SD Hackman Leading Teams

Leading Teams When the Time is Right: Finding the BestMoments to Act

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Citation Hackman, J. Richard, Ruth Wageman, and Colin M. Fisher.2009. Leading teams when the time is right: Finding the bestmoments to act. Organizational Dynamics 38(3): 192203.

Published Version doi:10.1016/j.orgdyn.2009.04.004Accessed July 22, 2014 9:30:16 AM EDT

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Leading Teams When the Time is Right:

Finding the Best Moments to Act

RUTH WAGEMAN COLIN M. FISHER J. RICHARD HACKMAN

I am aware that success is more than a goodidea. It is timing, too. Anita Roddick.

W e have all heard the phrase timing is every-thing. While that claim overstates the case,good timing is a vital element of high-quality teamleadership. Regardless of whether one holds a formalposition of authority or is a regular teammember whoinformally provides leadership, the timing of interven-tions canmake all the difference. Timing can be the keyto assuring that leadership actions help a team ratherthan distract or misdirect members, or make no dif-ference at all. This article explores what is involved inproviding just the right kinds of leadership at just theright times.

Good timing means taking action to help a team atthose special times when the team is ready to receiveand use the help that is offered. For example, a projectteam we observed that was thoughtlessly carving upits work into individual pieces was stopped by theteam leader and redirected by a well-timed question:How are you going to integrate all those separateparts? Bad timing is either making an intervention atan inappropriate time or failing to act at the momentwhenhelp is badlyneeded. For example, another projectteam leader poorly timed his efforts to get members toaddress their uneven levels of participation in thework.Insensitive to timing, this leader stepped in at preciselythe moment when members began intensely debatingthe next step in their worknot a good moment tointervene. Or, just as ineffective, we have seen all toomany leaders miss the opportunity to ask, What didntwork well in that meeting we just had? Asking thatquestion at the next team event two weeks later, whenthe meeting is but a distant memory, is too late.

Some of themoments when a teamwill be open toleadership actions are highly predictablefor exam-ple, when members rst come together, around themidpoint of theirwork, andwhena signicant piece ofwork has been completed. But there are other times,unpredictable times, when leader interventions alsocan be helpful. During the course of a days work, forexample, members can fall into intense, unantici-pated conict, or become stuck, or embark on anextended discussion of a trivial or task-irrelevant

subject. A well-timed intervention that helps theteam deal with developments like these can headoff a downward spiral of increasing frustration, andraise the chances that the team will get back onto amore productive path.

The best team leaders exhibit good timing in both ofthese circumstancesat the predictable times in ateams work life, when members are reliably open toleadership interventions, and at those unpredictabletimes when developing events require immediateaction. We refer to the former as Type I timing and tothe latter as Type II timing.Wediscuss themeachbelow.

T IMING TYPE I : KNOWING WHEN A TEAMWILL PREDICTABLY BE READY FORLEADERSHIP INTERVENT IONS

Having great Type I timing is a matter of getting wellprepared for predictable times in the life of a teamwhen members are especially open to helpful inter-ventions. It involves knowing what kinds of inter-ventions will help a team at particular points in itslifecycle, and having those interventions alreadyestablished in ones leadership repertoire. Even wellconsidered and well-executed actions are unlikely tobe helpful if the team is not ready for them. In fact,ill-timed interventions may actually do more harmthan good, by distracting or diverting a team fromother issues that do require members attention atthat time. For example, some years ago, RichardHackman (in collaboration with Janet Weiss andKen Brousseau) set out to show that groups offereda strategy-focused coaching intervention when theystart their work will perform better than teams thatplunge directly into the workbut only when themost obvious way of proceeding is not actually theoptimum. Although the ndings supported that pre-diction, perhaps the more important lesson from thestudy was that it turned out to be nearly impossibleto get teams to actually have a discussion of strategyat the start of their work period. Members needed tofocus on getting some actual experience with eachother and with the task before they were able to havea useful discussion of how best to go about accom-plishing the work.

Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 192203, 2009 ISSN 0090-2616/$ see frontmatter

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So when are teams most open to intervention? Aline of research conducted by Connie Gersick, in whichshe carefully tracked a number of project teamswhoseperformance periods ranged from just a few days toseveral months, points the way. Gersick found thatevery group developed a distinctive approach towardits task as soon as it started work, and stayed with thatapproach until precisely halfway between its rstmeeting and its project deadline. Moreover, almostall teams underwent a major transition at that calen-dar midpoint. In a concentrated burst of changes, theydropped old patterns of behavior, reengaged with out-side supervisors, and explored new perspectives ontheir work. Then, following their transition, teamsentered a period of focused task execution that per-sisted until very near the project deadline, at whichtime a new set of issues having to do with terminationprocesses arose and captured members attention.

Gersicks ndings provide a refreshing alternativeto standard forming-storming-norming-performingmodels of group development, one that recognizes theimportance of calendar time in developmental pro-cesses. Moreover, her ndings suggest that the readi-ness of teams for leader interventions waxes andwanes across the team life cycle. Different issues arenaturally on team members minds at different times,and interventions that address issues that are alivefor a team at a particular time are especially likely totake root and be helpful. Actions taken when a team isnot ready for them for example, talking about teammember relationships at a time when a team is fullyoccupied with getting an urgent piece of work accom-plished are unhelpful and often disrupt the positiveaspects of a teams work processes.

We describe below the particular kinds of inter-ventions that are most helpful when a team islaunched, when it reaches its midpoint, and when asignicant piece of work has been completed. Butsome of the most powerful interventions a leadercan make to facilitate teamwork are accomplishedeven before team members come together to begintheir work. As we will see, how a group and its workare set upmakes an enormous difference in how groupprocess and performance unfold. Therefore, thereare four predicable times at which team leaders canreliably help their teams both perform their tasks welland learn fromtheirwork together: (1) before the groupexists, (2) at the initial launch, (3) at the calendarmidpoint, and (4) at the end of a performance period.

