By Clive Elwood MA VetMB MSc MS (Ashridge) PhD FRCVS 

Clive Elwood

Clive Elwood MA VetMB MSc MS (Ashridge) PhD FRCVS practised as a specialist in private practice for 20 years, including ten years as Managing Director of Davies Veterinary Specialists, before retraining as an executive coach. He holds a Masters in Executive Coaching from Ashridge Hult Business School and is a European Mentoring and Coaching Council Senior Practitioner. As the founder of Trellis Coaching and Consulting Ltd., Clive brings together understanding, empathy, warmth, curiosity, challenge, and support to his coaching – co-creating a safe space for his clients to think, feel and grow. In December 2021, his book, Leadership in Veterinary Medicine, was published through Wiley-Blackwell.

Introduction

Veterinary teams will, to varying degrees, include veterinary professionals and paraprofessionals, non-clinical colleagues and, importantly, clients. But what is a team, and what is ‘effective’?

A team is a group of individuals working together to a common purpose, where diverse contributions and the quality of inter-personal relationships allows goal attainment which is greater than the sum of the parts.  Teams are challenging, sophisticated, dynamic, amazing entities, requiring energy and investment to create, develop and lead. So, do you need a team, or would a work group do (table 1)? Is the task complex, does it require constant re-assessment and adjustment, are the relationships between the individuals critical to task achievement? If the answer is ‘Yes’, you need a team.

Work Groups Teams
Each member feels entirely responsible for their own work and will self-calibrate their effort to achieve it A mindset of mutuality. In a true team, each member feels personally responsible for all the work that the team does and will self-calibrate their effort to ensure that the team succeeds in delivering it.
A work group member will operate independently of the efforts of other members A team member will adapt and compensate relative to the efforts of others in the team
Work group members often have similar skills. It is irrelevant if their attitudes and behaviours complement each other (but they must not create conflict or frustration of effort). Teams have people with complimentary skills that are recognised and used effectively by the team. Diversity of behaviours, attitudes, knowledge, experiences and skills become a team strength.
A work group’s output is determined by the sum of individual contributions A team’s performance is determined by both the individuals and the nature and quality of the relationships.
A work group leader manager works to achieve optimum outcomes from each work group member. Team leadership works within it and is attentive to both the individuals and the inter-relationships.

The definition of team effectiveness is context dependent and influenced by factors such as the primary goal and success criteria, the time window for performance, the need for sustainability of effort, the working environment, and the coherence (or not) of stakeholder needs. Effective teams nevertheless have common features (figure 1).

Broadly, enablers of team performance include the potency or agency of the team (can it make a difference), the psychological safety within the team and the civility of interactions, shared mental models (including team purpose and values) and effective diversity of experience, knowledge, skills, and behaviours.

Creating the team

What is your team’s purpose? Can you succinctly define its mission? It might be very clear and short-term e.g., ‘To rescue this trapped horse’ or more flexible and long-term e.g., ‘To attend to the health and welfare needs of our patients.’ The purpose will greatly influence the team created. Clarifying shared purpose and motivations is an iterative process which develops as a team builds (figure 2).

Individuals within a team will have both shared and specific needs and motivations. Effective teams ensure there is sufficient alignment whilst accepting and exploiting differences, and that the overall goal is understood, agreed, and accepted by all. By asking ‘What matters to you?’ we can begin to understand and respect individual needs with the team and maybe, where there is insufficient alignment, compassionately recognise that some individuals will not be effective within that team at that time. Inevitably, we may need to subsume individual needs when joining a team and, according to Rock (2009), as well as the benefits accrued from the shared purpose, we can minimise the risks and maximise the social rewards of being part of a team by optimising the ‘SCARF’ factors:

  • Status – our relative importance to others.
  • Certainty – our ability to predict the future.
  • Autonomy – our sense of control over events.
  • Relatedness – how safe we feel with others.
  • Fairness – how fair we perceive the exchanges between people to be.

To these intrinsic benefits we must also recognise the need for extrinsic rewards, such as salary, which allow team members to function outside of the team and live their lives.

Optimal team size will vary with task and the required balance of performance vs. sustainability. As teams enlarge, the number of inter-personal relationships and communication challenges increase exponentially. Short-term, high-effort challenges may get the best performance from teams that are a minimum size for task achievement, and if individuals can sustain effort until the ‘end of the race’ when they can recover. For longer term challenges, sustainability is key; the pace needs to slow, and the team needs to rotate people through the high demand roles.

