Team effectiveness: what? how? when?

Hi everyone,
Today I want to talk about team effectiveness. I think it is a really important topic that has a high impact on the outcome of a project. In this blogpost, I would like to introduce several models for team effectiveness that I have found, but first let's introduce the concept itself.

What is team effectiveness ?

Team effectiveness is also known as group effectiveness. It consist on the capacity of a team to accomplish goals or objectives. One important aspect is that the tasks of the individuals are interdependent and the responsibility of the output is shared among all the members.

Different models

Several models to increase team effectiveness has been proposed. A summary of some of the most important ones are:

Rubin, Plovnick, and Fry's model

It is also known as the GRPI model to stand for goals, roles, processes, and interpersonal relationships, and is represented in a diagram as a pyramid in which each of the levels need to be met by the team in order to be effective. This levels are:

1. Goals
2. Roles
3. Processes
4. Interpersonal relationships

The Katzenbach and Smith Model

In this model the teams is in a triangular diagram, with the three vertex being the larger deliverables of any team: collective work products, performance results, and personal growth. And in order to reach those goals, there are three necessary factors in play, which make up the sides of the triangle: Commitment, skills and accountability.

The Hackman Model

In this model there are 5 conditions that need to be met in order to increase the chances of the team being efficient. This conditions are.:

1. Being a real team. E.g. the membership on the team is clear and stable.
2. Direction. Everyone works on the same goal.
3. Having a structure that enables team work and collaboration.
4. Having a supportive context. E.g resources are provided to the team.
5. Having expert guidance available to help team members.

Conclusions

In my opinion, the GRPI model is good because it gives a simple and clear approximation to which elements are necessary and most important in order to make a team effective. On the other hand, it might lack depth on the human plane in order to tackle a team in the current world context (more culturally and skillset diverse teams).

That is why I think the model that may adapt the best in a modern organisation is the Hackman model as it takes into account the team but also the individual (which can be seen with the coaching condition).