Be fo re the Group Ex i s t s

Whethera teamsucceedsor fails isoftendeterminedbefore the team ever meets. Initial team design choicespowerfully shape team effectiveness on several dimen-sions: how well the team serves its clients, how muchthe team itself learns, and the development and well-

being of individual members. It is ironic, therefore, thatso many team leaders approach the initial meeting of ateam without having made the preparations that canhelp a teamget onto a positive trajectory. Excellent pre-work involves knowing what a high-quality teamdesign entails, and then getting as many of those con-ditions in place as possible before convening the team.

We and our colleagues have conducted a great dealof research on a wide variety of teams to identify thedesign conditions that reliably foster team effective-ness. The conditions we describe come from studies ofsenior leadership teams from around the world, ofanalytic teams in the U.S. intelligence community, ofteams of grass-roots organizers, and of a range ofconsulting, production, service, sales and projectteams. These teams come from small businesses, hugemultinational conglomerates, and all kinds and sizes oforganization in between. Many are from not-for-protand public sector organizations. The teams work in avariety of industries, come from at least 12 nations,and include organizations you have never heard of aswell as many high-prole players.

In brief, the conditions for team effectiveness wehave identied are (1) creating a real work team(rather than a set of people who are a team in nameonly), (2) specifying a compelling direction or purposefor the team, (3) creating an enabling team structure,and (4) providing an organizational context that sup-ports teamwork, and (5) coaching the team as a team.These conditions are described in more detail in theaccompanying sidebar; guidance about strategies forcreating them is provided in the readings in theappended bibliography.

Collectively, these design features create a highand sturdy platform on which to launch a work team.Shaping the features of the teams design is an essen-tial team leadership activity, because a high-qualityteamdesign establishes powerful and persistent posi-tive inuences on the key processes that drive per-formance over time. Creating a good team design canbe a quite challenging leadership task, however, onethat requires both conceptual work and behavioralskill.

Thinking it through. Great pre-work always involvescognitive activityin particular, careful thought aboutwhich design conditions are most critical for the workthe team will be doing. For example, thinking throughthe task demands, and dening the capabilities mem-bers must have to perform the work well is largely ananalytic task. And that task should be done long beforea team is brought together. We have, for example, seenfar too many chief executive ofcers (CEOs) take as agiven that their team refers to all their direct reports.The best of them, by contrast, rst ask: What do Iwant of my leadership team? Which of my seniorleaders have what it takes to think about the whole

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enterprise, and tomake decisions in collaborationwiththeir peers? The answers to those questions deter-mine who is invited to the table.

Similarly, crafting an initial statement of purpose isconceptual work. It involves thinking through oneschoice of words and how to provide clarity. It meansnding ways to link the statement of team direction tomembers values or to the overall purposes of theorganization, to make it compelling to teammembers.This cognitive planning puts a team leader in the bestpossible position to engage the energy of members, tobe sure that the work the leader has in mind reallydoes call for a team of people, and to identify whoshould be put on the team.

Getting the key design conditions in place is asequential process. For example, there is very little ateam leader can do about choosing the right peopleand creating constructive norms of conduct in a teambefore rst having thought through what the task is,how to make it a team task, and how it will be com-municated to the team in a compelling way.

Getting it done. Team leaders sometimes nd it dif-cult or impossible to create a good team design,especially in organizations that have been ne-tunedover the years to support work performed by indivi-dual employees. Creating true team tasks, for exam-ple, can be quite a challenge. Sometimes it requiresreassembling pieces of work that, for the sake ofefciency, have been partitioned into small, routi-

nized subtasks doled out to individuals. Similarly,state-of-the-art performance appraisal systems thatprovide good measures of individual contributionsare often completely inappropriate for assessingand rewarding work done by teams. Creating ateam-favorable design, therefore, often requiresskilled negotiations with managerial colleagues toobtain resources and tomake organizational changes.And those activities are far better done in advance ofthe team beginning its work rather than later, when apoor design is already creating difculties for theteam.

A second kind of behavioral pre-work is to rehearseones intended statement of purpose before actuallyconvening the team. Practicing the team launch offersa leader the opportunity to draw on the advice andreactions of a trusted advisor as a sounding board. Formany leaders, hearing an advisors perspective on howones words come across, and what is actually beingcommunicated, is the best preparation possible for ahigh-quality team launch.

Launch ing the Team

A leaders behavior at the launch of any work teamserves a vital functionnamely, to breathe life into theteams basic design and thereby help the team startfunctioning on its own. Good team beginnings areespecially critical because the majority of key leader-ship functions are fullled, for better or for worse, by

194 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS

Sidebar: Conditions for Team Effectiveness

1. Real team. Real teams (1) have clear boundaries; (2) are interdependent for some common purpose; and(3) have at least some stability of membership, which givesmembers time and opportunity to learn how towork together well.

2. Compelling direction. The specification of the teams overall purposes is (1) challenging (which energizesmembers), (2) clear (which orients them to their main purposes) and (3) consequential (which engages thefull range of their talents).

3. Enabling structure. Three structural features are key in fostering competent teamwork. (1) Task design. Theteam task is a whole and meaningful piece of work for which members have autonomy to exercisejudgment about work procedures, and that provides members with regular and trustworthy data abouthow well the team is doing. (2) Team composition. The team is as small as possible, has members withample task and interpersonal skills, and consists of a goodmix ofmembers. (3)Core norms of conduct. Theteam clearly and explicitly specifies both thosemember behaviors that are especially valued and those thatare unacceptable.

4. Supportive organizational context. In addition to thematerial resources needed for thework, three featuresof the organizational context are especially consequential: (1) the reward system provides positiveconsequences for excellent team performance. (2) The educational system makes available technicalassistance or training for any aspects of the work for which members are not already knowledgeable,skilled, or experienced. (3) The information system provides the team with whatever data and projectionsmembers need to select or invent strategies for carrying out the work that are fully appropriate forthe teams task and situation.

When the first four conditions are in place, it becomes useful to provide the fifth:5. Available, expert coaching. The team has available to it someone expert in helping members make good

use of their collective resources as they work together.

the time a team is only a fewminutes old. And it is thebeginning that offers the best chance to engage mem-bers motivation with the work at hand.

