SMART SKILLS
Team tactics
Usha Albuquerque

If you have seen films such as Hotels you can probably recall the efficiency with which the team of firefighters worked to control the fire. Or better still, watched reality TV visuals of rescue missions — paramedics, firefighters, even the Baywatch coast guards, you would have seen a high-performing team in action. They are fluid, efficient and operate in concert. Each member performs a specialised job exceedingly well, while being aware of the other tasks and ultimate goal. If one stumbles, the others continue with no loss of time or diminished outcome.

The need for high-performing project teams was once limited to high-risk sectors — the military, medical emergencies, aerospace and construction industries —where consequences for failure could include loss of life. But today, building a high performing team is considered a vital requirement of the global corporate world. Knowledge and expertise are corporate assets and must be shared and be made easily accessible.

Today's managers understand the value of inclusion, communication and consensus building for high-performing teams? There's no room for the word 'ego'. It is the 'soft-skills' style of management. Managers are willing to subsume personal ego to achieve results. By understanding how to handle difficult people and situations they can diffuse them and turn them around to their benefit.

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, once said, "We have to undo a one hundred-year old concept and convince our managers that their role is not to control people and stay 'on top' of things, but rather to guide, energize and excite."

To build a high performance team requires the team manager to play many roles, in which the skill requirements of the project manager constantly change to best serve the project at hand.

Facilitator

A team leader must provide the team with a vision of the project objectives. Create an environment oriented to trust, open communication, creative thinking, and cohesive team effort. It is useful for teams - even global, virtual or remote project teams - to meet face-to-face as often as possible.

Help all involved to form a consensus and share a common vision of the project and project goals. As a team leader he/she must understand individual differences, and work styles, and be empathetic, particularly to regional and cultural nuances.

Mediator

A team leader must maintain healthy group dynamics. As the team members get together and differences arise — as it always does in team development — the leader must make the transition from controlling and leading, to mediation. A good leader recognises when conflict is approaching, and is able to aid team members in resolving or managing it. That means facilitating problem solving and striving for team consensus and win-win agreements.

A mediator must therefore have problem-solving and resolution skills and cultivate decision-making techniques

Coach

As a coach, the team leader is helping create a team identity. This means he/she must be able to motivate and inspire team members, building team trust, through coaching and mentoring, at the individual and team levels. Team leaders lead by setting a good example (role model) — behaviour consistent with words

A team coach provides team leadership and coaching. He/She must insure that communication remains open and positive, teaching others to give and receive feedback. Recognising and celebrating team and team member accomplishments and exceptional performance can also be highly motivational.

Consultant

When projects are moving towards fruition, the team leader now plays a consulting role, providing advice, tools, and interventions wherever needed. 'leading from behind'. Helps keep the team focused and on track and serves as a focal point to communicate and resolve interface and integration issues with other teams or departments. It is also important to keep the project manager and product committee informed of task accomplishment, issues and status from time to time.

Leadership qualities are now required to provide guidance to the team based on management direction. It is important to foster team spirit, assess team opportunities and to align individual and team values with that of the organisation.

Collaborator

This final stage is reached only when a high performing team is at its peak operating level. Successful team leaders are able to lead softly and assume a peer relationship with team members Communication is at an almost intuitive level and leadership is shared, handed off to team members as their areas of expertise become the critical need. Individuals may operate independently but in harmony, fluidly and efficiently. In project development, few teams actually reach this level and sustain it for long because it is so intense.

The skills a successful team leader needs may differ from project to project and from team to team, but they will always be those that best unleash the knowledge and potential of the individual members and the team as a whole

In the wake of the global information explosion, managing efficient effective project teams becomes critical. Particularly in the IT world, survival is dependent upon organisational speed and agility. A successful leader is judged by his/her motivational ability, as civil rights leaders would say, 'Keep everyone's 'eyes on the prize'. High-performing teams present an ideal operational model, and the skills required by the successful team leader today may well be those of the CEO of tomorrow.