03-26-2008, 02:17 AM
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Editor in Chief
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 49
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Every Voice Counts
A group or team does not learn by random coincidence or sheer good fortune, but through effective leadership and a facilitating environment. Teams that face dynamic versus static demands must rely on all team members to contribute input and feedback in order to achieve success. Amy C. Edmonson focuses on how leaders and managers can effectively promote learning in a team environment by encouraging each team member to be proactive in communicating questions, concerns and observations to team leaders. This principle may appear to be straightforward, however Edmonson states that there are several hurdles that team members must overcome in order to speak out. Several team members may have a disproportionate amount of power in comparison to other members, which may cause team members to feel as though their opportunity to contribute is limited. While working for a large investment bank this summer, I had the opportunity to experience working for leaders who had disproportionate amounts of power over other employees. While lower level workers were seen more as commodities that went through a “revolving door”, leaders were viewed as almost legendary figures that were written about in newspapers. This led to an environment where lower level employees felt it was pointless to point out inefficiencies in the system or even to offer an idea of how to pitch a new business opportunity. Edmonson suggests that leaders can effectively remove this hurdle by mitigating power imbalances through candor and humility. Another way that leaders can deal with this imbalance is to communicate with other team members on “neutral ground” at an offsite setting where all team members can see the “human” side of the leader, and the leader becomes more of a teammate than a removed figurehead in the “ivory tower”. I personally applied this principle during my first job as the athletic trainer of a high school football team during their summer training session. I was tasked by the head coach to train the kids and get them into their best possible shape for the start of their fall football season. Initially, I used a whistle and tried to enforce my leadership by demanding a lot and making them face consequences (i.e. push ups or sit ups) when they fell short of what was asked. I became frustrated with the progress of the kids as well as with the effectiveness of my leadership. I decided to try another tactic and, instead of seeing myself as the leader of the group, I decided that I would consider myself as just apart of the group. I started to do the running wind sprints with the team, and soon I had won the group’s respect. They started to open up to me and communicated what their goals were, what drills and exercises they thought were really working, and what they thought we could do better. More importantly, the kids were actually having fun getting in shape and looked forward to our work out sessions. No one was late, and many kids actually would stay late to do extra work. Towards the end of the summer, the head football coach commented that he was very pleased with the team’s condition coming into the season. I know that if I had continued my initial leadership style of forcing “power” and control, the team would have been unable to achieve their goals.
Even if team members do not feel powerless in an environment, they may not have been trained or developed assertiveness in the past, and so leaders must challenge their employees to develop good habits of communicating. Team members may also believe that their input is not valued or even needed by the team. During the first semester of business school, we had to rely heavily on the study groups that we were assigned. My study group functioned well and helped everyone to learn more in a team environment, but it remained important that we communicated to each member of our team that their input was vital to the success of the group. One team member in particular was extremely intelligent, but frequently had the assumption that his input was not relevant or desired. Our team had to continuously remind him that it was essential that we receive his input in order for our group to be successful.
It is also important for Interactive Action Teams (“IATs”) to look outside of the team to realize what other teams and resources they may have to work with to achieve success. This principle is referred to by Edmonson as “Boundary Spanning”. Often times there are outside organizations or teams that have the resources and support to facilitate the tasks of the team, but there is no team member willing to communicate with the other group to learn of these resources. In Edmonson’s next article “Why Hospitals Don’t Learn From Failures”, she cites an example of how nurses who ran out of clean bed linens would take them from a different unit without communicating to that unit, passing their problem down the line for another person to deal with. The principle of boundary spanning could be used in this circumstance. Nurses could communicate with all the other units, even if they had different specializations or educational backgrounds. This communication could actually lead to the coordination of resources for clean bed linens instead of “robbing” another group and creating a problem for that group down the road. Often times, IATs undergo significant amounts of change due to the dynamic nature of their environment, and so the IAT has to understand what tools and resources are available to them, as there may be new processes required due to the new demands. An interesting point from Edmonson’s research is the importance of relationships within teams and specifically within the context of boundary spanning. Edmonson’s data revealed that when nurses had to find an answer to a question or procure a resource that they needed, it was more effective for them to go to a source with which they had an established relationship instead of going to the source most appropriate to their need. Having this relationship would effectively allow nurses to receive the help that they needed, instead of going through a painful process of misunderstood requirements and deadlines with sources they had not established a relationship with. It is not surprising that Edmonson found boundary spanning to be the most critical factor in group learning, for it showed the highest correlation with implementation success of all potential predictor variables.
Another finding in Edmonson’s study was the importance of preparation to the IAT. Edmonson found that if health care staff workers could receive some repetition of opportunities to speak up in cases without “life and death” consequences, these team members were much more inclined to speak up under more strenuous circumstances. It is important to note how critical the role of the leader is in setting up the appropriate environment in which team members feel as though they are comfortable to communicate freely. When team members believe that they risk job security or reputation by speaking up, they are more inclined to bite their tongues and not take a risk, which actually hurts the entire group. So the next time you find yourself to be in a group meeting or exercise, now you know why you shouldn't be the only one talking!
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