Let’s Give Teams a Chance

Photo by F. Bandini 2021 ©

About work groups, social loafing and how to give real teams a chance to bloom

​Let’s begin with a question: How many teams do we really belong to, compared to just being part of groups?…

Based on the many definitions that abound in the literature (and in particular those proposed by Steve W. J. Kozlowski, Professor of Organizational Psychology at the University of South Florida and Caroline Aubé, Director, Research and Knowledge Transfer at HEC Montreal), we consider a team to be a formal group of at least two interdependent individuals who consider themselves jointly responsible for carrying out one or more tasks defined by the organization. With differentiated roles, but belonging to the same organization — itself having boundaries and links with other organizations — these individuals collaborate in a face-to-face or virtual relationship to accomplish together interdependent tasks with interdependent results.

In order to foster the emergence of a team, it is therefore useful to succeed in bringing together — beyond the various job descriptions — individuals with necessarily diverse personalities, experiences, beliefs, convictions, values, perceptions, attitudes, styles, underlying motivational forces and expectations, into an integrated and efficient work unit.
Success will be achieved through all the contributions, which themselves still depend on other contributions that we are not even aware of. And it is the overall success that will give us the opportunity to continue to participate in something larger than ourselves, to continue to contribute with our respective talents to future successes.

Simple, but easier said than done.

Indeed, believing that it is enough to bring together natural gifts, hard work and passion to generate professional excellence is like believing that to create an exceptional mechanical watch, all you have to do is combine gold, a set of wheels and pinions.

Individual and organizational factors

Individual factors have for sure a direct impact on the quality of the team.
Some of us work to live, others live to work, some of us are satisfied with our lives, others deeply dissatisfied. We each have a very specific outlook toward the world, a unique “inner theatre” — the core themes that affect our personality and influence what we value as well as our behaviour — as often underlined by Manfred Kets de Vies, the Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership Development and Organizational Change at INSEAD.
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For example, overdeveloped narcissistic traits (expressing a tendency to exaggerate one’s own talents and accomplishments while downplaying those of others), grandiose and vague personal ambitions, even if present in only one team member, or more commonly affects related to personal frustrations and repressed anger, such as episodic bursts of jealousy (associated with thoughts and feelings of insecurity and fear), tend to quickly promote counterproductive aggressive behaviour within a team.

A superior’s disinterest in human relations or his lack of trust in subordinates also easily encourages dysfunctional behaviour that is destructive to the team.

When individual factors encounter organizational factors, such as incentive systems, team resources, administrative support, as well as communication and coordination mechanisms, either constructive or dysfunctional behaviours will be catalyzed and maintained.

​If we’re not careful enough, while we’re busy doing other things, a bad work climate could inadvertently, slowly and silently set in. A sense of insecurity and shame, of organizational injustice and a lack of trust could become prevalent in the organization. Paranoia tendencies would then be aroused and the lack of tolerance for the differences of others would become more pronounced. If dissenting views also begin to be perceived as threats and indirectly but violently punished, the fear to speak up would naturally expand and spread in the organization as much as whispered complaints and gossips. Eventually, on a Monday morning, at a virtual town hall meeting, employees would be asked to “stop moaning”, to cease “playing the victim card” and to work harder.

Reluctance to cooperate and to contribute to the team’s success would be on the rise. It would become a vicious circle. More and more, people would begin to question the added value of cooperation for themselves and dread that they would lose out on cooperation: “Will my contribution to the project be recognized during my yearly individual performance appraisal?”
In such situations, teams would gradually untie themselves and only the organizational chart would remind us of their official existence.

Social loafing

In addition to individual and organizational factors, let’s consider the social dynamics that emerge when individuals join a group.
Joining a group is indeed not a trivial process in itself; our identities are tested and we have to deal with issues of diversity and inclusion (“Will I be accepted the way I am?”), protection (“Will I be safe in this group?”) and belonging (“Will I really feel that I am a member of this group?”).

​Unfortunately, it appears that group work tends to promote some “social laziness” and causes individuals to work less hard and to make fewer decisions than if they worked alone…

At the end of the 19th century, Maximilien Ringelmann, a young rural engineering teacher, conducted experiments on the efficiency of humans in working in the fields. In one of his experiments, the agricultural engineer asked the students to pull with all their might on a rope connected to a measuring device, first individually and then in groups. The results were conclusive. When they pulled together, the guinea pigs individually put less heart into their work: with two of them, the dynamometer recorded 7% less work; with eight, 51% wastage. As soon as two or more “engines” were coupled together, the work done by each of them decreased due to the lack of simultaneity of their efforts. And, as Ringelmann added, due to a lack of motivation.

In the 1970s, psychologists confirmed these results by naming the Ringelmann effect with a pejorative connotation: “social loafing”. The phenomenon of a person exerting less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when working alone is then associated with a kind of “pathology” with negative consequences for institutions and societies. Whether physical or intellectual, collective work would demotivate people because each person would not perceive his or her individual contribution; it would favour slackers and cause a general softening, with people reducing their personal investment in the group endeavor, especially when they perceive that they are doing more than their fair share of the group’s work (the famous “sucker effect”).

