Team Development

Not every group called a team is one, and the difference has real costs. This module sets out Katzenbach and Smith's distinction between working groups, pseudo teams and real teams, Richard Hackman's four features of a real team, and Michael West's three tests from the NHS staff survey. It closes with Google's Project Aristotle and its five dynamics, read for public service teams.

Teams develop, but rarely as neatly as the models suggest. This module revisits Tuckman's forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning, then adds Connie Gersick's punctuated equilibrium and Susan Wheelan's integrated model. Using Hackman's account of airline crews and their first days together, it shows what familiarity is worth, and sets out what leaders can do at the launch, the early days, the midpoint and the close.

Great teams are designed, not discovered. This module follows the evidence from Richard Hackman's three essentials and three enablers, the sixty, thirty, ten heuristic and Ivan Steiner's process losses, through the shift from input, process, output to the IMOI model, to Salas, Sims and Burke's Big Five of teamwork. Research on senior leadership teams shows why the conditions should be fixed before you coach.

Purpose is the first design decision a team leader makes. This module covers Hackman's compelling direction, the GRPI model of goals, roles, processes and interpersonal relationships, and meta-analysis evidence on team goals from Kleingeld and colleagues. It shows how to write a team charter and a team communication charter, and uses Gene Kranz and Apollo 13 to show why purpose holds when plans fail.

Who is in a team, how many there are and how they differ shape performance long before anyone meets. This module looks honestly at Belbin's nine team roles, the evidence on size and social loafing from Ringelmann to Karau and Williams, Amazon's two-pizza teams, Scott Page's diversity theorem and its critique, and Lau and Murnighan's faultlines, ending with a practitioner lens for composing a team.

Teams learn only when it is safe to speak. This module sets out Amy Edmondson's definition of psychological safety, the standards and safety matrix, and her hospital study in which the better units reported more errors. It distinguishes competence trust from character trust, drawing on Covey, describes Edmondson's three moves for leaders, and separates the evidence from the myths, including the idea that safe means soft.

Most teams are not short of knowledge; the difficulty is getting it heard. This module covers Stasser and Titus's hidden profile problem, Woolley's collective intelligence c factor and its critics, and Pentland's energy, engagement and exploration. It then borrows tools from safety-critical teams, including SBAR and closed-loop communication, examines the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist, and offers a ten-minute team huddle.

Capable, well-intentioned teams can still reach poor decisions together. This module explores Irving Janis's groupthink and its symptoms through the Bay of Pigs, clarifies decision rules from leader decides to consensus, and shows how structured dissent changed the outcome in the Cuban Missile Crisis. It adds Jerry Harvey's Abilene paradox and Gary Klein's premortem, and a simple habit: ask who is not sure.

Some conflict is essential to good work and some slowly corrodes a team. This module uses Karen Jehn's task, relationship and process conflict, meta-analyses by De Dreu and Weingart and by de Wit and colleagues, Thomas and Kilmann's five modes and Behfar's research on well-functioning teams. The East Kent maternity investigation shows the cost of tribalism, and a five-step conversation offers a practical way in.

Most team failures are quiet: effort leaks away, people wait for someone senior, and procedures protect people from the work itself. This module draws on Wilfred Bion's basic assumption groups, research on social loafing, free riding and diffusion of responsibility, and Isabel Menzies Lyth's study of social defences in nursing. Liverpool City Council's recovery shows how structures sustain, and repair, hidden dynamics.

Leadership is whatever the team needs done. This module covers the functional team leadership model of Morgeson, DeRue and Karam, Pearce and Conger on shared leadership, Hackman's authority matrix and Robert Kelley's follower styles. The All Blacks illustrate a deliberately designed culture, and the module sets out the leader's job across a team's life: designer first, coach at the right moments, member throughout.

Team coaching works with the team as a whole, at the right moments and within its wider system. This module distinguishes group coaching from team coaching, using Clutterbuck's definition, then covers Hackman and Wageman's theory of coaching timing and Peter Hawkins's five disciplines of systemic team coaching. It explores contracting, keeping candour on the work, Pixar's Braintrust and a practical team coaching cycle.

Experience alone does not make a team better; teams that stop to think go further. This module covers Amy Edmondson's five team learning behaviours, Michael West's reflexivity cycle, and the evidence from Tannenbaum and Cerasoli and others that structured debriefs and team development work. It examines the US Army's After Action Review, its four questions and principles, and four habits of useful learning reviews.

Distance does not break teams; neglect does. This module shows what leaders must design back in when a team is not in one place, drawing on Jarvenpaa and Leidner's swift trust, O'Leary and Cummings's spatial, temporal and configurational distance, and Hinds and Bailey on distributed conflict. It covers choosing the right channel, writing things down, GitLab's handbook, and a weekly, monthly and quarterly hybrid rhythm.

Much public service work is done by people who were not a team yesterday. This module explores Amy Edmondson's teaming, the team of teams model, Ancona and Caldwell's boundary spanning roles and x-teams, and the pressures of identity, status and accountability in multi-agency teams. The Chilean mine rescue, read through envision, enrol and engage, leads into five moves for leading across organisational boundaries.

The group at the top is often called a team without being one. This module covers Hambrick and Mason's upper echelons theory, Jon Katzenbach's top team myth and the single-leader unit, Lencioni's first team, and the particular features of top teams in public services, including statutory officers. It names four ways top teams go wrong and reads Northamptonshire County Council through the lens of the top team.

The capstone practises the skill that matters most: reading a real situation through the ideas of team development. It examines the 1996 Everest disaster, Wales at Euro 2016 under the banner Together Stronger, and the emergency response to the Manchester Arena attack, drawing on Hackman, Edmondson, Roberto and JESIP. The cases are compared on two dimensions and drawn together into five layers of team development.