How to identify the next step that accelerates your team’s growth

In 1965 a psychologist called Bruce Tuckman was working for the U.S. Navy. He was a member of a small group of researchers at the Naval Medical Research Institute. Their job was to study small group behaviour.

How to Design Better Teamwork

Research into what motivates teams

In today’s issue, we explore recent research into what motivates teams. This research can help us design better teamwork by understanding team dynamics and what motivates different people.

It got me thinking about a group or teamwork in a school or academic setting, so I have shared some guidance and thoughts about that.

An essential affirmation I had was the critical nature of the design of teams and what they do.

Photo by Daniel Larsen on Unsplash

Together, everyone achieves more — or less?

A team at TU Dortmund University in Germany have published an interdisciplinary meta-analysis on effort gains and losses in teams.

You can access either the academic paper or a summary blog post from the researchers on Aeon.

From the beginning, the authors highlight the importance of intentional design.

Our analysis of the data shows that whether teamwork boosts motivation or saps it strongly depends on how the work is designed.

And it looks like one of the keys to boosting motivation is how we perceive our contribution. As educators, facilitators, and designers, we need to ensure each team member can make a meaningful contribution to their team’s performance.

when people perceive their contribution to the team’s outcome as indispensable, they tend to show greater effort than they would when working alone. These ‘effort gains’ can be due to team members aiming to be prosocial: they care about others and want to make a difference to the team.

You might apply dispensability in a range of ways, such as:

  • What roles do people take on in a meeting?
  • What do people do during a breakout in a workshop?
  • What specific tasks are assigned during a discussion session in a class?
  • Do people understand how their workshop contribution is integral to our collective success?

On reflection, the level of dispensability is a proxy for what we value. You would hope anything we design is worthy of the learner’s time.

Social Comparison

One of the critical factors that impact motivation for team members is social comparison.

The desire to evaluate oneself is a basic one, and when working in a team, individuals commonly compare their own performance with their teammates’ performances.

The researchers discovered this comparison could go in different directions. If a team member displays significantly superior abilities, it leads to demotivation, frustration and feelings of failure.

Team membership is most beneficial when it creates a visible, proximal, and relative advantage.

People often strive to match or exceed the performance of others, which makes working with slightly better teammates a very motivating experience…it is advisable to compose a team such that members are similar in their abilities, but with some of them being somewhat superior to boost the others’ motivation.

Some thoughts from a different direction.

I struggle identifying the ‘slightly superior’ teammate — how do we measure this?

We are also assuming we have an accurate understanding of our ability. The Dunning-Kruger effect often masks this. This cognitive bias leads us to mistakenly assess our abilities as being much higher than they are.

I am also thinking about mixed ability grouping in schools, but I need to read further into the collision of that strategy with these ideas.

Collaborative Learning

When we consider these findings in relation to schools and student learning, it is clear that collaborative learning is an essential part of the educational process.

The Evidence for Learning summary on Collaborative Learning is an excellent overview. It explains that collaborative approaches have a consistently positive effect on learning.

I noticed the emphasis on intentional design, which aligns with the research analysis from the team at TU Dortmund University. Here’s a further passage from the Evidence for Learning summary:

[Collaborative learning] requires much more than just sitting students together and asking them to work in a group; structured approaches with well-designed tasks lead to the greatest learning gains.

Some other key considerations are:

  • Students need support and practice to work together; it does not happen automatically.
  • Tasks need to be designed carefully so that working together is effective and efficient, otherwise some students will try to work on their own.
  • Competition between groups can be used to support students in working together more effectively. However, overemphasis on competition can cause learners to focus on winning rather than succeeding in their learning.
  • It is particularly important to encourage lower-achieving students to talk and articulate their thinking in collaborative tasks to ensure they benefit fully.

Your Talking Points

Here is a range of key takeaways and provocations from today’s issue:

  1. Design teams that create a visible, proximal, and relative advantage.
  2. How intentional are we in the design of our group or team activities?
  3. How dispensable is their contribution? Is this worthy of their time?

🕳🐇 Down the Rabbit Hole

Complement this issue with Create Safety and Togetherness #249, Willful Blindness — Medium article, If You Are The 1st Responder To New Ideas, You Have A Critical Job #243, The Three Pillars of Powerful Team Collaboration — blog, Successful Teams Are More Open About Their Mistakes — blog

What is on your radar?

Far from the wintry climes of Europe in Australia, our Summer is just getting warmed up. The highest temperature in Australia since 1960 was recorded in Onslow, Western Australia, on Thursday this week. The mercury climbed to hit 50.7 degrees at 2:26 pm!

The hot, stormy weather is always a strange experience for an Englishman in Melbourne during the Christmas break. I know many of you in the North will already be scraping ice off the windscreens as the school term kicks off again.

When the rains have arrived here in Victoria, the contrast to the blue skies is evident, and we often see a tremendous rolling bank of greyscale formation heading our way.

The Bureau of Meteorology’s Rain Radar shows us the encroaching blobs of wet thunder and lightning. The more red and dark, the more intense. Sometimes the rain falls, and sometimes it passes.

It got me thinking about a question I have for you – what’s on your radar for 2022?

To lead is to have a vision.

To have vision is to see the unseen, hear the unheard, and know what others do not know. It’s about being proactive rather than reactive, finding opportunities where there seems to be nothing but obstacles.

It is seeing what you believe exists but cannot yet be seen by others. It is looking beyond your own eyes. And it is about seeing the unseen so that you can lead others to success.

