K ATZENBACH AND S MITH – T EAM B ASICS M ODEL

Katzenbach and Smith (1993) argue that we cannot meet the challenges ahead, from total quality to customer service to innovation, without teams. They say that teams are a flexible and efficient way to enhance organizational performance.

An employee’s contribution to organizational operational performance may depend on four levels of relationship: competence, teamwork, organizational commitment and customer orientation. These four dominant variables, individually and collectively, influence organizational performance parameters (Paul and Anantharaman, 2003).

Katzenbach and Smith (1993) believe that as teams trust the individuals of the team and their collective accountability, team performance is greater as it harvests results based both on individual efforts in addition to the joint contribution of the team members. Katzenbach and Smith's research involves interviews with hundreds of people from thirty companies, and reveals what differentiates various levels of team performance, where and how teams work best, and how to enhance their effectiveness and productivity. Among the findings were that a formal organizational hierarchy is good for teams, successful team leaders fit no ideal profile and commitment to performance goals is more important than commitment to team-building goals.

A good team leader creates opportunities for others (Katzenbach and Smith (1992). Team performance is not possible if the leader grabs all the best opportunities, assignments, and credit for him or herself. The leader must provide performance opportunities for the team (Katzenbach and Smith (1992). A good team leader gives up decision space only when and as the group is ready to accept and use it, striking the right balance between making tough decisions and letting others make them, between doing difficult things alone and letting others learn how to do them (Katzenbach and Smith, 1992). As part of team development, teams must learn to take risks involving conflict, trust and interdependence. Too much command will suffocate the capability, initiative, and creativity of a team; too little guidance, direction, and discipline will have the team struggling. No two teams have the same mix of people and skills, choice of purpose and goals, best approach, or threshold of mutual accountability. Rarely does a leader's experience with one team exactly match the needs of another.

The wisdom of teams lies in recognizing their unique potential to deliver results and in understanding their many benefits. Different tasks require different teams (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993). As well as Wheelan and Larson and LaFasto, Katzenbach and Smith proposed a similar type of team development model that describes the journey of a working group to a high

performing team. Katzenbach and Smith (1993) argues that there is a natural resistance to moving beyond individual roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities. Individuals do not easily accept responsibility for the performance of others or cherish others assuming responsibility for them. Overcoming this resistance requires that team members understand, accept, and apply the

‘the basics’ of team work. In the ‘team performance curve’ the team starts out as a working group and ends up by being a high-performance team. Katzenbach and Smith (1993) uses the following six questions to identify the success of teams and also to enhance this effectiveness:

Is the size of the team appropriate? Do members have adequate complementary skills? Is the purpose of the team truly meaningful and understood? Are there team-oriented goals – are they clear, realistic, and measurable? Does the team have a voiced working approach? And, is there a sense of mutual accountability? For teams to be efficient, all six questions need to be addressed adequately. Furthermore, there are three predominant goals in the Katzenbach and Smith model: 1) Collective Work Products, 2) Personal Growth, and 3) Performance Results.

Team elements required to make these three happen are: 1) Commitment, 2) Skills, and 3) Accountability. These outcomes are presented in the vertices of the triangle and indicate what teams can deliver. In contrast, the sides and center of the triangle describe the team elements required to make it happen – Commitment, Skills, and Accountability.

Figure d: Team Basics Model - Katzenbach and Smith (1993)

To explain the Katzenbach and Smith model, the six rudimentary elements that are key characteristics important to consider in developing a high-performance team are:

1. Small teams - less than 12 individuals for a good work flow

More than this number and it gets complicated to work together effectively. Smaller groups have less logistical issues with meeting often enough for them to form a real team. In a small group, each person’s contributions and responsibilities are clear, whereas larger groups have more difficulties progressively defining those responsibilities. Too few team members could limit the range of skills, while too big a group will encourage teams within the team to emerge.

2. Complementary skills related to functional expertise, problem solving and decision-making, as well as interpersonal and social skills

Complementary skills and experiences gives the benefits of team members stimulate each other on overcoming hindrances. They focus on performance which makes the team a powerful tool for learning and professional development. The members of the team have to have all of the necessary skills for them to achieve their goal. This requirement is somewhat less important than the others, as Katzenbach and Smith observe that real teams give their members the incentive to go learn the skills they need for the team to be successful. High-performance teams begin by engaging the best talent, while quickly helping low-performing members find other places to work. Morale normally increases as performance rises. Selecting talent, criticality is ensuring the team members hold complementary skills (e.g. technical, problem-solving, decision-making and interpersonal skills). Team members must show a continual obligation to performance excellence, exercise openness and mutual respect, and hold themselves and their organizations accountable at both the individual and team levels. The active leadership role in a team often shifts from member to member, depending on the situation. Team leaders should adopt a team approach as to the leader avoids on his own making all important decisions or makes all work assignments and all evaluations of individuals. They mean that the leader should promote constructive conflict resolution, use distance and perspective to keep the team's actions and directions relevant and constantly challenge the team to sharpen its common purpose, goals, and approach. It is argued that conflict is necessary in becoming a high performing team.

