Internal and external Learning & Development practitioners all have a common nemesis: Program delivery can be compromised when working with an immature or ineffective team. This statement may sound dramatic on the surface but it’s a safe bet that a group won’t internalize and execute on program content as efficiently as a team can and will do. Let me explain.

Are you dealing with a group or a team?

There is a profound difference between the inner-workings of a group and team. A team is operating under clear rules of engagement, understood interdependencies (and best with financial interdependencies—meaning that team members are dependent on one another to make a bonus and/or incentives), a method for in-the-moment conflict resolution, and specific decision-making protocols. A team isn’t formed by placing a bunch of employees with a leader into a business unit with a fancy label. That’s a group. A team is evolved over time after deliberate effort is expended to achieve such a state. A group is really a loose federation of people that may be working toward a common objective—but haven’t, as of yet, evolved into a unified, aligned, efficient workforce. Thus, a group simply doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to optimally engage in, process, and apply new methodologies. This might be the fundament reason why that about one half of business failure can be traced back to ineffective teaming of some sort—even if a company’s products and services are competitively viable. It’s a staggering statistic.

Many of the products and services that we deliver to client groups are targeted at intact teams or commonly referred to as business units. Yet the label of team is no guarantee that in fact a team is functioning under a euphemistic title. I’ve been burned more than once by assuming that I was dealing with a team, when in fact, I was dealing with a group. A group’s dynamics are squirrelly at the best and can also create the perfect storm that undermines anything meaningful that the L&D professional is trying to achieve.

Executive Teams have Extreme Dynamics

Executive teams are a completely different animal too. Executives are like thoroughbred stallions. It’s the nature of the beast to run, kick, and bite. Company’s need thoroughbreds to compete—but not with each other. Leveraging these smart, driven people in the confines of an organization can only be accomplished through effective teaming. If left to chance divisive, silo behavior will prevail.

I have yet to consult with an organization that couldn’t use a bit of a team tune-up, prior to engaging in the heavy-lifting of strategic planning, organization design, building Employer of Choice Cultures, rapid scaling, and the like. This begs the question: “To what degree do ineffective teams impact your L&D agenda?” I’ll let you draw your own conclusion here. My experience is that ineffective teams have sabotaged or contributed to some of my less effective program deliveries. About five years ago I made a command decision: “I will not deliver products or services targeted at an intact team or business units unless the client agrees to a 4 hour front-end, no non-sense team building module (something I’ve distilled over the last 20 years from trial and error with hi-tech executive team interventions). That way, I know I’m introducing processes or programs into an environment that have a better-than-likely-chance of succeeding. I consider this a win/win for both the client and I. I have also absorbed the cost of team building in some circumstances—taking the long-term view that a profound success with a major initiative will make the client happy and likely generate additional business.

We’ve all heard the expressions, “herding cats” or “pushing a rope”. These expressions likely came from one of our colleagues that were trying to deliver a program or service to group as opposed to a team. So, I suggest that, unless you’re already doing it, insert a team building module on the front-end of all major initiative work that needs to be embraced by a team.

And, by the way, while ropes courses, wine tasting, and bocce ball are great socialization activities (and all teams can use this) these are not fundamentally team building activities. Team building creates the needed infrastructure (described earlier) so that a group can evolve in something that performs at a higher level than just a bunch of nice people in a room. As Bill Gates said, “Teams should be able to act with the same unity of purpose and focus as well-motivated individual.”