I see you first

Radar stands for Radio Detection and Ranging, which means it works by first detecting objects via radio waves.

This technology was not the product of a single inventor but many inventors who contributed throughout its development. Christian Hülsmeyer claimed the first patent for Radar in 1904, but this kind of detection concept goes back to Heinrich Hertz’s experiments in the 1880s.

Radar was first used to detect ships, allowing faster and more accurate detection of potential threats on the battlefield. This application gave birth to radar guns, which are still used by some police forces today.

Wartime Advantage

World War One was responsible for advancing the development of Radar, including its use as a military defence in detecting enemy aircraft.

World War Two saw further development in Radar technology for use on ships and planes, and land with radar towers used to detect incoming air attacks during “The Battle of Britain”.

Today, Radar is used by governments to monitor borders and airports while also being used in weather forecasting; mapping oceans and landmasses; air traffic control; meteorology; astronomy; remote sensing of trees and land-use change; object tracking in space like satellites or asteroids movements.

What is now proved was once, only imagin’d.

William Blake, Proverbs of Hell.

What is on your radar?

The concept breaks down a little when we think about this question and how we imagine or extend our long-range senses. Radar detects what already exists and gives us an indication of movement and direction.

What it cannot do is reveal intention. Leadership is about this intention. This wisdom requires personal insight into oneself, not just observation of others. Leadership, therefore, involves foresight

Foresight is the state of knowing events before they occur; vision; imagination; anticipation. For example, a wise leader will foresee the problems that their team might face and prepare them as much as possible to overcome those obstacles.

This does not mean leaders should look into their crystal ball and predict every detail like an oracle -because things constantly change- but rather to envisage multiple possibilities and choose the most realistic one with an optimistic view.

The only way we can see what we do not yet see or hear what we cannot yet hear is by imagining it and preparing.

Your Talking Points

Here are a few key takeaways about foresight and long-range sensing.

  1. We see what we imagine. Imagination is the eye of the soul, and with it, we can imagine all kinds of possibilities.
  2. Radar cannot provide intention. What is on your radar requires interpretation.
  3. Leaders need the foresight to envision multiple options and prepare accordingly. They also need insight into themselves for this wisdom about their radar.

🕳🐇 Down the Rabbit Hole

Complement this issue with Timecones #145, Beyond VUCA #226, Fuzzy Goals #215, Comfortable Uncertainty #130, Negative Capability #146.

If You’re The 1st Responder To New Ideas, You Have A Critical Job

You get a moment to choose.

Your decision influences the dynamic of talk and wonder, whether you like it or not.

The pocket-sized hidden curriculum encourages or dampens enthusiasm-worse still, it spirals into self-preservation.

Questions litter the learning space in the primary and early years, often strewn around quite randomly.

I was once asked, If a pea had a brain, how big would it be?

Mourn Those Precious Little Sparks

These precious sparks exist momentarily, but the impact of our response to questions has an extended half-life.

Each of us is born with two contradictory sets of instructions: a conservative tendency, made up of instincts for self-preservation, self-aggrandisement, and saving energy, and an expansive tendency made up of instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk. We need both. But whereas the first tendency requires little encouragement, the second can wilt if it is not cultivated.

Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

How you react to ideas is comparable. Consider the response when new ideas or contributions are shared in your team. There is a fundamental similarity to this moment of micro-judgement.

I wonder how the tiny moments of judgement or encouragement shape the climate of our teams? My hunch is, over time, they shape our experience in a significant way.

Culture Is Key To Innovation Potential

The Australian software company Atlassian recently published results of a study into the health of teams with evidence from 1,500 team members outside of Atlassian in the US and Australia. They found that 88% of participants are operating in an ‘unhealthy’ environment.

56 percent feel their team is poorly connected on a personal level, and 37 percent feel like they can’t try new things or express themselves fully.

This is the outcome of the block we started to explore, the micro-judgement of new ideas (or questions).

I wonder why 37 percent of participants can’t express themselves fully? The reasons for holding back might be:

  • fear of being penalised unnecessarily
  • perceived lack of impact or influence
  • worries about how their manager will respond
  • fear of not looking like a team player (they don’t want to appear different)

The Hidden Curriculum of Your Teams

I’ve seen this happen many times. A team member shares something new, and others require an immediate response in the group. Someone questions it confidently (because decades of experience tell them it’s not worth exploring), and the others on the team nod (because they’re too afraid to be the first one out). The new idea is squashed.

It takes more courage to applaud someone who shares new ideas than put them down.

What does this do, though, in the long term? If we belittle, shoot down or diminish new ideas or people who present them, the person might learn that it’s not safe to share in this environment.

In our study, members of healthy teams noted feeling a sense of belonging and support for new ideas. This creates an environment of high engagement, which, in turn, serves as a buffer against burnout and fuels even higher performance.

The first responder to questions or new ideas sets the tone.

Your Talking Points

A few weeks ago, I shared the mental model of compounding in issue 237.

Unnecessary negative micro-judgement of new ideas compounds, the result is unhealthy teams — an example of how compounding works even for negative behaviours.

Your challenge is to notice the first responder and reflect on what behaviours and responses are your standard.

Some of the report’s takeaways direct leaders to focus on encouraging ideas and are worth discussing with your colleagues. Let me draw your attention to these below:

  • Carve out time to explore new ideas, both individually and as a team.
  • Make space for calculated risks and incorporate the lessons you learn.
  • Elevate the importance of diverse viewpoints and make space for respectful dissent.

You can read the complete set of recommendations here from the State of Teams Report 2021 — Work Life by Atlassian.


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