Improved performance may come from disagreements and constructive debating. It is further argued that teams should openly and honestly examine who best suits what task and also evaluate how the roles work together. Katzenbach and Smith maintains that leaders need to trust in the people of its team otherwise he or she cannot be effective.

For a group to come forward with productive and resourceful problem solving, they would need open discussions about conflict adjacent to a task (Pratkanis and Turner, 1999). Esquivel and Kleiner (1996) claims that the dynamic of conflicts and its effect on work teams’ decision-making processes is necessary to become

high performing. Esquivel and Kleiner (1996) means that the focus of team members’ discussions and differences on issues related to the task at hand fosters creativity, open and honest communication and utilizes members’ skills and abilities. Esquivel and Kleiner (1996) in addition to Katzenbach and Smith, discuss the ability to understand different types of conflict and to manage them successfully will give teams the competitive edge they need to become high performers.

Spring (2007) mentions that successful leadership maintain team congruence by focusing on mission specific task outcomes and personal qualities of team members. There is also said to be an association between leadership and team cohesion that is affected differently depending on leadership behavior, team categories, different tasks, and formal structures (Spring, 2007). Leadership behavior, impacting development of team cohesion, may harvest superior performance (Michalisin and Karau, 2007). Team leadership demands a set of attitudes and behaviors and many of us can learn these, but the attitude and behavior of a team leader will have to be re-learned and re-applied over and over, since these are not instinctively found in us (Katzenbach and Smith, 1992). Many different kinds of people can be effective team leaders and most people have to develop as team leaders on the job (Katzenbach and Smith, 1992). Katzenbach and Smith (1992) also argues that each team is unique and requires its leader to strike a distinctive balance between action and patience, in each separate team.

They say that this requires the leader's unbroken attention to strengthen the mix and level of skills, build commitment and confidence, relationship building with unknowns, and remove hindrances. Leadership style is a key factor for positive impact on team outcomes. Somech (2006), mentions in his research, participative leadership style was found positively associated with team reflection, which in turn fostered team development. Manz and Sims (1987) found indications in their research that leaders' most important behaviors are those that through participation facilitate the team's self-management, this through self-observation, self-evaluation, and self-reinforcement.

Michalisin and Karau (2007) found that no single style of leadership is effective across all work to be executed. Furthermore, Katzenbach and Smith (1992) expresses they have encountered many situations where successful leaders of one

team were unsuccessful with another. They reason that patterns exist from which we can all learn, but there are no formulas that guarantee effective team leadership. Even within the same team, a leader's role hardly ever ends where it began. No team is the same, but varies in challenges, composition and working conditions, which requires team leaders to continue to grow with the team throughout their lifetime. As a potential team grows into a real team, the leader's job changes dramatically (Katzenbach and Smith, 2003). Many people confuse the team leader's task with leadership in general. Although being a good team leader is a worthy test for any of us, it does not require, as one executive opined,

"having the patience of Job, the courage of Napoleon, the insight of Pasteur, and the wisdom of Churchill" (Katzenbach and Smith, 1992). Corporate leadership, business unit leadership, and team leadership are not the same thing. Some people can do all three well. But equating them, or inadvertently assuming that the capacity to do one is a prerequisite for doing the others, artificially limits the choice of a team leader (Katzenbach and Smith, 1992). If the group can deliver acceptable levels of performance as a working group through maximizing each individual's contribution, the leader can rely on the normal decision making and delegation approaches associated with good corporate management. If performance requires a team approach, the leader must show - in everything he or she does and does not do, a belief in the team's purpose and in the people who individually and together make up the team. The strength of a leader's belief in what a team is all about can be incredibly powerful (Katzenbach and Smith, 1992). Katzenbach and Smith (1992) have set up a number of fundamentals for good team leadership and they argue that all teams must shape their own common purpose, performance goals, and approach.

Teams expect their leaders to use their perspective and distance to help the teams commit to their mission, goals, and approach. Team leaders should work to build the commitment and confidence of each individual as well as of the team as a whole. There is an important difference between individual commitment and accountability and mutual accountability. Both are needed for any group to become a real team. Effective team leaders are attentive to skills (Wheelan, 2003).

No team reaches its goal with a chronic skill gap relative to its performance objectives. A flexible, high performing team has to have people with all the

technical, functional, problem solving, decision making, interpersonal, and teamwork skills. Team leaders are expected to effectively communicate the team's purpose, goals, and approach to anyone who might help or hinder the team (Katzenbach and Smith, 1992). Ineffective organizational communications are seen as a discouraging factor for teamwork.

