Build diverse and small teams

In the following interview, Professor Hackman explains the principles that build and support teams, and how to foster a team culture that fosters solidarity.

How does an organization determine whether an individual has the potential to be a leader?

For a long time, psychologists believed that past behavior could be predictive of future development. Candidates who may be suitable for leadership positions may not have the opportunity to demonstrate leadership skills, so a selection process is needed to discover their talents. My advice is not to limit yourself to testing them, but to put candidates in situations to judge whether they have leadership potential.

AT&T uses this approach when selecting managers. Not only do candidates pass a variety of tests, but they are also divided into groups where they need to present their ideas and make decisions while the trainer focuses on their leadership skills.

In "Leading a Team," I refer to a study of flight teams and their behavior during simulated training. This training exposes them to all possible difficulties, such as a power failure or an engine fire. Such training also contributes to the development of new training programs to improve trainee deficiencies.

But that's not the case in real life, and it seems like there's no reason why airlines don't use simulation training as a tool for selecting captains from a pool of candidates? In most airlines around the world, seniority and technical prowess determine whether a pilot can be promoted to captain. However, it is also possible to determine whether they have the potential to be captains by testing their behavioral responses in simulated situations, especially in emergency situations.

Having said all that, the key to selecting a leader is, of course, identifying whether he is a "creative talent". This is the function of a well-designed selection program based on behavioral response testing. But it shouldn't stop there, as many people think that since the good people have been elected, they can be all right as long as they are given leadership. But I don't think so. After selecting the right leaders for the team, there should be a development plan to ensure that the strengths of those selected can be further strengthened and the weaknesses identified can be overcome and exercised.

In an extremely individualistic team, how much do you think individuals' attitudes and behaviors affect the team's success?

We've recognized that there are some "black sheep" who will wreak havoc no matter what team they're on. This type of person may be very lacking in the skills to work with people, or they may be too self-centered, which is the reason for this situation. As individuals, these people may also make outstanding contributions to the enterprise. In fact, there are far fewer such people than people think.

When a team encounters difficulties or things are not going well, team members often look for a "scapegoat". They'll pick one person and decide he's the one who caused all the problems. In this way, this person is labeled as a "black sheep".

Finding scapegoats is not random. Because of differences in age, profession and gender, each individual's choice may be different from that of the majority of the team. Knowing this, we should avoid pushing all the problems on a team to one person.

So what should we do to prevent those who are indeed more individualistic than the average person from affecting the work of the team?

There are three important conditions that increase the likelihood of a team's success: First, are team members made up of a group of people who are willing to share responsibility?

Second, has the person who created the team, or the leader of the team, established a very clear basic code of conduct? All members should be aware that certain behaviors are not tolerated by the team.

Third, does the reward and punishment system of the company in which the team works recognize and reward the contribution of the entire team, or does it tend to reward individuals only? If the answer to the first two questions above is yes, and the answer to the third question is to choose the former, then the risk of individual team members affecting the work of the team as a whole is greatly reduced. Team success and a cooperative group can have a powerful inhibitory effect on the individual behavior of team members.

What should be considered when building and supporting a successful team?

When forming a team, you should include people who have the knowledge, skills, and experience to accomplish the task. At the same time, it must also take into account that the knowledge, skills, concepts and experiences of team members should be diverse. Teams cannot be successful if they are made up of statistically identical people, or if all members have the same knowledge and skills. To be successful, you must diversify your team members.

What are the common problems that teams typically encounter?

One of the biggest problems is that people believe that harmonious relationships are the catalyst for team success, but that's not the case. When people pick people to join their teams, they tend to choose people who are similar in temperament to their own. But the diversity of knowledge, skills, ideas, and experiences in a team is very important, and it doesn't work well to make a team of people whose personalities and behaviors match well.

Another problem is the size of the team. This often occurs because the team creator wants to ensure that the team has sufficient resources, or wants to have representatives of various functional departments on the team, or so that the team can get more people to support. It's easy to get a team of 18 or more, which may guarantee "political correctness" or everything, but such a team won't do much. I advocate that the number of teams should be controlled in single digits. I personally think that a team of 6 is the most ideal. Teams of 10+ people can definitely go wrong.

What skills should a team leader have?

