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Strategy Skills > Managing People

Working as a team

> in practice

Teams work best with strong focus and purpose; clearly defined roles; and a working approach that encourages honesty and mutual support.

Working in multi-disciplinary project teams may be a new experience for many staff and it is important to ensure that all team members are familiar with the team working approach. It is important that the team leader:

• Clearly articulates the different roles and contributions of team members
• Clearly articulates the purpose and format of consultation within the team
• Acknowledges the practical demands of the project, especially for members of the team who are not full-time on the project
• Accommodates different styles
• Ensures attention is paid to individual development during the project.

Kick-off meetings

Holding a project kick-off meeting at the start of the project is a useful way of developing the team's working approach. Depending on the size and length of the project, it may also be appropriate to have kick-off meetings for each new phase of work.

Away-days

A project away-day is another useful way to get the project started, plan work-streams and encourage team building.

If possible, it is best to hold the away-day away from the office environment. This will help people switch off from day-to-day tasks and avoid the inevitable trips back to desks to check emails or phone messages. Where practical, it can be beneficial to hold the away-day in a location relevant to the project - for instance the Strategy Unit Childcare team held their away-day at a nursery.

The away-day agenda could include an ice-breaking session, a session on team member's working and learning styles and a tour of the location (if relevant). If there are team members with little specific knowledge of the subject, it may also be helpful to invite an external expert to provide an 'idiot's guide' to the subject. This will ensure that all team members have at least a basic knowledge of the subject.

It is very important to organise the away-day with sufficient notice to ensure everybody attends, including project sponsor and support staff. The major objective of the away-day should be to make sure that key milestones and rules are clear to all team members by the end of the day:

• timelines
• key deliverables
• roles and responsibilities
• how to work together.

Following the away-day and kick-off meeting, a summary of what was covered and agreed should be circulated and followed up with one-to-one meetings if necessary. Depending on the length of the project, a further away-day at a key point later in the project may also be worthwhile.

Team Meetings

As well as ad-hoc discussions and workstream meetings, weekly team meetings should be held throughout the course of the project. It is important to communicate the purpose and process of every meeting and structure the meetings to ensure they are effective and worthwhile.

Regular team meetings involving relevant members of the core team as well as the Project Director and/or Sponsor, if appropriate, should be held. These meetings provide an opportunity to update on substantive issues, make and communicate decisions and map progress against the project plan. Meetings will also be needed to debate difficult issues and create space for creative thinking.

If the project has an Advisory Group, Advisory Group meetings needs to be managed by the team leader to ensure the Group is used effectively. Responsibility for supporting the Group needs to be assigned and meetings planned carefully and in good time.

Below are some suggested guidelines:

Set the content

• Why call the meeting? (e.g. share information, brainstorm, scheduling)
• What tangible results do you want?
• What preparation do you want? (limit this to a minimum)
• Set the agenda - people will perform better with a map

Set the process

• What kind of participation do you want? (e.g. listening, problem solving, presenting)?
• What climate do you want (e.g. time-limited, open-ended, team building)?
• What role will the team leader play?

For the team to be creative...

• Everyone must be willing to share ideas, even (especially) in raw form
• Everyone must be willing to receive ideas, and synthesise/improve them

An open communication style is an important part of this

• Such a style does not necessarily come naturally!
• Always be explicit
• Solicit feedback along the way

Team Communications

For a team to work efficiently, it needs a standard way of operating. The processes that a team needs to agree upon include:

• Standards of behaviour: Set clear rules to promote focus, openness, trust and commitment.
• Making decisions: As well as clear project governance arrangements, the team needs to be clear on what decisions individuals can make, what decisions the team should make and how the team will decide actions.
• Team communication: How will the team keep each other informed of progress? When does the team need to meet and when are other communication methods, like email, appropriate?

Team communications are as important as external communications and principles and processes should be clearly agreed early in the project. Team members should agree:

• What to share: Transparency alleviates anxiety. Feedback from Ministers and stakeholders and updates on meetings should be communicated to the team
• How to share it: keep all communications focused and efficient. Team members should be considerate in their use of group emailing (including only replying to sender rather than whole group where appropriate) and use email subject lines to indicate whether content requires action or is for information only

Team-working appraisal

A method of monitoring and appraising team-working may be found to be useful. For instance a 'team barometer' could be used to measure satisfaction with the project and approach. This involves anonymously answering a number of questions, every 3 weeks, on a scale of one to five, such as:

1. Overall, how satisfied are you with experience on the project since the last pulse check?

2. How satisfied have you been with:

• Clarification of roles and general project progress
• Our individual workloads
• The work itself (interesting/challenging enough?)
• Personal development (are you learning?)

Team leaders may feel that they work sufficiently closely with individual team members to be able to gauge satisfaction without this relatively formal approach. The option of using such a method should be discussed with the team and a decision made based on this feedback. An appraisal method can be introduced at any stage in the project, based on perceived need.

If this rather formal method is used, the team leader is obliged to act on the result. Using these sorts of formal methods can sometimes inhibit rather than create conversation as they use the medium of forms rather than dialogue. It is usually better to encourage people to take responsibility for speaking up rather than communicating through an anonymous process.

Strengths

• Agreeing norms within the team will help the team work to maximum effectiveness
• Away-days are a very good way of both promoting team bonding and ensuing buy-in from team members on the project structure and approach.

Weaknesses

• Away-days and formal team meetings can sometimes be neglected as the detailed work gets underway.

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