Can A Group Also Be A Team?
Samuel James, EdD, CGP

Dr. Angela McCue*, the Director of Group Psychotherapy at Mission Hospital, was about to see a new patient in her office unaware that her life was about to take a fascinating turn. She had recently led an in-service forum at Mission Hospital entitled: “A Group is a Group: The Role of Groups in Hospital Settings.” She saw these presentations as opportunities to teach about the effectiveness and flexibility of groups and the ways they can contribute to meeting the multiple needs of a hospital community. During her presentation, she noticed that Dr. Michael Nelson, Director of Psychiatric Services, had attended her presentation.

When Dr. McCue finished seeing her new patient, the phone rang, and Dr. Nelson asked if he could meet with her that afternoon. When they met later that day, Dr. Nelson explained that he had attended her presentation because he is looking for “creative ways to use internal resources to meet the department’s obligations.” He went on tell her that at his previous hospital they had used teams to help cut costs in administration, patient care, and staff-support responsibilities. He wanted her to replicate the organizational team approach in Mission’s Psychiatric Department. Stunned, Dr. McCue said she did not know anything about teams. “A group is a group,” he reminded her flatly and asked her to make an appointment with him in a week to give him an update of her progress.

Dr. McCue left Dr. Nelson’s office with a mixture of anger, fear, and curiosity. “How do I develop a team development program? Isn’t team development what organizational development people do?” she thought. She called a friend who was an organizational development professional. He recommended that she get on the Web and order three books—”The Wisdom of Teams” (Katzenback and Smith); “Working in Teams” (Shonk); and “Team Building” (Dyer)—and track down one article, “Optimizing Team Building Efforts” (Beckhard).

To her surprise, she was soon excited about her readings. She learned that work teams are not primarily designed to address the interpersonal aspects of what is going on between the members. Rather, they are designed to provide a good structure that integrates a clear charge and active senior sponsorship so that the team members understand the scope of their responsibilities and how they are going to work together to complete tasks.

She thought of her charge—to build a team development program—which suddenly seemed too broad. To what end was she doing this? What was expected? How would she know she was successful? Second, would Dr. Nelson be willing to be a partner with her? She called Dr. Nelson who asked her to come to his office right away. She asked Dr. Nelson to help define her task and to provide senior sponsorship to ensure the program’s success. He asked what she meant. She said she needed him to remove all obstacles to making this program successful. She asked all correspondence go out under his signature and he needed to be laying the foundation for the program. Her requests made sense to him and he agreed. 

Together they decided that she would put together a pilot program for two teams within the Psychiatric Department. In deciding which groups would make the best teams she looked at groups that met the following criteria:

• They coordinate their activities in order to accomplish the task.
• They work toward a common task or goal. 
• They are dependent upon each other’s services.
• They make decisions jointly. 
• They supply each other with resources. 
• They sequence their efforts to accomplish an overall goal. 
• They share common resources.

She concluded that two teams made the most sense; one would deal with administration and the second, patient care.

Dr. Nelson agreed and made arrangements for Dr. McCue to work with him as partners with these two groups—soon to be teams. He told her to let him know what was needed from him. Dr. McCue was thrilled. She had successfully completed her first intervention as an “OD consultant.” She was ready to begin in earnest. If a clear charge and senior sponsorship are the first two parts of the equation what was the rest?

From reading Dyer’s book, Dr. McCue learned that teams are very different from therapy groups. The purpose of team building is to help those who must work together to accomplish result; identify any condition that impedes effective collaboration; engage in actions to improve the quality of teamwork; and frequently take time to critique their performance together. Teams are designed to successfully complete their task and she needed to understand the steps in the design. With further help from reading Shonk, Katzenbach, and Dyer, the steps in team development began to fall in place. She carefully outlined the next four steps.

Goals: Since teams require coordinated activities, common goals, and sequenced efforts, they have to have a mission and clear goals that all members agree to. At the heart of setting goals is the question, what is their reason for being, their mission? Are they in agreement about this basic question? What are the goals for addressing the mission? How clear are these goals? Are the members in agreement about their level of importance? Will the members have goals specific enough so that they know when they have accomplished them?

Roles: Members of teams invariably create expectations of one another that are seldom discussed. These assumptions can lead to misunderstandings and scuttle their best efforts; consequently, it is paramount for team members to discuss roles and expectations. She learned that she could ask some simple questions of the members to help each address his or her role.

• What are the specific responsibilities you must fulfill?
• What can others expect from you? 
• What do you need from others in order to carry out your role?
• What are the questions you have about your role? 
• What do you need from the chairman/manager to be successful?

She was quick to realize that the members would be defining who would be doing what and why and at the same time that a subtle dynamic would be going on. They would be learning to listen carefully, negotiate with each other, and get to know each other in order to meet their goals. 

Relationships: At this point, Dr. McCue felt like she was on familiar turf. Soon she realized that she was only partly correct. While high performance teams are very committed to each other, Katzenbach reminded her that very few teams reach this level of development. Most teams are like work groups; it is important that members trust each other, not necessarily like each other. The place where teams develop or fall apart, however, is in their ability to deal with the relationships among the team members. While it is true, no real team becomes a team until they overcome obstacles—internal and external—they have to be prepared to address the interpersonal dynamics generated from working together. The capacity to successfully deal with the members’ interactions is what builds trust and cohesion. “Perhaps a group is a group after all,” she thought. Consequently team members need ways to successfully resolve problems and to ensure that a good working relationship continues. Overall, this includes having the ability to deal with interpersonal conflicts when they arise as well as the feelings and attitudes that are part of the day-to-day process of being a member of a team. 

Processes: She learned from Dyer that teams need a common working approach and must determine how they will work together to accomplish their goals. This is another area where teams typically do not take time to clarify how they will work together, and later they fail. It seemed very obvious to her that they needed to decide how decisions would be made. Will they follow the lead of the chairperson/manager or make decisions based on consensus or majority? Further, what do they each need communicated to them? How will meetings be called and who will set the agenda and lead them? Do they have all of the necessary skill sets within the members to be successful?

Dr. McCue had completed her initial outline for the team development program. She knew she had only begun, but believed she had an outline that she could follow to help with the pilot. She decided that additional training would be critical to the long-term success of her program, but she had enough support and understanding to get started. “Indeed,” she thought, “a group is a group but with some forethought and training it can be a whole lot more!”

* Drs. McCue and Nelson and Mission Hospital are fictitious and used to provide context for this article.

References

Beckhard, R. (1972). Optimizing teambuilding efforts. Journal of Contemporary Business.

Dyer, W.G. (1995). Team Building: Current Issues and New Alternatives. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Katzenbach, J.R and Smith, D.K. (1993) The Wisdom of Teams. New York: Harper-Collins.

Shonk, J.H. 91982). Working in Teams: A Practical Manual for Improving Work Groups. Ridgefield, CT: J.H. Shonk.

This article was published in the June/July 2001 issue of The Group Solution.