What Is an Effective Team?

To build believable performances, actors start by figuring out their characters' motivations - their reasons for doing what they do. As a team leader, you can use the same line of thinking to better understand your team members. Start by asking this question: Why do your team members do what they do? Most people work because they have to, of course. But their contributions to a team are motivated by issues that go way beyond the economic pressures of holding onto a job.

In their book The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer argue that the most important motivator for any team is making meaningful daily progress toward an important goal. In their study of 12,000 daily journal entries from team members in a variety of organizations and industries, they found that a sense of accomplishment does more to encourage teamwork, on-the-job happiness, and creativity than anything else. "Even when progress happens in small steps," the researchers explain, "a person's sense of steady forward movement toward an important goal can make all the difference between a great day and a terrible one".

According to Amabile and Kramer, the best managers focus on facilitating progress by removing roadblocks and freeing people up to focus on work that matters:

When you do what it takes to facilitate progress in work people care about, managing them - and managing the organization - becomes much more straightforward. You don't need to parse people's psyches or tinker with their incentives, because helping them succeed at making a difference virtually guarantees good inner work life and strong performance. It's more cost-effective than relying on massive incentives, too. When you don't manage for progress, no amount of emotional intelligence or incentive planning will save the day.

As you might expect, setbacks on a project can have the opposite effect, draining ambition and creativity from a team that, only days before, was charging full steam ahead toward its goal. But setbacks can be counterbalanced by even small wins - "seemingly minor progress events" - which have a surprising power to lift a team's spirits, making them eager to get back to work the next day. You've probably experienced the pleasure that comes from checking at least one task off your to-do list. Even completing a small task can generate a sense of forward momentum that can propel a team toward larger achievements.

Amabile and Kramer's book is a great resource for team managers looking to improve their motivational abilities.

Through years of practical experience as an executive, consultant, project engineer, and project manager, John Nelson has gained a finely honed understanding of how to manage teams. According to Nelson, the following are essential for motivators for any team:

• A sense of purpose - Individually, and as a whole, a team needs an overarching sense of purpose and meaning. This sense of purpose should go beyond each individual's project duties. On the macro level, the sense of purpose should align with the organization's strategy. But it should also align, at least sometimes, with each individual's career and personal goals.
• Clear performance metrics - How will the team and its individual members be evaluated? What does success look like? You need to be clear about this, but you don't have to be formulaic. Evaluations can be as subjective as rating a dozen characteristics as good/not-good, or on a score of 1-5.
• Assigning the right tasks to the right people - People aren't commodities. They aren't interchangeable, like a router or a hand saw. They are good at specific things. Whenever possible, avoid assigning people to project tasks based on capacity - that is, how much free time they have - and instead try to assign tasks that align with each individual's goals and interests.
• Encouraging individual achievement - Most people have long-term aspirations, and sometimes even formalized professional development plans. As team leader, you should be on the lookout for ways to nudge team members toward these goals. It's not your job to ensure that they fully achieve their personal goals, but you should try to allow for at least a little forward movement.
• Sailboat rules communication, in which no one takes offense for clear direction - On a sailboat, once the sail goes up, you need to be ready to take direction from the captain, who is responsible for the welfare of all on board, and not take offense if he seems critical or unfriendly. In other words, you can't take things personally. Likewise, team members need to set their egos aside and let perceived slights go for the sake of the team. When you start a big project, explain that you are assuming sailboat rules communication. That means that, in a meeting, no one has the privilege of taking anything personally.
• Mentorship - Team members need to be able to talk things over with more experienced people. Encourage your team to seek out mentors. They don't necessarily have to be part of the project.
• Consistency and follow-through - Team morale falls off when inconsistency is tolerated or when numerous initiatives are started and then abandoned. Encourage a team environment in which everyone does what they commit to do, without leaving loose ends hanging. Be on the lookout for gaps in a project, where things are simply not getting done.
  

Nelson also recommends avoiding the following demotivators, which can sap the life out of any team:

• Unrealistic or unarticulated expectations - Nothing discourages people like the feeling that they can't succeed no matter how hard they try. Beware of managers who initiate an impossible project, knowing full well that it cannot be accomplished under the established criteria. Such managers think that, by setting unrealistic expectations, they'll get the most out of their people, because they'll strive hard to meet the goal. In fact, this approach has the opposite effect - it drains people of enthusiasm for their work and raises suspicions that another agenda, to which they are not privy, is driving the project. Once that happens, team members will give up trying to do a good job.
• Ineffective or absent accountability - Individual team members pay very close attention to how their leader handles the issue of accountability. If members sense little or no reason to stay on course, they'll often slack off. As often as possible, stop and ask your team two essential question: 1) How are we doing relative to the metrics? 2) How do we compare to what we said we were going to do? If the answers are encouraging, that's great. But if not, you need to ask this question: What are we going to do to get back on track?
• Lack of discipline - An undisciplined team fails to follow through on its own rules. Members show up late for meetings, fail to submit reports on time, and generally ignore agreed-upon standards. This kind of lackadaisical attitude fosters poor attention to detail, and a general sense of shoddiness. As a team leader, you can encourage discipline by setting a good example, showing up bright and early every day, and following the team rules. Make sure to solicit input from team members on those rules, so everyone feels committed to them at the outset.
• Anti-team behavior - Self-centered, aggressive bullies can destroy a team in no time, making it impossible for less confrontational members to contribute meaningfully. Overly passive behavior can also be destructive because it makes people think the passive team member lacks a commitment to project success. Finally, bad communication - whether incomplete or ineffective - is a hallmark of any poorly functioning team.
  

One form of motivation - uncontrolled external influences - can have positive or negative effects. For example, in 2017, Hurricanes Harvey and Irma inflicted enormous damage in Texas and Florida. That had the effect of energizing people to jump in and help out, creating a nationwide sense of urgency. By contrast, the catastrophic damage inflicted on Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria, and the U.S. government's slow response, generated a sense of outrage and despair. One possible reason for this difference is that, on the mainland, people could take action on their own, arriving in Florida or Texas by boat or car. Those successes encouraged other people to join the effort, creating a snowball effect. But the geographic isolation of Puerto Rico, and the complete failure of the power grid, made it impossible for the average person to just show up and help out. That, in turn, contributed to the overall sense of hopelessness.

This suggests that small successes in the face of uncontrolled external influences can encourage people to band together and work even harder as a team. But when even small signs of success prove elusive, uncontrolled external influences can be overwhelming.

As a technical team leader, you can help inoculate your team against the frustration of external influences by making it clear that you expect the unexpected. Condition your team to be prepared for external influences at some point throughout the project. For example, let your team know if you suspect that your project could possibly be terminated in response to changes in the market. By being upfront about the possibilities, you help defuse the kind of worried whispering that can go on in the background, as team members seek information about the things they fear.

If you're working in the public domain, you'll inevitably have to respond to influences that might seem pointless or downright silly - long forms that must be filled out in triplicate, unhelpful training sessions, and so on. Take the time to prepare your team for these kinds of things, so they don't become demotivated by them.