Moussa Mario - Committed teams : three steps to inspiring passion and performance

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Copyright 2016 by Mario Moussa, Madeline Boyer, and Derek Newberry.

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Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: Moussa, Mario, author. | Boyer, Madeline, 1987- author. | Newberry, Derek, 1983- author.

Title: Committed teams : three steps to inspiring passion and performance / Mario Moussa, Madeline Boyer, Derek Newberry.

Description: Hoboken : Wiley, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015042388 (print) | LCCN 2015047335 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119157403 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119157410 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119157427 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Teams in the workplaceManagement. | Employee motivation. | Leadership. | BISAC: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Workplace Culture.

Classification: LCC HD66 .M68 2016 (print) | LCC HD66 (ebook) | DDC 658.4/022dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015042388

Cover Design: Wiley

Cover Image: iStock.com/furtaev

Illustrations by: Barbara Boyer

For Robin Komita

Mario Moussa

For Robert and Ana Boyer

Madeline Boyer

For Carolyn Newberry

Derek Newberry

Our teamwork philosophy is easy to describe. You get organized, schedule regular times to check on your progress, and make adjustments when necessary. Three steps.

Simple.

The hard part is actually following the steps during your typical workday: time-crunched and stressful, deadline-driven, often chaotic, and full of quirky characters who have surprising motives. Not so simplebut that is a common reality. We wrote this book for teams who have to deliver results under these difficult conditions. Though it originated in the research we conducted at the Wharton School of Business, we organized our findings in the form of a how-to guide.

In from beginning to end, so that you understand the whole 33 and how to apply it. Each chapter includes a tool that you can start using right away.

. Each chapter in the second half of the book offers lessons you will find valuable no matter what your team needs to accomplish.

The three of us collaborated with a group of contributing authors who are experts in social science and organizational consulting. You can read about their backgrounds in the Authors section.

We tell lots of teamwork stories that we have heard over the years. We are interested in hearing your story, too. Please get in touch with us at www.committedteams.com

Mario Moussa, Madeline Boyer, and Derek Newberry

Intense!

Twisting your features into a mask of pain, you dig your heels into the soft grass. A rope tears into your palms. Sweat runs down your face as blood seeps from spidery cracks in your skin and onlookers gawk and yell.

A clear, tiny voice speaks to you amid the cacophony of confused thoughts swirling in your head: So-o-o-o what am I learning from this experience?

Well, you should be learning about teamwork. You are in the middle of a typical organizational development exercise. This one happens to entail pulling a large rock 30 feet. Your supervisor decided to start by having you try going it alone. Yet, despite all of your 5 a.m. Crossfit workouts at the gym, you failed to move the boulder even an inch. To achieve a different result, you clearly need to work with others.

Teamwork gets things done, right?

As others join you, one by one, the collective rope-pulling effort seems to demonstrate the point. Little by little, the boulder starts moving until it nudges over the 30-foot mark. Cheers erupt. But you notice something odd. With each additional person who contributes to the effort, the boulder moves a little bit faster, but not as fast as you would have imagined. By the time the tenth person steps up, you feel the group is barely pulling harder than when it was only six, even though everyone seems to be working hard.

Afterward, you ask others if they noticed the same thing. Everyone says: I was pulling my weight, but it sure seems that others weren't.

If the boulder exercise sounds like something you have experienced on your own team, then you have encountered a well-known phenomenon first identified by Max Ringelmann in the early twentieth century: social loafing. It names the tendency to apply less and less effort to a task as more people become involved with it.

In the original studies of what became known as the Ringelmann Effect, the French engineer analyzed the amount of energy expended by his students in a rope-pulling contest. As each side expanded its team, each person became less committed to the task, subconsciously slacking off more and more. No synergies here: 1 + 1 equals something less than 2, as illustrated in . This is just one in a long list of bad habits that most teams tend to cultivate over time, even though they might not be aware of it.

Effects of Social Loafing on People Pulling on a Rope