Learn the Science of Teaming

Take some time to gander at the nightly sports scene on television these days and you’ll find plenty of teamwork taking place. Both the NHL and NBA playoffs are charging fast, professional baseball has shaken off its April rust, and, before you know it, the dog days of August will arrive and football teams will start up their annual preseason training camps.

There are also plenty of teams in business as well. Organizations traditionally break individual business units into teams — or departments — and often much of the heavy work is accomplished in a team-oriented environment.

Yet as organizational design has propelled toward a more horizontal construct — where collaboration often occurs across the functional units of a business —a different brand of teamwork is taking place.

In her new book, Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy, Harvard Business School professor Amy C. Edmondson describes “teaming.” Never mind the usual project teams employees are used to working with — those that tend to last for an elongated period of time, perhaps three to six months.

Teaming, Edmondson said, is more about working together on short projects — say a week, maybe less — and learning to function effectively with people from different business units who perhaps come from different backgrounds, both professionally and personally.

“We see the need for people to get together quickly in team-like arrangements, get things done and disband,” said Edmondson, whose research and teaching is focused on leadership and management.

Other teaming specialists seem to agree.

“When you have cross-functional teams, many of these people are not used to working together outside of their discipline,” said Glenn Parker, a team building consultant and the author of Team Players And Teamwork. “So the ability to work with people who are different quickly, have a different work style, experience, goals … as a result, we need a lot of the same kind of [teaming] skills.”

As the need for teaming grows, it becomes partly the responsibility of the learning leader to take the reins and ensure that leaders are equipped to team.