akinsgre's picture Submitted by akinsgre on
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Management and Leadership

This article has some interesting things to say about teams.

http://tinyurl.com/24v7lh

MT seems to emphasize individual behaviors, and consequently encourages individual feedback. Is there a feedback model for teams, and when to use team vs when to use individual feedback?

There is a section where feedback to teams vs feedbacks to individuals is described...

[quote]Feedback directed to individuals yields higher individual performance at the expense of team performance; team feedback yields better team performance at the expense of individual performance. If both types of feedback are provided, both levels of performance cannot be maximized.[/quote]

Mark's picture
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Submitted by Mark on Wednesday June 6th, 2007 4:01 pm

Dang academics! :wink: I wonder if they do all the stuff they say. There's a LOT of good concepts in there...all of it pretty old, but still relevant.

I'd love to hear what they consider team feedback. What is it, what works, what doesn't. We haven't found a real world situation where we have seen noteworthy impact of team feedback...but I think that's because we haven't even mastered individual feedback. And, as long as there is individual pay (we don't inherently endorse that, but we know it's...ahhhh... prevalent) individual feedback is where you gotta be playing.

Once we all get to delivering regular, specific, and actionable feedback to individuals and performance improves...we might consider sharing some thoughts about team feedback.

Say, in a thousand years... :wink:

Thanks for sharing Greg. This is a good concept to return to.

Mark

LouFlorence's picture
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Submitted by LouFlorence on Wednesday June 6th, 2007 9:01 pm

Managing teams sounds to me like changing a culture. Both are commonly thought of as things that can be done by working on the entire team or culture.

My current view, shaped by experience and greatly focused by what I have learned here at MT, is that only individuals can be managed. If we do that effectively, then team performance and cultures (which are simply aggregates of individual behavior) will be changed.

The referenced article discusses Apollo 13. That was a great team performance, and it was characterized (chiefly, I would argue) by tremendous individual contributions.

Lou