When the "Team at the Top" is the Problem
Is it a Management Team or Band of Infighters?
Jul 7, 2009
A description like this gets confused with what a team is and what it can accomplish.
Is it a Management Team or Band of Infighters?
All too often, executive team members tend to spend their time fighting for turf, avoiding anything that will make them look bad, and pretending that everyone is behind the team’s strategy. In doing this they maintain the appearance of a team. To keep up that image they tend to stifle disagreement. People with serious reservations avoid stating them publicly and joint decisions are watered-down compromises reflecting what everyone can live with.
If there is disagreement it’s usually expressed in a manner that fixes blame, polarizes opinion, and fails to reveal the underlying differences in assumptions in a way that the team as a whole could learn. Most of these management teams break down under pressure. They may function fairly well when things are calm but when they must confront complex issues that may threatening the team often seems to fall apart.
The reality is that most managers find collective inquiry threatening. They are trained never to admit that they do not know the answer and most businesses reinforce that lesson by rewarding the people who excel. When was the last well-publicized case where someone was rewarded for raising difficult questions about current policies rather that solving urgent problems?
Reaching the Breaking Point
These teams reach this point of peril when the members decide that it is too risky to keep playing for team success and they silently decide that it makes more sense to avoid individual failure. Instead of looking out for each other they all start looking over their shoulders and covering their backs. This usually happens after the team has been together for sometime and the results have not been forthcoming.
A trigger event for this behavior is often when a team member is disproportionately blamed for a problem. The rest of the team makes a resolution not to let that happen to them. From that point on it is heads down and make sure you do your own job well, even if nobody else does theirs.
When the “Team at the Top” is the Problem
Despite strong individual resources and the potential for synergy, with this dynamic in place most top management teams suffer from a kind of performance slippage.
- The sum of their individual efforts falls short of what it could be. They are like all-star teams that showcase strong individuals but fail to deliver a strong team product.
- Individual negativity and passivity also increase. People change their behavior when they participate in a group, and the changes can be discouraging. Most people tend to be more critical, negative, and passive in a group setting than when they communicate one-on-one and this can get magnified when the going gets tough.
- Individual focus rather than a team focus becomes prevalent. Even when the CEO is advocating teamwork, most members are actually thinking, "How does this affect me?"
- Groupthink also shows up now. These teams suffer from conflict avoidance, premature agreement, short-term thinking, and far-from-optimal thinking.
- Questionable ethics also show up at this stage. A top management team in this mode possesses a frightening ability to coerce individuals to "go along to get along."
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