Welcome to TLC, a newsletter with ideas and insights on Teams, Leadership & Communication
January 24, 2025 | #005 | 3-minute read

It’s not that four letter-word, it is faux.  A faux team is a group that pretends to be a team, but lacks a shared purpose and a distinct identity.  In some ways it is worse than strangers engaged in a transaction - where expectations, albeit low, are at least mutually understood. Faux teams are destined to disappoint members, sponsors and stakeholders alike.  So what can you do about it? 

#1 Does the purpose need a team?

Often, a team is commissioned before the purpose is clear, resulting in unstated expectations remaining unmet, leaving leaders looking for answers and people to blame.  

Is there a high-value endeavor that requires bringing together and coordinating the skills and efforts of many individuals?  If the answer is yes, get a team together to share the purpose.  What economist Ronald Coase said for firms, can be said for teams – “Teams exist to reduce transaction costs.” But transaction costs don’t automatically drop just because you brought people together, contrary to what naïve leaders would like to believe.  I am constantly amazed by the lament “can’t they all just work together”.  Of course they can, but they wont, at least not if left by themselves. The only thing that is going to happen naturally is entropy, all else requires input of energy. Teamwork requires energy and commitment – both arise from a shared purpose with value high-enough to off-set the costs of teamwork.  

A high-consensus committee or a high-performance team?

If you create groups where each member represents their subfunction, by all means go for it, just don’t expect it to deliver like a ‘high-performance team’. Representatives, by definition, will maximize their own interests.   Solutions will be a compromise acceptable to all but may undermine the bigger purpose.   

#2 Launch the team as an ‘entity’ with a clear boundary and a distinct identity?

“If you do not establish clear boundaries, your team cannot develop the collective identity that it needs to interact as a unit with external constituencies.”¹

The first attempts at multicellularity were a loose association of independent cells resulting in a ‘fuzzy’ new entity that was a step-up but still incapable of accomplishing complex tasks in concert.  On the other hand, the human body is a bounded ‘entity’ with specialized parts that come together for the common purpose of living.   It would be absurd to state that ‘your’ kidney is not part of ‘my’ body.   Yet, this clarity so critical to an cohesive identity,  is often lacking and the cause of failed expectations.  Too many teams feel like early attempts at multicellularity – a loose association of individual leaders with their own interests.  The problem gets more acute the higher we go on the org chart.  In a study of 120 senior leadership teams across the globe, fewer than 7%  agreed on who else was on the team¹.  Expecting such leadership teams to behave like an team is a bit like asking a sea sponge to show some spine.  Futile. 

#3 Challenge the team, and let them challenge the individual.   

As a sponsor/stakeholder, do you address your concerns to the team or to your ‘representative’ on the team?  What keeps you, as a team member, awake at night? Is it your individual goals or the bigger challenge in front of the team?  It is a sure sign of trouble if the team leader is the only person concerned with team challenges.

#4 Reward the team AND the ‘individual’.

Every leader I have met has honorable intentions about rewarding teams to encourage team behavior and seems to forget it completely come November.   They also forget the impact of extolling individual accomplishments over team efforts at town halls, coffee chats, and other opportunities to communicate and reinforce culture. 

It is wise to remember that Humans are 90% Chimp and 10% Bees, as my favorite author Jonathan Haidt insightfully points out.   You are unlikely to witness highly-coordinated chimpanzee teams and bees that don't collaborate.  Humans are an interesting mix.  We pride individuality and love the euphoric experience of being part of something bigger than ourselves.  Recognition needs to honor the Chimp and the Bee, they are both us. 

So, what euphoric team experience do you recall? I would love to hear and learn from your experience. 

Sources

1. Senior leadership teams. What it takes to make them great.  Ruth Wageman, Debra Nunes, James Burruss and Richard Hackman. HBR Press, 2008.
2. Why Teams Don’t Work- An interview with J. Richard Hackman, HBR, May 2009.