As suggested by the journalist Pierre Rimbert in a recent article of Le Monde diplomatique (February 2021), social loafing expresses more fundamentally a paradox of societies that, on the one hand, condemn the lack of involvement in collective work and, on the other, consolidate a world based on individual success. To reinforce this hypothesis, let’s mention that it seems that people from collectivist cultures show more motivation when they work in groups than those of individualistic cultures, and that the acceptance of power inequalities and hierarchies would lead to less individual involvement in collective tasks. In short, the framework of salaried work would seem to restrict joint activity… Are we deploring the effects whose causes we cherish, wonders Pierre Rimbert?

To find some balance between Me and Us

We enter groups as much as groups enter us and in order to conform we leave out certain elements of our individuality. Sometimes the pressure of the group is such that we feel a little bit confused, and sometimes even as if we are “losing ourselves”, as Pierre Turquet, an English psychoanalyst at the Tavistock Clinic with a special interest in group relations, famously described in his writings (the threats to identity in groups, the struggle to self-actualize and to keep oneself in the group).

If the fear to “lose ourselves” is high, and to protect ourselves, we may begin to nervously “walk around in circles”, and suddenly vaguely feel that we’re all trapped and stuck in a senseless labyrinth, trusting blindly that some new IT tool will be The Answer that will deliver us from this semi-chaos. More commonly, to reassure ourselves, we insist on the need to rush into tasks, to strike quick deals and to focus on “quick wins”. And it goes without saying that we will deal with “the soft skills” (whatever that means) later.

Avoiding to face our discomfort, we are at risk to lose sight of the primary task of the team, to switch from collaborative thinking to competitive thinking and eventually let ourselves be led by greed, as a basic defense against anxiety.

​We could feel a weird sensation as if we were in the middle of the jungle, and suddenly even seem to hear someone quoting a Harry Bliss’ cartoon from The New Yorker: “Okay, I admit we’re lost, but the important thing is to stay focused on whose fault it is.” It would feel funny. There wouldn’t even be a slight smile on any face.

The anxiety generated may cause group members to regress — just for a little while or for a longer period of time — to patterns of functioning that are not necessarily adequate to tackle the actual tasks of the group, and without us being even aware of it. When this happens, we may begin to perceive some sense of “pseudo-vitality”, an illusionary “as if” feeling of purposefulness.

When entering and participating to a group’s life, whatever group it is, we always face the challenge to find and maintain a good-enough shifting balance between individual needs and adherence and loyalty to the group, to feel alive and to function well with others; feeling both different from and together with others, feeling supported by the group, forgetting ourselves for the benefit of the group and not getting lost. Sometimes it is the individual before the group and sometimes it is the opposite, the group first and the individual second, and then it becomes tacitly accepted that individual opinions are not expressed as much and that there are subjects that are discussed within the group and others that are not.

​Each individual moves in a personal and fluid way between these different states, sometimes trying to make sense of the struggling experience as well as possible with the words of the corporate speak: if “diversity” is a fact, “inclusion” is more of a behavior and “belonging” — the new buzz term, which has a warmer and more approachable feel to it than “inclusion” — refers to the emotional outcome, fueled by a desire to have a sense of purpose at work and a sense of community, according to Christianne Garofalo, Americas Diversity & Inclusion Leader at Heidrick & Struggles (Washington Post, December 30th, 2019).

… And with all that, we haven’t said anything about the impact on teams of economical, societal and environmental factors, such as booming deflation and inflation periods, a pandemic, the dark and rainy winter nights and the trees blooming at the beginning of spring, or simply a power failure.

Well…

Even in the darkest situations, when teams may feel like foggy battlegrounds on the Planet of the Apes, at some point, hopefully, alienation becomes unbearable and it’s not possible to avoid confronting reality anymore. Greater solidarity eventually becomes a real priority, we realize that we have to stop using scapegoats and that systemic problems can’t be addressed only individually. We start to tackle issues that we have always been quite aware of but have preferred to ignore until now, and we accept more consciously and willingly the reality of living in an interconnected world.
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Even if we still fantasize about quick fixes, we also realize that most changes are often incremental. When a new way of looking at things is slowly internalized, a change in attitude begins to occur. We eventually cease to blind our eyes and stop relying on panaceas to suppress anectodical symptoms.

With the nineteenth century Victorian realist poet Thomas Hardy (wrongly considered a pessimist), we declare that if a way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst.

To dare to be aware of the facts of the universe in which we are existing calls for courage, claimed Wilfred R. Bion, who served in France during the First World War as a tank commander, considered a pioneer in group dynamics, concerned with the development of a capacity for thought.

We become more aware that — to paraphrase the famous Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience) — the best moments often occur when we challenge ourselves to expand and stretch to our limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is indeed something that we make happen.

We challenge our own leadership. We face our chance to finally do something about some of our dysfunctional behaviours as leaders and followers.
To find enough courage, we may possibly be inspired by the words of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami: when we come out of the storm, we won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what the storm is all about.

