Leading Temporary Teams

Is there a difference between leading a temporary team rather than a permanent team? Not just a question of timing, temporary teams are now often multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural and multi-locational; in other words there are many challenges to leading this particular type of team. I was therefore very interested to come across an article by Amy Edmondson in this month’s Harvard Business Review, “Teamwork on the Fly”, April 2012.

Instead of seeing temporary teams as a problem, Edmondson sees them as a solution as to how companies can adapt to an ever-changing world; and potentially as a solution to bridging different national, organizational and occupational cultures. The author states that “in today’s fast-moving, ultracompetitive global business environment, you can’t rely on stable teams to get the work done. Instead, you need ‘teaming’”.

Here’s how ‘teaming’ is best achieved followed by further implications “et alors?”

Leading Temporary Teams

The author proposes that several project management principles (scoping, structuring and sorting) help leaders facilitate effective ‘teaming’; and cross-boundary collaboration can be achieved with leadership skills (emphasizing purpose, building psychological safety and embracing failure and conflict). Here’s the summary:

Scoping

Scope the challenge, determine the expertise and clearly outline roles and responsibilities. This includes continually articulating the best possible current definition of the work.

Structuring

Boundaries and targets need to be established along with teamwork tools (conference and webinar communications, chat rooms, internet site and shareware).

Sorting

Reciprocal interdependence (as opposed to sequential) is required with back-and-forth (almost constant) team communication in order to mutually adjust according to progress.

Emphasizing Purpose

Articulating purpose is always important but even more so in a temporary team. Answering why the project exists is fundamental and can “galvanize even the most diverse, amorphous team”.

Building Psychological Safety

To encourage the sharing of information, leaders must exemplify a safe environment by exhibiting their own weaknesses and acknowledging ignorance where appropriate.

Embracing Failure and Conflict

Rather than avoiding them, accept and learn from failures! With conflict, reflection takes less time than fighting: replace advocacy (explaining and teaching) with inquiry (curiosity and listening).

Et alors?

The author states that “‘teaming’ can help to change a culture from localized hierarchical decision making to horizontal collaboration” (as demonstrated in Danone with ‘teaming’ known as “Networking Attitude”); however it is also arguable that some corporate cultures might more easily accommodate ‘teaming’ than others. Trompenaars defines four different corporate cultures according to the level of formality and centralization. Centralized cultures might not readily accept ‘teaming’, namely informal/centralized (the “family”); and formal/centralized (the “Eiffel Tower”). Decentralized corporate cultures where ‘teaming’ might prevail are informal/decentralized (the “incubator”); and formal/decentralized (the “guided missile”) which is similar to what other commentators call an “adhocracy” where teams come together temporarily to achieve common tasks... Nevertheless, the author’s principle argument is that with the rapidly changing world, ‘teaming’ is becoming more and more important and by implication, some corporate cultures might need to become less centralized.

The author cites conflict as a great source of creativity, but investment has to be made both in the team and beyond the team to ensure that cultural diversity does not in itself become a conflict. For example, for one of the ‘teaming’ projects, “the project leaders facilitated the successful outcome by assigning those rare specialists who had deep familiarity with both Chinese and Western culture to spend time in each other’s firms helping to bridge differences in language, norms, practices and expectations.” Multi-cultural, multi-locational teams might therefore be better comprised of individuals who have already been expatriated. One of the key points from the article – inquiry rather than advocacy – could be equally applied to all inter-cultural relations. Otherwise, leading a permanent team is reasonably similar to leading a temporary team. Notwithstanding the added urgency with a temporary team to define scope and purpose, implement structure and safety, the key difference in terms of leadership for a temporary global team is the need for the leader to be culturally sensitive.