When teammembers rst come together, the mostpressing piece of business is to get oriented to oneanother and to the task. This orientation involvesestablishing the boundary that distinguishesmembersfrom nonmembers, starting to differentiate roles andformulate norms about how members will worktogether, and engaging with (and, inevitably, reden-ing) the group task.

Some leaders are fortunate because long-standingorganizational processes for launching teams arealready in place. At PepsiCo Inc., for example, wefound that there were very strong norms about howpeople should operate both as team leaders and asteam members. A carefully scripted on-boardingprocess for teams was in place that showed leadersand members how to bring the core conditions forteam effectiveness to life in the rst meeting. Thatprocess included: (1) identifying and highlighting thecore capabilities that each member brought to theteams work; (2) articulating the team purpose andinviting members to respond; (3) creating a sense ofshared identity, emphasizing what we share andour accountabilities; (4) identifying the mainresources the teamwould need and how to get them;and (5) putting the norms and expectations for mem-bers on the table for the group to revise and ratify.Collectively, these elements of the launch script ani-mated all the essential conditions for team effective-ness. And they established a positive trajectory forteams thatmade later coaching interventions immea-surably easier.

When a launch is successful, the leader has helped agroup move from being just a list of names to a real,bonded team. The ofcial task that the team wasassigned gets examined, assessed, and then redenedto become the slightly different task that the teamcommits to tackle together. And the team has begundeveloping and trying out the initially specied teamnorms, to be gradually revised and made the teamsown.

Even so, it does not all happen at oncesomecycling back to issues that the leader may havethought were already settled inevitably occurs. Inthe course of a launch, for example, members typicallytest the leaders statement of purpose, they may askclarifying questions that have a confrontational under-tone, and they eventually redene the purpose at leastto some degree. That is one reason why it is so impor-tant for the leader who commissions the team toachieve clarity in his or her mind during pre-work.It is during pre-work that a leader can get her ownmind clear on just what is needed from the team, andabout those aspects of the purpose that are negoti-ableand those that are not.

Sometimes leaders ask the team members todebate their work strategy at the launchmeeting. Thatis almost always a bad idea. When teams are juststarting out, they are not yet ready to address ques-tions about alternative ways of going about the work.In fact, as we have seen, it is nearly impossible to getgroups to actually have a productive discussion ofperformance strategy at launch. The beginning of awork cycle turns out to be an inappropriate time for acoaching intervention that focuses on work strategy. Itmay not be until themidpoint of the teams work cyclethat members become fully ready for interventionsintended to help them settle on a strategy that theyactually will use in completing their work.

Consu l t i ng a t the Midpo in t

Major changes in how a teamworks are unlikely tohappen until there is some natural break in the work.As Gersicks research demonstrated, themidpoint is anespecially pronounced and predictable breakpoint.Halfway through a cycle, a meeting, or a project, teamstend naturally to reorganize and reorient their pro-cesses in preparation for the second half. The mid-point, therefore, is a time when a team is likely to beready (or, in some cases, even eager) for consultativeleader interventions, which help members revise andrene their work strategy.

Some of the most deft team coaching we have seentakes place during these predictable downtimes.Well-conducted midpoint consultations often involveasking a team to reect on which approaches to thework are effective andwhich aremisdirected, off-base,or simply not working. Even the best teams have atendency to get caught up in the heat of a difcultdecision, or to get mired in inappropriate behavior anddigressions. We see patient and dexterous leaders letthat process go on for a while. Then, when the team isfully ready to reect on how things have been going,the leader poses questions such as How is that work-ing? Whats not helping? What do we wish we hador hadnt done? What shall we do differently for thenext half? The discussion that ensues can be the bestway to help the team generate a good way of movingforward with the work.

For example, a business unit president of a globalmining rm used the last hour of the rst day of histwo-day management team meeting to conduct amidcourse review. He briey described some of thebehaviors in the team that had improved since themembers had begun working together three monthsbefore, the norms that he saw them consistently enfor-cing, and the few things they still did not do welldespite trying hard: Like me jumping on top of Hai-leys comment without even understanding her point,when we said we wouldnt do that. He then invitedthe team members to add their own comments and

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observations about the teamsworkprocesses. It turnedout to be an important opportunity for the team tochange a few key features of their work process, suchas how well they addressed each others business con-cerns. And they experienced signicantly greater trac-tion in their decision making in the next days work.

The midpoint, then, is a time when members aremost likely to welcome and be helped by interven-tions that encourage them to assess their work pro-gress, to review how they are applying membersefforts and talents to the work, and to consider howthey might want to alter their task performance stra-tegies to better align themwith external demands andinternal resources. A good midcourse review also canuncover important gaps in teammembers knowledgeand skill for the work at hand, especially when theproblem or client is new to the team, and whenanticipating all the necessary capabilities would havebeen an exercise in clairvoyance. Midpoints are notgood times for teaching team members new skills,however. If it becomes clear at the midpoint that thework is suffering because of missing capabilities, itmay be better to engage the team in locating peopleoutside the group who can provide some help than totake time out for members themselves to hone theirknowledge or skills. As will be seen next, learning isbest done later, when the grouphas reached the endofa performance period.

Harves t ing Les sons Learned a t the End

The nal predictable opportunity for helpful teamleadership occurs when the work is nished or asignicant subtask has been accomplished. At theend of a task cycle, a team has all the informationthey are likely to get about what members can learnfrom their team experiences. Members are ready tointernalize and use the lessons they learn from theirwork. Anxieties about getting a piece of work orga-nized and nished on time dissipate once the work iscompleted, the main reason that learning-focusedinterventions are best done at the end: People donot learn well when they brim with anxieties. Finally,there usually is time for reection once the task hasbeen nished. The post-performance period, therefore,is an especially crucial time for leaders to undertakelearning-focused coaching.

