Learning organizations: A primer for group facilitators

Team Learning

A team, say Robbins and Finley (1995), is "people doing something together" (p. 10). It could be a baseball team or a research team or a rescue team. It isn't what a team does that makes it a team; it is a fact that they do it together. A workplace team is more than a work group, i.e. "a number of persons, usually reporting to a common superior and having some faceto-face interaction, who have some degree of interdependence in carrying out tasks for the purpose of achieving organizational goals" (French and Bell, p. 169).

A workplace team is closer to what is called a self-directed work team or SDWT, which can be defined as follows: "A selfdirected work team is a natural work group of interdependent employees, who share most, if not all, the roles of a traditional supervisor" (Hitchcock and Willard, 1995, p. 4). Since teams usually have team leaders or managers, sometimes called coaches, the definition used by Katzenbach and Smith seems the most widely applicable: "A team is a small group of people (typically fewer than twenty) with complementary skills committed to a common purpose and set of specific performance goals. Its members are committed to working with each other to achieve the team's purpose and hold each other fully and jointly accountable for the team's result" (p. 21). The focus is on the human side of organizations. It is believed that individuals who have some control over how their work is done will be more satisfied and perform better. This is called empowerment. Put these empowered individuals together into teams and the results will be extraordinary. French and Bell put it this way:

... work teams are the building blocks of organizations. A second fundamental belief is that teams must manage their culture, processes, systems, and relationships, if they are to be effective. Theory, research, and practice attest to the central role teams play in organizational success (p. 87).

Although teams have to manage their own culture, processes, systems and relationships, and ultimately be accountable for their own results (or lack of results), they can still ask for help. Facilitators can help teams understand how their work relates to goals and to the system as a whole, and what the reasonable contributions and expectations might be for each individual within a team. When people are clear on how they can contribute, they are much more likely to be solid team members and to feel both connected and empowered in their work. It is the inability to ask for help that halts progress in many organizations, according to Senge et al, (1999). Brenneman (1999) suggests that "[w]hen a sufficient clarity of goals, roles, and expectations is established, including making people clearly accountable for the learning and performance of their subordinates, then learning is virtually automatic" (p. 389).

Characteristics of Successful Teams

Interventions are divided into two basic groups: (diagnosis and action) or (process). Team building is one type of process intervention. French and Bell consider teams and work groups to be the "fundamental units of organizations" and the "key leverage points for improving the functioning of the organization" (p. 171). A number of writers have studied teams, looking for the characteristics that make them successful. Larson and LaFasto (1989) looked at high-performance groups as diverse as a championship football team and a heart transplant team and found eight characteristics that are always present. They are listed below: