Team Building - Developing Performing Teams

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Team Conflicts, Argyris, Team Learning, Peter Senge, skill, Team Building, Teamwork, collective work-products, leadership, Michael Dell, John Medica

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Composition of teams Contd...

Exhibit: 1.2
Team Learning at Boston Celtics

Boston Celtics is a basketball team. This team won 11 of the 13 World championships held between the years 1957 and 1969. How did it do so? Red Auerbach¹³, the coach of the team, made sure that every player was on the team as long as he contributed to winning. Everybody's role in the team was clear. Bill Russell (arguably the best basketball player ever), a player on the team, recollects what his coach told him: "He told me that he was counting on me to get the ball off the backboard and pass it quickly.

This, plus defense, was to be my fundamental role on the team, and as long as I performed these functions well, he would never pressure me to score more points. That conversation was worth a whole season of tactical coaching." In this case the coach assured Bill Russel that he did not need to improve his score at the cost of team's success.

The coach of the team was intensely focused on bringing out the collective potential of his team. Team learning was a key part of the Celtics' daily practice. The coach and the team used to explore various ways to improve their game and tactics. The team members had a high level of solidarity among themselves. Retiring players used to give tips to new players on the competition. Bill Russel further adds, "On the court, the most important measure of how good a game I'd played was how much better I'd made my teammates play."

Adapted from "Fifth discipline field book," By: Peter M Senge, Art Kleiner, Charlotte Robberts, Richard B. Ross, Bryan J. Smith, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing group (1994), p351.

The shaping of a common approach needs:
• Details of the task to be accomplished and
• A fit between individual skills the team task In effective teams all the members do equivalent amount of work. Everyone in the team, including the team leader, contributes to the team's work-product¹⁴ in a concrete way. The feeling that everyone is fulfilling his or her role can be an emotionally motivating factor, which can stimulate improved performance.

Team accountability is as important for the success of a team as a common purpose and a common approach are. One characteristic of great teams is mutual accountability. Accountability for the team's performance needs commitment and trust. These will naturally grow when all the members of the team are diligently pursuing common objective. The common purpose, and common approach will finally make the members responsible for the team's performance as well. All the effective teams surveyed felt that working with a common purpose, a common approach, and mutual accountability made their experience both energizing and motivating unlike their regular work.

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13] Red Auerbach is the architect and mastermind behind the Boston Celtics, one of the most dominant franchises in professional sports history
14] Can be equated to team output.