Excellent debriefs not only build the teams reser-voir of talent for subsequent work, but also contributedirectly to the personal learning of individual teammembers. Some years ago, Ruth Wageman, then adoctoral student, was conducting research on taskinterdependence among eld service teams at XeroxCorporation. Her academic advisor, Richard Hackman,accompanied her to a meeting with the managers whowould be involved in the project. At the end of themeeting, one of the Xerox managers asked, as was

customary at the company, two debrieng questions:What did we do especially well today? And whatneeds some improvement? Various itemswere calledout in response to the rst question. There was but asingle suggestion for the second item, however: Theprofessors interpersonal skills. The professor joinedin the laughter. But later he reected back on hisbehavior in that meetingand he found that therewere indeed some ways in which he could havebehaved more competently and helpfully in teaminteractions. Those reections, and the learning theyspawned, never would have happened if the Xeroxservice organization had not routinely and habituallyconducted post-meeting debriengs.

Without direct intervention, teammembers are notlikely to conduct a systematic debrieng. If the teamhas succeeded, they will be more interested in cele-brating than in reecting. If it has failed, they may bedriven more to rationalize why the poor outcome wasnot really their fault than to explore what might belearned from it. Finally, even if members do take thetime to reect on possible explanations for the teamslevel of performance, leader coaching can be helpful inbringing those explanations into alignment with rea-lity before the team either moves on to another tasktogether or disbands to address other work.

Conc lus ion

Team leader pre-work sets the stage for team effec-tiveness. By creating conditions that foster team effec-tiveness before a team meets, a leader substantiallylessens the chances that the team will succumb tointractable process losses. Moreover, pre-workincreases the likelihood that members will generatereal synergies, or process gains. In addition, getting therst four conditions in place goes a long way towardmaking the fth condition competent coaching possible. If the team is poorly designed, there is verylittle a leader can do in real time to redress the dif-culties that the team is almost certain to have. But ifthe basic conditions for effectiveness are in place, thenreal-time leadership actions can help a team get overrough spots and take advantage of opportunities that apoorly designed team would overlook or mishandle.

Once the team is underway, expert team leadersfocus on three predictable times when coaching canbe especially helpful: beginnings, midpoints, andends. At the beginning of a teams work, motivationalinterventions that focus on the level of effort theteam applies to its work are especially helpful. Suchinterventions can help minimize free riding (a pro-cess loss) and build high-shared commitment to theteam and its work (a process gain). For example,articulating a specic, challenging goal and attachinga valuable reward to achieving it are leadershipactions that can motivate members to focus intently


on the task at hand and to work hard to accomplishit.

At themidpoint of a teamswork, consultative inter-ventions that help the team revise and improve itsperformance strategies are especially helpful. Such inter-ventions can help the group avoid over-reliance onhabitual routines that may be inappropriate for theteams task (a process loss) and instead invent workstrategies that are particularly well-suited for the taskand situation (a process gain). For example, a teamleader of a problem-solving team can introduce theteam to people who have tackled similar problemsand invite team members to explore alternative waysof getting the work done.

Finally, at the end of a performance period, educa-tional interventions that help the teammake good useof the full complement ofmembers knowledge and skillcan be especially helpful. Such interventions canmini-mize the mis-weighting of members contributions(that is, when the importance given to individualmembers contributions does not match their actualtalent for the task, a process loss), and foster peer-to-peer teaching and coaching that can increase theteams capabilities (a process gain).

Clearly, a team that applies ample effort to its work,that uses a performance strategy that is well-alignedwith its task and situation, and that appropriatelydraws on members knowledge and skills is muchmore likely to perform well than a team that managesthese processes poorly. Leader interventions can beextremely helpful to teams in managing these essen-tial performance processesbut, as we have seen, it isvital that each one be addressed at the specic, pre-dictable time in the teams life when members areready to receive help and use it.

T IMING TYPE I I : KNOWING WHEN TOADDRESS THE UNPREDICTABLE NUANCESOF GROUP DYNAMICS

The [project] team had been preparing itspresentation for the client, but they reallywerent seeing it through the clients eyes. . ..It was clear from the rst slide they showedme when I walked in the room that we hadvery different expectations for what the cli-ents needed to see. . .. I knew I needed to leadthem to a place where they could look at [allthe information they had assembled] fromthe clients perspective. . .. So I had tomake asnap decision whether to say right away,This is not what were looking for, orwhether to wait until after the presentationand act as if we had come to this conclu-sion.Tony, a partner at a global consultingrm, on coaching one of his project teams

before a meeting with a client

Tony had a choice to make during his meeting withthe team he was supervising. He had quickly diag-nosed an unexpected problem, but he also needed toweigh the pros and cons of intervening earlier or later.Intervening immediately, he could see, would savetime and get the team onto a good trajectory morequickly, but might undermine the teams sense ofautonomy and short-circuit any learning that mem-bers could harvest from guring it out for themselves.On the other hand, while waiting would allow Tony toget a better sense of what was going on and why, theteam could end up wasting valuable time before themeeting with the client.

Tonys dilemma typies the second type of timingthat team leaders must master. Our emphasis on pre-dictable times of readiness could be viewed as sug-gesting that leadership actions are irrelevant orineffectual during the great majority of a teamslifethat is, in the extended periods that lie betweenits beginning andmidpoint, andmidpoint and end. It istrue that teams are remarkably impervious to majorinterventions made during times of low readiness.However, by actively watching for emerging opportu-nities to motivate, consult to, and educate teams, teamleaders can make signicant contributions to the teamand its work.

To exercise great Type II timing, team leaders mustdiagnose group problems and opportunities as theyoccur and craft competent interventions on the y. Aswill be seen, both diagnosis and intervention require anely honed sense of timing and considerable coach-ing skill.

Diagnos i s on the F l y

It may seem unnecessary to say, but we have foundmany team leaders need reminding that: Diagnosing ateams problems and opportunities requires that one

actually observe the team doing its work. Too manyteam leaders, when they do not have formal respon-sibilities that require their presence with the team,choose to work on other matters rather than observethe team in action. Others pitch in to help the teamwith its work rather than keep an eye on team pro-cesses. Still others, although fewer in number, havelearned about the importance of coaching interven-tions at beginnings, midpoints, and endsand payclose attention to what is going on in the team onlythen, thereby potentially missing important develop-ments that occur between the predictable times.

