Team Building - Developing Performing Teams
 

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Team Learning 

We all know that the real work in organizations is done by teams and not lone individuals. So for organizations to be effective, they need effective teams. Teams need to constantly operate at a higher level of intelligence than that of individual members. Thus, teams need to be continually learning. The cost of neglected learning can be high. To avoid this, teams need to be aware of the following:

On mediocre teams, one observes two situations surrounding conflict: the appearance of no conflict, and rigid polarization. In the first condition, team members suppress their conflicting views to continue as a team. In the second condition, though the team members speak out their conflicting views, their positions are clear, and no exchange or change of views takes place.

Defensive routines

Chris Argyris [16] studied management teams for 25 years to identify why managers fail to learn in management teams. He found that these managers avoid constructive conflicts and are defensive when a conflict arises. He also identified some basic differences between mediocre teams and great teams. A mediocre team is different from a great team in how it faces a conflict, and how it copes with defensiveness that arises due to conflict. According to Argyris, human beings “are programmed to create defensive routines, and cover them up with further defensive routines...This programming occurs early in life.” [17]

Argyris further says that defensive routines are entrenched habits people use to protect themselves from the embarrassment and threat that comes once they express their views [18]. People use defensive routines as a protective shell around their deepest assumptions. They employ defensive mechanisms to protect themselves from the pain that occurs when these assumptions are questioned or the thinking behind these assumptions is exposed. While these defensive routines protect them from pain, they also prevent them from learning about the causes of the pain.

What is the source of defensive routines? Argyris feels that people become defensive not because they believe in their views, or desire to preserve social relations but because they dread others finding errors in their thinking. As Argyris says, this fear starts in childhood, and is reinforced throughout life. Defensiveness stops people from knowing about the validity of their reasoning. Defensive routines can do more damage in organizations where incomplete or faulty understanding is seen as a sign of weakness or incompetence.

In such organizations, it is often believed that managers should know everything that is happening in the organization. Thus, they become incapable of accepting their ignorance. Obviously, knowing everything that is happening in the organization or having solutions to all the problems in an organization is impossible. But these managers cannot accept that. As a result, they put on an appearance that they know what is happening, and why it is happening. Over a period of time, their assumptions and behaviors get reinforced. They attain mastery at appearing to know what is happening. These managers are forced to behave in either of the ways shown below:

• Some managers internalize the air of confidence and believe that they have solutions to important problems in the organization. To protect their belief they do not accept other alternatives and choose to be closed to other ideas. They believe that to remain confident they have to be rigid.

• Other managers believe that they need to know what is causing problems in the organization. They also believe that they have solutions to the problems but are not very confident of the solutions. However, they maintain a mask of confidence and hide their ignorance.

Thus, some managers become highly skilled at using defensive routines that preserve their image as capable decision makers. Slowly, this behavior sinks into organizational culture. According to Argyris individuals play political games in organizations because that is human nature and the nature of organizations. Human beings are carriers of defensive routines, and organizations are hosts. Once the organizations are infected they too become carriers.[19]

As teams are part of organizations, they too exhibit defensive routines. These routines block a team’s energies and the talents that could have been directed at realizing the team’s purpose. Defensive routines also prevent collective learning in teams.