What behaviours, attitudes, knowledge, experiences and skills (BAKES) are necessary for your team’s effectiveness? These may be technical, managerial, relational, cognitive and political. Teams which harness a diverse membership are stronger and less likely to have collective blind spots.

Many of these questions may be answered organically, iteratively, and even unconsciously. At some point, however, you may step back from the focus of the task in hand to recognise you are a team!

Developing the team

Initially, purpose and values may not be explicitly discussed or stated, but this is risky; it is all too easy for assumptions to be made which can lead to misunderstanding, misalignment, and unhelpful conflict. With this is mind, it makes sense to agree shared purpose and values.

Psychological safety (‘a climate in which individuals feel able to take interpersonal risks without fear of negative consequences’) and team performance are directly linked (Edmondson 1999). Behaviours which foster psychological safety include:

  • Inclusivity.
  • Facilitating discussion and candour.
  • Active listening.
  • Open questioning.
  • Admitting fallibility and showing vulnerability.
  • Normalising (and learning from) failure.
  • Clarifying expectations.
  • Sanctioning clear violations.
  • Expressing gratitude.
  • Delegating and empowering.

Communication in a psychologically safe team, with mutual respect, trust, and openness allows constructive feedback and mutual accountability.

Identification of BAKES that need adding or developing will inform recruitment and development to enhance capability. As members join a team, they learn norms intentionally or by default. Formal induction and mentorship programs, which sets expectation of, and supports purpose, values and behaviours, help ensure commonality.

Inter-relationships define a team as more than the sum of its parts and relationship development (one to one, one to many, many to many) is essential. This may occur informally through casual contact (think of the conversations across an operating table) or in formally arranged meetings. Team building through rehearsal or by utilising lessons from actual work via planned and structured debriefs are important as are social events where we share and enjoy different aspects of each other whilst embedding social norms. When considering ‘out of work’ events, be sure to make them inclusive and accessible for all.

Teams develop in phases, identified by Tuckman (1965) as (colloquially) forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning, although the phases may not be predictable or linear. Diversity brings differences of opinion and handled well, creative conflict (‘storming’). Well managed challenge, conflict and support will enhance performance, allowing the team to develop capacities for increasingly difficult and complex challenges.

What can go wrong with a team? Lencioni (2002) identifies ‘Five dysfunctions of a team’ as:

  • Absence of trust
  • Fear of conflict
  • Lack of commitment
  • Avoidance of accountability
  • Inattention to results (N.B. I would frame results in terms of process, not outcome).

Many of these dysfunctions can be avoided through attention to creation, development and meaningful leadership.

Leading the team

Team leadership balances concern for performance with concern for people (figure 3). Task leadership challenges process, drives performance, sets expectations, holds accountability, maintains standards and demands continuous improvement. Relational, compassionate leadership supports people, upholds values, facilitates creative tension, mediates, resolves conflicts, manages workload (to avoid burnout or boredom), maintains curiosity and focusses on what matters.

Leadership is a shared responsibility, not just a formal role. We are all role models. What do you want to model? Ask ‘How do you want people to experience you?’ and ‘How do you want people to experience themselves in your presence?’. Your answers will guide your actions and behaviours. Sharing leadership means delegating and empowering others, developing through coaching, and mentoring, stepping up and stepping away when necessary. In a multi-disciplinary, diverse team with complex demands, one individual cannot (and should not) expect to have complete understanding or control.

Conclusion

Teams are fundamental to being human and allowing individuals to come together and achieve what they cannot as individuals. In many cases, creation and development of a team will be informal and emergent. Nevertheless, consideration of some of the ideas touched on here might make for a better, happier, more sustainable, and productive team.

Bibliography

Blake R., Mouton J. The Managerial Grid. Houston: Gulf Publishing; 1978

Edmondson, A. (1999) Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams, Administrative Science Quarterly, 44, pp. 350–383.

Elwood, C. (2022) Leadership in Veterinary Medicine Wiley-Blackwell, London

Lencioni, P. (2002) The five dysfunctions of a team : a leadership fable. 1st ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Rock, B. Y. D. (2009) Managing with the Brain in Mind, Strategy + Business, (56), pp. 1–12.

Tuckman, B. W. (1965) Developmental sequence in small groups, Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), pp. 384–399. doi: 10.1037/h0022100.


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