How do leaders improve team dynamics?

Different types of dynamics or connecting forces occur in teams. Some are obvious such as the sharing of tasks to complete a goal, some lie under the surface such as the thought someone else in the team is not pulling their weight may foster cynicism and cause people to bear grudges. These reflect the two main types of team dynamics proposed by the psychologist Robert Bales:

• Task Interactions: Focus on the group's objectives and problem-solving activities.​
  
  
• Relationship (Emotional) Interactions: Concern the interpersonal relationships among team members, including aspects like support and conflict resolution.

In this sense, team dynamics can be positive or negative. A leader must take a bird’s eye view of the team and assess what the balance is and identify how to ‘eliminate the negative and accentuate the positive’ as the saying goes.

There are tried and tested ways to do this but it helps to understand what conditions need to exist in the team to foster positive dynamics and then it’s easier for the leader to identify how to bring those into existence. There are four conditions necessary:

Mutual trust: team members need to feel they can rely on each other otherwise they are merely a group of individuals

Psychological safety: in addition to mutual trust, teams must offer non-judgemental environment where risk is tolerated and failure offers everyone a chance to learn.

Defined ways of working: and this is not just an agreement on when and where teams should meet. It also include the agreed values, beliefs and behaviours the teams subscribes to so they are all aligned in what they see as important for their identity as a team

Commitment: teams share a commitment to reach a goal, usually a business objective and they work towards that in the belief they will be successful. If that commitment is not there from everyone, it will foster cynicism on the part of the others – why should we bother, if they aren’t?

So for leaders, the question is how to bring these conditions into existence in the first place?

These answers form part of any well-structured team leadership programme and they are not something that people automatically inherit when they are promoted to a team leader role.

Some key elements to bring out here include:

Open communication is key. Encouraging transparency with your team allows an element of sufficient trust to be created. Everyone is comfortable to speak their mind whilst having the time of day for opposing ideas.

Clear responsibilities prevent a confused team and one that doesn’t know how to navigate a day's work in an organised manner. It is vital leaders assign roles and responsibilities for the team members are clear on what they are accountable for.

For more information on developing healthy team dynamics, you can download more information from the book: Creating Adaptable Teams, by David Webster, partner at Centre for Teams.

Reference: Bales, R. (2017). Social interaction systems: Theory and measurement. Routledge.

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