Occasionally, however, we have observed teamleaders who get good data about team processesthroughout the teams entire life cycle. Moreover,some organizations have developed policies that expli-citly encourage this. At Tonys organization, for exam-ple, the rms partners scheduled three hours perweekto check in, observe, and raise questions with each

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project team that they supervised. This policy createdample opportunity for the partners to identify strug-gling teams before they caused problems for clients,and to develop team members individual and collec-tive capacities in real time.

Whenever a team leader observes a team at work,he or she should focus on the teams standing on thethree performance processes. Team leaders can dis-cern subtle but critical dynamics by scanning theteam interactions and asking themselves a short setof diagnostic questionsHow are they doing oneffort? Are there signs of mindless routines, or doestheir strategy seem well-suited? Is there anythinggoing on here that is causing the team to underusesome talent?

However, dramatic moments in the interaction canoften lead team leaders to overfocus on one processand miss opportunities to be genuinely helpful withothers. For example, at amanagement teammeeting atthe Center for Application of Substance Abuse Tech-nologies (CASAT), several team members complainedvocally that work was unfairly distributed amongteam members. Executive Director Gary Fisher, cap-tured by the intense feelings expressed, focused on theemotional and interpersonal aspects of what he heardin the meeting. In response, he called an all-day meet-ing in which team members aired their interpersonalissues and decided to redistribute responsibilitiesmore equally. However, the teams performance pro-blems persistedand were ultimately solved by asmall, strategic shift in their work operations. Byfocusing energy on the surface content of team mem-ber complaints, rather than by watching the problemas it was occurring, Gary not only misdiagnosed asimple task strategy issue, but wasted the teams timeand resources. To avoid such misdiagnoses, team lea-ders must balance their attention across the threeperformance processes and properly diagnose unex-pected issues as they emerge.

Merely paying attention to these processes is notenough, however. Team leaders also must compe-tently interpret what they see. For instance, we oftenshow ourmanagement students a reenacted video of areal-life leadership team. In one tense moment, theteam is engaged in a heated discussion as they try todecide how to reduce the organizations overheadcosts by 20 percent. Some students see in this discus-sion a productive debate aboutwork strategy, and theydo not see a constructive purpose to intervening in theteams process. Others, however, are concerned thatinterpersonal conict between members is undermin-ing the teams effort on the task and argue that thechief executive should intervene. Either interpretationmight be appropriate, but each will affect both thetiming and type of intervention the leader shouldchoose. Team leaders with good knowledge of the taskand of the team and its history are in the best position

to make accurate diagnoses of what team dynamicsmean for the three key performance processes.

One word of caution: A common error we see teamleaders make in diagnosing team processes is focusingtoo much on the quality of members interpersonalrelationships. Relationship dynamics are easy to see,especially when conicts and disagreements develop,but they can prompt interventions that miss the mark,as Gary Fishers experience dealing with the negativeemotions in his management team illustrated.Although some leaders assume that harmonious inter-action is a sign that a team is working well, interven-tions focused on improving relationships do notactually foster team effectiveness over the long term.In fact, as Robert Kaplan documented years ago (in anarticle tellingly titled The conspicuous absence ofevidence that process consultation enhances task per-formance), relationship-focused interventions impairteam effectiveness as often as they helpby distract-ing members from the work at hand. Team-buildingexercises that emphasize trust or cohesion are indeedenjoyable and engaging, but they often divert mem-bers attention from task-focused activities that actu-ally have a chance of improving performanceoutcomes.

It is true that building harmonious interpersonalrelations among members can reduce the amount ofconict that exists among membersbut conictabout the best ways to do the work, or about therelative worth of different ideas that members pro-pose, actually can foster creativity and, ultimately,team effectiveness. Unless a team leader observes thatinterpersonal difculties are diminishing the teamsmotivation, or members capacity to develop appro-priate strategies, or their ability to leverage oneanothers talents, interventions that target interperso-nal relationships are unlikely to help the teamwith itswork.

Cra f t i ng Rea l -T ime In te rven t ions

Once team leaders diagnose the signs a team needshelp, they must contend with the key issue of timingon the y: How soon should they intervene? Shouldthey act immediately, as soon as a problem surfaces, orlet things play out for a while? The dilemma is thatintervening quickly is more likely to correct the pro-blem before it becomes intractable. But early actionmakes a team dependent on its leader and underminesthe teams capacity for self-correction. Interveninglater allows the leader to gather more data and offersroom for the team to learn from its experience andcorrect its own mistakes. But delay also increases thechances that a problem will become too large ever tobe corrected. Here is how Tony, the consulting rmpartner, concerned about his teams upcoming pre-sentation, handled this trade-off:


I decided to [wait to intervene and] let themwalkme through [their presentation], just incase I wasmissing something. I also felt that,from interacting with the team, the engage-ment manager had the thinnest skin, and Iwanted to steer them in a way whichwouldnt make him defensive or questionhis leadership. So, I had [two other teammembers] role-play the presenter and theclient, while the engagement manager andthe other team members watched. I didntsay much while this was happening, but theother members of the team started to askquestions from the clients perspective, andthey quickly realized that they didnt reallyhave recommendations that t. And I didthis on purpose so they could learn butnot feel bad about themselves and Iwouldnthave to lecture them. They could both testout the material for this particular projectand, hopefully, learn a technique to helpthem better prepare for meetings in thefuture. . .Rather than beating them over thehead with [what I thought they should do], Iwound up walking them to a place wherethey could nd that out on their own.

In this example, Tony detected a problem in teamstrategy. But he believed that the additional data heand the team would gain by waiting was valuableenough that he chose not to intervene when he rstnoticed the problem. He also made the judgment that,because he would not be working with this teamregularly, the team had to have the ability to self-correct. Had the client meeting been sooner, or hadhis coaching meeting with the team been of shorterduration, he might reasonably have chosen to inter-vene more quickly.

Tonys intervention was also appropriately modest.Because the effort, strategy, and use of talent in a teamare set on a trajectory by the teams initial design, teamleaders swim against strong existing currents whenthey attempt trajectory-changing interventions in realtime. Major changes therefore are best made duringthose predictable times, discussed earlier, when teamsare ready for them. Moreover, as Ruth Wagemandocumented in her study on self-managing teams,teams that are poorly designed and launched arenot helped by real-time process interventions. Well-designed teams, on the other hand, do benet frommodest interventions that aim to achieve small, posi-tive shifts in team effort, strategy, and knowledge andskill.