Coming out of wilderness spaces, whether physical or metaphorical, the new skills and unveilings of identity we have begun to acquire will prepare us for stepping forward into a new flourishing, as Enuma Okoro, a Nigerian-American author whose work focuses on how culture, art and narratives shape individual and collective perceptions and identities, stated with assertiveness in a recent FT article.

And we notice that we already feel much better, as if the fog was lifting.

So what do we do now? How do we begin?

We believe that what ultimately matters in a team, if we wish to foster synergistic behaviours focused on task and ensure involvement in mutual trust, is to recognize the importance of who we are, of what we can bring to the relationship, here and now, with humility and realism, respecting the other for who he or she is in his or her difference, facing our own hopes, fears and shortcomings.

As human beings, how we define who we are, how we define ourselves, is largely done through our interactions, through which we continually redefine ourselves.

Those who learn how to make connections are also those who collaborate more effectively, more constructively and more playfully. They know how to connect the ideas of others with their own and with the challenges at hand: connecting people, ideas and resources that are not directly interconnected. Collaboration is not just about debate or even dialogue. It is about creating real connections with others.

Let’s dare to face the complexity of the nuances of our human interrelationships, as a counter-intuitive way of escaping our tendency to complicate things, and finally return to what is essential and often simple.

Let’s open ourselves to experience and to reflect some confident humility, as suggested by the organizational psychologist Adam Grant in his recent book, Think Again. It will give us a chance and some courage to question some of our common assumptions, to ask simple and real questions that invite collaboration, to think and train ourselves to think again, to listen more attentively, so we can truly think with, learn from each other, and explore new and not yet identified possibilities.

John Hagel III, recently retired from Deloitte, where he founded and led the Center for the Edge, a research center based in Silicon Valley, would certainly agree. In a 2021 HBR article, he stated that, as leaders, by asking questions, we communicate that questioning is important, and in doing so, we’ll inspire people to identify new opportunities and to ask more often for help when they need it. As early answers to our questions begin to emerge (as a result of experiments or research, for example), we will share them, even if they are not groundbreaking; they’ll contribute to our culture of learning and show our stakeholders that our questioning is generating new insights.

Natalia Karelaia, Associate Professor of Decision Sciences at INSEAD, encourages us to go on the same path; according to her recent research, leaders who frequently ask questions before making decisions can strengthen their working relationships, while simultaneously improving problem-solving.

Let’s consider question-asking a solid interpersonal investment that also allows us to make better decisions.

Which groups do you identify with the most?
As a team, where do our values converge?
Do we share a common purpose?

The more we listen, the more attentive we will be, the more we will be able to identify genuine ways to connect.

What are the tasks and responsibilities that each team member really enjoys doing?
What are the unique qualities that each person brings to the team?
What is everyone’s role in the team?
How is each role perceived by other team members?

We learn, create and discover the values that we share within the team through exchanges and confrontation with the diversity of points of view and sensitivities, by confronting ourselves daily with real, ambiguous problems that have no predefined solutions.

The sense of duty, the meaning of our actions, the feeling of being useful are rarely detached from relationships.

​To give the team a chance to bloom, to walk the talk and walk the walk, let’s recognize the group dynamics that affect us, to better understand what’s happening “in the room”. Let’s try to face some of our anxieties and stay in touch with emerging needs and emotions, ours and those of others, and maybe even address those “data” within the team, to openly acknowledge differences without losing sight of our common primary task. Being sensitive to those dynamics will help us understand better how group cohesion becomes possible. In consequence, we will display less labile emotions and impulsive reactions while preserving individual thinking and diversity, to think, feel and act not only as individuals (i.e. in terms of personal identity — I) but also as members of the group (in terms of social identity — We).

When we are able to feel a We, that we see ourselves as part of a group, we are more likely to see the world from the point of view of our fellow team members and more open to being influenced by them, to trust them and to work together with them. In this way, the group truly becomes a team.

Thus, eventually, a clear sense of belonging, which does not threaten the individuality of each person, develops and allows us to empower ourselves and help others to take responsibility to join a common purpose that resonates with who we are, each of us individually and as a team.

To build a real team, let’s dare to work on our mindsets, and start to ask ourselves the following questions, suggested by Manfred Kets de Vries (rated in 2009 amongst the Top 50 Thinkers in Management, among Clayton Christensen, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Richard Branson and Eric Schmidt):

1. Are we prepared to reveal our thoughts, feelings, aspirations, goals, failures, successes, fears, and dreams as well as our likes, dislikes, and favoritisms to other people?

2. Are we willing to share with others information that helps them understand us better?

3. Are we willing to put ourselves at risk through intimate disclosure?

4. Are we the kind of persons who believe in the integrity, ability, character, and truth of other people?

5. Do we have confidence in the capability of other people to make good on their promises?

6. Are we always prepared to position ourselves as vulnerable to others?

7. Are we convinced that others will not abuse our confidence due to our trusting behavior?

If most of our answers to those questions are YES, it will be relatively easy for us to build intimate relationships with the members of our teams.

That seems a good way to begin to assess and build real teams.

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It’s the group sound that’s important, even when you’re playing a solo. You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz. — Oscar Peterson https://youtu.be/Vf0LOc49fX0


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