the process of assembling creative teams.”

Rather than just putting together people and expecting creativity to just happen, they have developed an empirically tested rubric for encouraging success based on communication success.