Oneway inwhich team leaders can intervene in theperiods between beginnings,midpoints, and ends is byusing operant techniques (i.e. positive and negativefeedback) to reinforce constructive but infrequently

observed team behaviorsfor example, praising ateam for eliciting participation from quieter members,or pointing out that members attention to the keyissue has slipped. Such interventions can both increasethe frequency of desirable behaviors and decrease thefrequency of behaviors that are distracting or disrup-tive.

However, operant interventions only inuence thefrequency of existing behaviors. What actions can ateam leader take in the moment to elicit effectivebehavior that is not being exhibited in the team?Leadership research often differentiates betweendirective and participative leader styles of inter-vening. Essentially, directive interventions tell teamswhat to do and what not to do with a minimum ofinput frommembers. They undoubtedly are faster andclearer in the moment. Participative interventions,generally executed by asking questions of the team,invite discussion and the invention of new and alter-native ways of behaving. They take time that other-wise could be spent working on the task, but they canclarify team members understanding of what isneeded, and strengthen their commitment to behavedifferently.

Even though participative interventions oftensacrice short-term efciency, they also may elicitnew behaviors quickly that would not have emergedspontaneously. That is precisely what happened in theexample above. Tony set the team up so that memberscould question each other and identify their ownmistakes, and then solve their problems without hisdirection. This time-consuming intervention helpedthe team add new ways of preparing for client meet-ings to its repertoire. Moreover, the new behavior wasmore valuable to Tony and to the client than the smallamount of time that would have been saved had hequickly told the teamwhat he thought was wrong andwhat they should do about it.

A directive approach, by contrast,may be especiallyuseful when a team is stuck, is headed for a majordisaster, or is xating on inappropriate matters. Forexample, Yuki Fujiyama, who runs a major businessunit for a large nancial services organization, foundher leadership team consumed by a heated debateabout an unpopular cost-allocation process that thechief nancial ofcer (CFO) had recently introduced.Seeing that the team was on an unproductive tangentfromwhich it was unlikely to recover, she stopped thedebate cold, asserting that the team would spend nomore time second-guessing its CFO and would turn,instead, to their planned discussion of strategic prio-rities.

Such pointed interventions that let members knowthat they are signicantly off track can sometimes behighly constructive, especially if one also addresseswhy the behavior is problematic and what behaviorsmight be more appropriate. However, Fukiyama did

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take the risk that her team would read her actions aspolitical support of a particular team member ratherthan as a statement about the kind of work that shouldbe the teams focus. It is better for a leader to explicitlystate why she expects what she expects from the teamthan to allowmembers to draw their own sometimes-sinister conclusions.

TEAM RE-LAUNCH AS AN INTERVENT IONSTRATEGY

Even competent, well-timed interventions sometimescannot save a team from an accelerating downwardtrajectory. Poorly designed teams with unclear pur-poses, for example, can develop persistent dysfunc-tions, in which team leaders and members know thereare signicant problems with effort, strategy, or use oftalent. Unfortunately, the dysfunctions persist nomat-ter who intervenes or how. For example, the seniorleadership team of a global mining company returnedagain and again to the same issues without ever com-ing together to make a decision. Upon reection, theCEO saw that while his initial choice of teammemberslooked promising, he inadvertently had included in theteam too many people from too many different levelsand functions of the organization ever to reach com-mon ground. All the clever coaching in the world wasnot going to bring that team to a point of effectiveness.

In such situations, team leaders who have diag-nosed the problem must lie in wait for an opportunityto change the basic design of the team, or create suchan opportunity themselves. In the above example, theCEO had all the authority he needed to redene theteams membership and purposeall he had to do wasto wait for the right moment. In his case, the approachof the new scal year created a naturally occurringpoint of inection in the organization. He acknowl-edged that the team as congured was not working,and announced that he was disbanding the team andstarting over at the start of the newscal year, with anew conguration ofmembers, a newname, and a newmeeting schedule. Armed with the lessons of priorexperience, he cut the size down to a handful of topexecutives, all of whom had previously demonstratedthe ability to work collaboratively on the kinds ofenterprise issues he wanted the team to tackle.Renaming the team made it palatable to those whowere not invited to be part of the new team, especiallysince he preserved the original team for less frequentinformation-sharing meetings.

Many leaders nd this idea of a team re-launch,as we term it, a source of considerable relief. Itsliberating to realize one does not have to live withcontinuing frustrations and dysfunctions. Re-launchdoes not offer an excuse for not getting the teamdesign right in the rst place, but it does offer realrecourse to team leaders who are coping with persis-

tently ineffective teams. It can help them to recon-gure the purpose or composition or norms that are ill-designed, and enable the team to have a fresh start.

WHEN TIMING IS BEYOND YOUR CONTROL

There are times in organizational life when team lea-ders have no realistic possibility of exhibiting goodtiming. Two such times are when institutionalrhythms overwhelm the predictable pacing of teamswork, and when catastrophic events prevent leadersfrom having any real choice about the timing of theiractivities.

In s t i tu t i ona l Rhy thms

The presence of powerful temporal forces thataffect an entire organization canmake it nearly impos-sible to properly time team interventions. When anorganization begins to move toward amajor event likea merger or new product launch, for example, teamsinvariably are swept along and their natural rhythmsare disrupted. In these cases, leaders cannot expect tosee the periods of readiness for interventions thatcome so predictably in normal circumstances, andType I timing becomes impossible. Only Type II timingis relevantassessing how teams are doing as eventsunfold, and crafting interventions in real time asneeded. Leaders who still try to do their main coachingat the beginnings, midpoints, and ends of team lifecycles are almost certain to be both frustrated andunsuccessful. There are times when one simply mustgo with the larger ow.