I certainly agree that people who are team leaders should have certain skills, and if they have extraordinary abilities, then of course the more the better.

However, that doesn't mean these people have to be "heroes" who can handle everything alone. Even those we consider heroes have their own weaknesses. For example, they may have cutting-edge technology and be very powerful technology pioneers, but they may not be able to lead the entire enterprise into the future.

Churchill is widely recognized as a hero. But if you look closely at the ups and downs of his political career, little has actually changed. It's just that in some cases, his personal style, political philosophy, and way of doing things are just in line with the needs of the country, and sometimes they don't. Even some of the leaders we think are the greatest don't have the skills and tools of a great leader. To strengthen the leadership of an enterprise or a team, it is necessary to encourage or support all members to fully develop their talents, so as to make up for the lack of leaders.

Few people are willing to take the time, energy, or conscious effort to strengthen their leadership skills if they have peers who can make up for their deficiencies, especially when the leader has already received considerable praise and recognition. He often regards himself as a hero, thinking that he can control the development of the enterprise and lead the enterprise to success.

There are exceptions, of course. Although some leaders have achieved success and are widely appreciated, they will still encourage others to give full play to their talents to make up for their deficiencies in knowledge, skills, experience and style, and achieve management improvement. This is very important for a senior management team. That is to say, it is impossible to know in advance what situations will be encountered in the work, and what kind of people will be needed to solve them, so it is impossible to simply use the leader personality test to form a team.

In your book, you mentioned that People Express Airlines did very well initially, but as the business grew, many problems arose. So, what do you think is the most appropriate team size?

People's MRT is a very young company. Much of the coordination happens on the plane and in the company's command center. The work process worked very well because the company's founder, Don Burr, had a good relationship with all levels of management. For a small business, this working model is successful and the business is growing rapidly. But as the enterprise grows and develops, more management and institutions are needed to help and promote the communication and coordination within the enterprise.

The problem is that when a business is doing well, it doesn't recognize the need for change. Worrying about bringing in more governing bodies would make the company the same as those traditional, bureaucratic airlines would create all kinds of problems.

A very successful example of a business that has grown in size is Mondragon, the largest and most successful business in the world to truly bring people together. The company is located in the Basque Country of Spain. The autonomous group of the company has a rule that if a unit has more than 250-300 employees, it will automatically split up and set up a new unit. This limits the expansion of scale and ensures that the enterprise will not become dysfunctional due to excessive scale.

Can a business evaluate a team by productivity, quality, or other metrics?

Let's first examine the evolution of evaluation criteria. The current trend still mainly relies on numbers. For example, financial indicators were often used to judge the quality of business operations in the past, and to make predictions based on this, basically to see whether the numbers increase. But there's no particular reason to believe that these numbers are a direct indicator of how well a team is working, at least not in the short term. In addition, focusing on numbers and short-term goals complicates results, as the pursuit of digital growth and short-term results may lead to certain actions that violate ethical standards or damage the business-customer relationship.

My personal preference is that the evaluation criteria should focus on customer feedback, whether it is internal or external to the company. To get the data, I want to see if the team is doing a good job of meeting the client's reasonable requests and additional requests. I'd wager that teams that meet customer needs well and even exceed customer expectations show up in terms of statistics. But I didn't start by looking at the numbers, because they weren't pre-designed, they weren't intentionally pursued, or they weren't the right way to evaluate a team.

I think teams should be evaluated from the perspective of the client, the team itself, and team members. Is the team completing or over-delivering on the client's task? As a work unit, what changes have the team itself made, whether it has improved its work ability, can it better cope with various working environments, and whether it has developed a unique development strategy that suits itself? Have the talents, skills, knowledge, experience and concepts of team members been fully developed, and have they promoted learning and the improvement of personal and professional qualities?

So my three criteria for evaluating a team are: Are the clients satisfied? Has the team itself become stronger as a working collective? Do team members feel that working in a team can learn more and has a greater sense of accomplishment rather than frustration? If the answer to all three is yes, I can assure you that over time, barring a catastrophic event, the team's numbers will be excellent.

[Source] Original text excerpted with permission from Management First by Sarah Powell, copyright 2002. Translated by Xiao Dongyan.