3. Shared purpose - clear and meaningful

High-performing teams often demonstrate a total commitment to the work and to each other.

Team members work better when their roles are clear. They know how to do their jobs and the purpose behind why they are doing them. Each member understands and supports the meaning and value of the team's mission and vision. Clarifying the purpose and tying it to each person's role and responsibilities enhances team potential, as does the presence of growth goals that increase motivation of team members. The highest performing teams invest a vast amount of time forming a purpose that they believe they can own. The best teams translate their purpose into specific performance goals. Everybody on the team has to believe in a common goal.

Teams in the process formation often require a great deal of communication and negotiation to agree on their common goal, but until the overall purpose is clear, the team cannot move forward.

According to Scarnati (2001) each member need to have a clear understanding of the desired outcomes, otherwise they may become discouraged. Without a guiding map, reaching the desired destination becomes a matter of chance (Scarnati, 2001). Katzenbach and Smith argues that clearly stated goals or objectives developed by the team or provided by a strategic action plan are essential for a team to function well.

4. Divided by specified performance goals

A common set of demanding performance goals that the team considers important to achieve will most likely lead to higher performance. The team include members who are deeply committed to the growth and success of the team. The high-performance team goals are set to significantly outperform all other teams and outperform all reasonable expectations. The team must translate the common purpose into specific and measurable short-term goals. These goals give the team a chance to bind together in the pursuit of the goals and create circumstances where all team members must contribute in order to achieve the goals. The goals also provide possibilities to celebrate minor wins along the way towards the larger purpose. Members in

these teams also are very committed to each other. They understand that the “wisdom of teams comes with a focus on collective work-products, personal growth, and performance results”

(Katzenbach and Smith, 1993). Successful teams, unceasingly, are a result of following demanding performance goals at the team level.

5. Jointly developed analysis and design of work structure

Team potential exists anywhere, hierarchy or organizational boundaries obstruct good performance. The team ask themselves, does the team accomplish its goals? Who takes care of necessary logistics? The answers to these questions must be voiced for the team to continue moving towards its larger purpose, and not getting stuck in processes and procedures. Standards for high-performance teams include honest and open communication, primary conflict resolution, consistent assessment of individual and team performance, high levels of respect among members, a cohesive and supportive team environment, a strong work ethic that focuses on performance and results, and a shared gratitude of team success. High-performing teams discuss and agree to their operating rules and standards.

6. Team members share mutual responsibility for performance

The essence of the team is a shared purpose. Without this shared purpose, groups perform as individuals; with it, they become a powerful unit of collective performance. The teams have to feel accountable for their results as a team, not as a group of individuals. The idea that the team can fail but that an individual team member has succeeded is incompatible with a high performing team. When the team believes in its purpose and performance goals, it will often hold itself to standards far beyond what the organization is expecting of it. Group cohesion demonstrates intimacy and support for other team members. When the amount of cohesion increases the group conformity increases, which is important to form an effective team as long as the group norm does not conflict with the organizational norms. A destroyer of group cohesiveness is lack of trust in the group. Successful individuals cannot exist without the team effort backing them up. The leader should also inspire trust by acting in concert with the team's purpose and personnel and create opportunities for others, sometimes at his or her own expense.

Team cohesiveness is “the strength of the bonds linking individuals to the team, feelings of attraction for specific team members and the team itself, the unity of a team, and the degree to which the group members coordinate their efforts to achieve goals” (Forsyth, 2006). Cohesion is also described as members’ attraction to the team and desire to remain in the team (Delarue, Van Hootegem, Procter and

Burridge, 2008). They say that leaders can engage in behaviors that are likely to increase members’ attraction to the team and desire to continue interacting with the team. Team cohesion is said to be fostered by partiality and esteem within teams, agreement and reduced social anxiety (Larson and LaFasto, 2001). It is also said positively associated with team performance (Bass et al. 2003). Bradley and Hebert (1997) believes that the ‘within-team’ communication is another critical factor that influences team success. Katzenbach and Smith (2003); Larson and LaFasto (2001) and Wheelan (2010) believe that high performing teams have clear work structures and that these nurtures engagement, trust and accountability within the team. Group cohesion is mostly affected by thinking versus feeling. A cohesive team is one that is able to resolve conflicts in manner that does not result in lasting divisions, but instead results in the synergism that makes team work valuable. Cohesion does not mean lack of conflict, Bradley and Hebert (1997) suggest that within conflict ideas are evaluated for their true impact. In general, each personality type within a group has something positive to contribute with.

They say that a large degree of psychological homogeneity causes problems, while a homogeneous team may be in agreement earlier, their results lack innovation, as there will be more of from a heterogeneous team (Bradley and Hebert, 1997).