An apparent obstacle to well-timed coaching iswork that is performed continuously around the clockand throughout the year. How can one exploit theopportunities for intervention at beginnings, mid-points, and ends if there are no beginnings, midpoints,or ends? In fact, we nd that there almost always are:If they do not exist naturally, then teams or theirmanagers create them. For example, the semiconduc-tor manufacturing teams that David Abramis andRichard Hackman studied at the Signetics Corporationsome years ago operated continuously throughout theyear: There were no natural breaks in the ow of thework. But managers at the plant arbitrarily partitionedthe year into six-weekperformance periods. Both teamdynamics and the tendency of team leaders to coach atthose times were highly responsive to the beginnings,midpoints, and ends of those entirely made-up tem-poral periods.

The creation of quarters to demark nancial report-ing periods and semesters to organize educationalactivities in schools have the same charactertheyare arbitrary, but nonetheless powerful in shapingthe rhythm of collective activity. Temporal rhythmsare deeply rooted in human experience, and we do not


do well when we do not have them. If rhythms fail tooccur naturally (for example, through seasonal orbiological cycles), we make up somemarkers and thenentrain our activities to them. These made-up markersare surrogates for real beginnings, midpoints, andendsbut they create opportunities for team leader-ship interventions that are just as real as the real thing.

Ca ta s t roph i c Event s

How can a leader do well-timed coaching when allhands are on deck dealing with an unanticipated crisisor catastrophe? Sometimes there really is not muchthat can be done: When the hurricane comes, it is thehurricane rather than the team leader that determineswhat happens when. That said, it also is true that thereusually are many more opportunities than one mightimagine for well-timed leader interventions even incrisis situations.

Consider, for example, an operating room that isconvened in real time when a patient develops anunexpected problem that requires immediate surgery.The team in the operating room the surgeon, theanesthesiologist, the nurses will not look muchdifferent from a team that is performing a procedurethat has been scheduled well in advance. The differ-ence, as a pediatric surgeon at a major Boston hospitaltold us, is that in an emergency situation there issimply no time to have the team brieng that he likesto conduct prior to beginning a scheduled procedure.

In fact, its a judgment call. Which is worse for thepatient: to take a short delay during which thepatients condition may deteriorate while the surgicalteam gets its act together, or to run the risk that an un-launched team may have failures of coordination thatpose an even graver threat than that of a brief delay?Our guess is that most surgeons would worry moreabout the delay than about the possibility of teamprocess problems. We are tempted to come downon the other side. There are relatively few occasionswhen deferring the start of a procedure for a fewminutes will have mortal consequences even in med-ical emergencies, and relatively more occasions whena procedure that should have proceeded quickly andsmoothly did not because of team-related communi-cation miscues and coordination failures.

What if all staff on the surgical service had pre-viously been trained in strategies for conducting aquick launch of a surgical team, and had practicedthose strategies frequently enough that they becamesecond nature? Would that make it possible for theteam to have a reasonable launch even as memberswere arriving and making preparations for their ownroles in the upcoming procedure? And could the samekind of thing be done for mid-procedure check-insabout team strategy, and for quick and efcientpost-procedure debriengs? We are not aware of

any research that bears directly on these questions.But we are condent that there are many more oppor-tunities for well-timed team interventions even incrisis situations than are generally recognized. Justbecause a crisis appears does not mean that timingbecomes irrelevant; indeed, it very well could be thatthe timing of team-oriented interventions is evenmore consequential in crisis conditions than it is innormal times.

WHAT IT TAKES TO HAVE A GREAT SENSEOF T IMING

A great sense of timing requires certain human capa-cities beyond the basic necessities of team leadershipskills. In addition to knowing about the key perfor-mance processes that inuence team effectiveness andthe times when a team is likely to be open to coachinginterventions, team leaders also need the ability tosense social systemsthat is, to be able to recognizethe root causes driving the behavioral patterns theysee in teams. Great timing also requires that leadersmaster their own natural tendencies to analyze end-lessly and to recognize when one must act rst andanalyze later. We explore below what is involved inthese two special leadership capabilities.

Ab i l i t y to Sense Soc i a l Sy s t ems

Leading teams requires identifying the systemicconditions that create obstacles to team performanceor, alternatively, that increase the chances of teameffectiveness. System-focused action is creating theright design features for a team and then occasionallyintervening on the y, in ways that elicit and reinforceeffective collaboration. Consistent with these observa-tions, we nd that the team leaders with the besttiming are those who are adept both in comprehend-ing the systemic nature of teams and organizations,and in taking actions that respect and take full advan-tage of systemic forces.

Competent team leadership interventions, there-fore, require a diagnostic frame of mind, in which aleader asks What are the critical functions that are notbeing fullled in this system right now? That kind ofdiagnostic question allows a leader to identify theactions that have the best possible chance of strength-ening a team in its particular context at a particulartime. For example, one leader of a regional medicalproducts company had superb system-sensing skill.He recognized that it was unclear purposes and trivialtasks that were the most likely root causes of mem-bers disengagement in a series of team meetings.Other observers might have seen the boredom, rest-lessness, and surreptitious e-mail checking as signsthat members were challenging his authority. But hisrecognition of the underlying issue allowed him to

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take well-timed action, clarifying purposes and rede-signing the teams shared work, when the situationpresented an opportunity to do so. This diagnosticframe of mind, coupled with an understanding ofthe main conditions that elicit and reinforce effectivecollaboration, illustrates what we mean by the skill ofsensing social systems.

Impu l se to Ac t v s . Ana lyze

Team leaders differ in their propensity to act rst(and analyze later) vs. analyze rst (and act later). Ourobservations suggest that these differences sometimescan impede a leaders ability to act at the rightmoment. Consider, for example, a leader who stronglyagrees with the following statement: It is reckless toact without careful advance planning. Such a leaderwill wait, observe, and learn before taking action.Leaders who have a strong propensity to analyze aremore likely to intervene later rather than sooner inteamdynamics, and have a better chance of getting thecontent of their interventions right. That is, they putthemselves in position to understand what is causingthe team to struggle and what actions in their ownrepertoire are likely to be helpful. Moreover, they run alow risk of undermining the teams ability to self-manage and solve its own problems because the teamwill have plenty of room to self-correct before itsleader intervenes. But such individuals may missentirely the critical moments in the team when thegroup is most able to be helped by prompt action.

Now consider the action-prone leader, one whowould agree with the statement: Endless analysiscreates more problems than does thoughtless action.Such an individual intervenes quickly, with relativelylittle observational data about what is going on in theteam. Action-oriented leaders are likely to act onproblems long before they become intractable ordamaging to team performance. But those actionsmay be taken on the basis of an incomplete or incorrectunderstanding of the group dynamic. Such leaders alsomay unintentionally prevent their teams from self-correcting and thereby encourage them to remaindependent on the leader to take care of things.

Among the best team leaders we have observed arethose who have learned to shift orientation depending

on the situations their teams face. Sometimes theseleaders act swiftly; other times they defer action untilthey have done considerable observation and analysis.The success of this shifting strategy of coursedepends upon the degree to which action- or analy-sis-prone behaviors actually are under leaders volun-tary control. Sometimes action-prone behavior isdriven by a leaders anxiety that the teams trajectorywill get out of control and that he will take the blamefor the consequences. And analysis-prone behavior canbe driven by a leaders lack of condence in his teamleadership repertoire. Developing both capacities toact swiftly or towait and analyzemore data may bestbe done under conditions of relatively low pressure, sothat those who hold responsibility for leading teamscan learn to choose their approach deliberately whenthe moment matters.

CONCLUS ION

Effective team leadership ensures that the functionsthat aremost critical to a team in achieving its purposesare identied and fullled when the moment is right.Anyone who contributes to that whether a formalteam leader, a regular teammember, or even an outsidemanager or consultant is exhibiting team leadership.This article has described what it means to have greattiming in anyones team leadership activities. It takes aworking knowledge ofwhat teams need andwhen theyneed it. It means putting the conditions for team effec-tiveness in place in the right sequence, then exploitingpredictable points of readiness in teams, and, nally,watching for real-time opportunities to help teams onthe y. These different aspects of great timing place aheavy demand on the cognitive, emotional, and beha-vioral capacities of individuals. Therefore, when a givenleadership activity requires knowledge or skill that isbeyond one individuals capabilities, the best team lea-ders do not hesitate to call on others to lend a hand inhelping the teammove forward. Team leadership is nota solo act. It, too, is a team activity.


SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

The conditions for team effectiveness are explored inHackmans book Leading Teams: Setting the Stage ForGreat Performances (Boston: Harvard Business SchoolPress, 2002). Hackman and Wageman addressed thebroader question of circumstances under which teamleaders canandcannothelptheir teams ina2005article,When and How Team Leaders Matter, published inResearch in Organizational Behavior, 26, 3976.

The title of R. E. Kaplan s 1979 article assessing theeffects of relationship-focused interventions intoteams foreshadows his conclusion: The ConspicuousAbsence of Evidence That Process ConsultationEnhances Task Performance, in Journal of AppliedBehavioral Science, 15, 346360.

For a helpful treatment of how teams are inu-enced by temporal markers in organizations and howthey develop predictable cycles, see D. Ancona and C.Chongs Cycles and Synchrony: The Temporal Role ofContext in Team Behavior, which was published in R.Wageman (ed.), Groups in Context (Stamford, CT: JAIPress, 1999), 3348.

For more information on what inuences the tim-ing and type of team leader interventions, see C.M.Fishers What Team Leaders See: Towards an Under-

standing of the Timing of Team Leader Coaching Inter-

ventions (Technical Report No. 6, Project on HumanCognition and Collective Performance, Department ofPsychology, Harvard University, May 2007).

In J. R. Hackmans edited book Groups That Workand Those That Dont (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,1990), there are two cases that provide helpful illus-trations of how early events in a teams life, especiallyleaders actions, affect how well the team performs.The rst is R. Ginnetts Airline cockpit crew, a treat-ment of how captains briengs shape the subsequentbehavior and ultimate effectiveness of ying teams(pp. 427448). The second is C. Gersicks The Bank-ers, which shows a year-long project teams trajectorythrough its launch, midpoint transition, and comple-tion. In addition, Gersicks 1989 piece Marking time:Predictable Transitions in Task Groups explains herndings about temporal phases in group life (Academyof Management Journal, 31, 941).

For a discussion of timing issues in leading teamsat the top of organizations, see R. Wageman, D. Nunes,J. Burruss, and J. R. Hackmans recent book SeniorLeadership Teams: What It Takes To Make Them Great

(Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2008).

Ruth Wageman is Visiting Scholar in Psychology at Harvard and Director of Research forHay Group. She received her bachelors in psychology from Columbia College and herPh.D. in Organizational Behavior from Harvard. Her research interests include inuenceson team effectiveness, the design and leadership of executive teams, and the theory andpractice of leadership development (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United [email protected]).

Colin M. Fisher is a Ph.D. candidate in organizational behavior at Harvard University. Hereceived a bachelors degree in jazz performance from New England Conservatory ofMusic and worked as a professional jazz trumpet player. His research interests includeteam coaching, leadership, improvisation, creativity, and negotiations (HarvardUniversity, Cambridge, MA, United States).

J. Richard Hackman is Edgar Pierce Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology atHarvard University. He received his bachelors degree in mathematics from MacMurrayCollege and his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Illinois. His research interestsinclude team dynamics, leadership effectiveness, and the design of self-managing socialsystems (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States).

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Leading Teams When the Time is Right:Timing Type I: Knowing When a Team Will Predictably be Ready for Leadership InterventionsBefore the Group ExistsThinking it throughGetting it done

Launching the TeamConsulting at the MidpointHarvesting Lessons Learned at the EndConclusion

Timing Type II: Knowing When to Address the Unpredictable Nuances of Group DynamicsDiagnosis on the FlyCrafting Real-Time Interventions

Team Re-Launch as an Intervention StrategyWhen Timing is Beyond Your ControlInstitutional RhythmsCatastrophic Events

What it Takes to Have a Great Sense of TimingAbility to Sense Social SystemsImpulse to Act vs. Analyze

ConclusionSelected bibliography

SD Hackman Leading Teams

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