Stuck Teams

It’s a lot of fun exploring research about high-performing teams and applying the principles to your own teams. But sometimes, like anything exciting, it can seem a bit of a utopian dream when things aren’t going well. Every workplace, and every team, has its own context and circumstances, which is why I’m always reluctant to say ‘this always works’ or ‘do this and your team will be fine’. Just like teaching, working in a productive team is nuanced and challenging.

One term that I’ve come across recently from Katzenbach and Smith’s The Wisdom of Teams, is the concept of a stuck team. This isn’t to say that the team has a toxic culture, or is steeped in dysfunction, but rather acknowledges that all teams go through cycles, and, while sometimes momentum is high and things go well, at other times we can become stuck.

Teams can get stuck for a variety of reasons, from not investing enough into proper teamwork behaviours, to unforeseen challenges, to a lack of purpose or focus on important goals. I suspect we can all recall the feeling of being in a team that doesn’t feel like it is doing good, important work with clear aims.

When teams get stuck, members might experience these symptoms:

• Loss of enthusiasm
• Lack of purpose or identity towards the team
• Unconstructive discussions
• Cynicism and mistrust
• Interpersonal issues
• Lack of commitment to the team’s work

It’s usual for all teams to experience a sense of being stuck at some point. Education is a tough business, and our teams won’t be plain sailing the whole time. A pastoral team used to being on top of things might have suddenly been hit by a spate of safeguarding issues and a decrease in attendance – these challenges aren’t their fault, and yet they must respond to them. On top of their current workload, this might cause them to struggle to figure out how to flourish. So being ‘stuck’ doesn’t necessarily mean that we lack competence, but rather that we need to address something about the work we do to make sure the team becomes purposeful and productive again.

Some of the reasons why teams get stuck:

1. A weak sense of direction – teams and their leaders shouldn’t assume that everyone understands and agrees why and how they are working together. A team’s direction and purpose should be discussed and reviewed, so that it is clear to all – fundamental agreement on the sense of direction will help the team when there are more specific conflicts or obstacles further down the line.
2. Insufficient focus on team performance – teams don’t just magically work together because they are told to, nor do they bond simply because they are called a team. Teams thrive when they have a performance challenge, mapped out with specific performance goals for the group. When teams sleepwalk through the school year, just going through admin and dates, they fail to coalesce around a purposeful performance challenge. Without this, they are unlikely to genuinely work together, and then, when things do crop up that require discussion or teamwork, they don’t have a foundation for this.
3. A lack of evaluation – some teams don’t discuss how things are going, or objectively consider their processes or impact. Some leave this to June / July and by then it’s too late. If a team isn’t regularly discussing what is going well, or what needs to improve, the team members themselves have no reason to contribute to the team’s growth or learning. They are likely to switch off from team processes and do whatever suits them, because after all, they are busy and need to apply their expertise where it has the most impact. Teams who do not review or evaluate do not only alienate their team members by not seeking their views, they also do not learn about how to improve.
4. Low levels of psychological safety – teams get stuck when members don’t feel they can contribute their honest ideas, views, and expertise. This has a catastrophic effect on all aspects of the team. I’ve written more about this here, and in The Power of Teams. Teams needs high levels of belonging and psychological safety in order to become more than the sum of their parts.
5. Things not getting done – team members feel stuck when they keep feeding things back and then nothing happens, or there is no communication about what is going on. Team members will feel enthusiastic about a team where things are getting done, and when that isn’t possible, the leader recognises how they will adapt to move forward and communicate with the group. If we felt energised about our purpose and mission, we need to see steps being made towards that.
6. Unprecedented challenges – sometimes teams can be in a really good spell, but a set of circumstances occur that knocks them off their stride. Every team goes through peaks and troughs, so it’s important to remember that it’s not time to panic if they become a bit stuck with an aspect of their work.

Of course, there are various reasons why teams become stuck, but let’s cut to the chase and look at some potential solutions. Think about the teams you are in, and whether or not some of these ideas might benefit them.

How teams can become unstuck:

1. Revisit the basics – as things becoming more demanding during the term, we often forget the basics of what our team(s) is striving for. Teams cannot rethink their purpose, approach, and goals too often. Re-evaluating these basics means that they can discover emerging or shifting assumptions, differences of opinion, or new perspectives, which may help to revitalise the team’s mission and how to accomplish it.
2. Go for small wins – there is a great analogy about a team who are sailing a boat, aiming to cross a sea and arrive at their destination, hundreds of miles away. During the voyage, a storm occurs, damaging multiple parts of the vessel. The boat is close to destruction, and will not make it to their destination in its current condition. That goal is no longer attainable. So, two members of the crew start fixing the rudder – with a lot of effort, they manage it. While the boat is not much closer to being truly sea worthy, their efforts are rewarding, and other small groups within the crew set to work on other small tasks, all of which are accomplished. The boat is not necessarily closer to the original goal of reaching the final destination, but it is now seaworthy. They change course for a nearby island, and reach it.

The lesson here is that sometimes when we are stuck, our grand goals for the year feel unattainable. Rather than despair about the gap between where we are now, and that audacious goal, teams should focus on shorter-term goals, which will provide a boost in morale, and progress, when they are achieved. Working together on shorter-term goals helps to galvanise the team in lots of ways, and will, of course, contribute to the overall vision or goals.

3. Purposeful meetings – meeting time is limited in schools, so they must be used purposefully to evaluate processes, have meaningful discussions, learn together, and to do collaborative work, if relevant. If you want your team to believe that it does good, meaningful work together, this is the place to start.

4. New information and learning – it’s easy to get trapped in a cycle of what we are doing, the ways we are doing it, and a sense of negativity if that isn’t bearing fruit. Teams should examine new information about what they do, to provoke discussion and learning. For example, a department might use various interventions to better understand how effectively they are teaching something, from student surveys, team CPD on their subject, expert views from other teachers, or looking at blogs or research together. Teams sometimes to need to lift their heads of their day-to-day, in order to be challenged or inspired by new information and knowledge. I really enjoyed Adam Grant’s Think Again, where he challenges us to constantly find information that will go against our assumptions.

5. Team CPD – similarly, stuck teams often do not have a purposeful curriculum of CPD for their team members. Team learning should be prioritised so that the team is learning things that contribute to their aims, but also so that individuals are gaining expertise in things they want to improve, too. CPD should be deliberate, mapped out, and fed back into the group and its processes. Too many stuck teams have an accidental approach to learning and CPD.

6. Build belonging and psychological safety – part of good teamwork involves conflict. Any group of people will have diverse views, and it is futile getting them together if they aren’t able to express those. So, we have to find ways to build belonging so that in good moments, and in tricky conversations, team members feel they can be honest with one another. There is no blame for mistakes, no mocking, no cliques, and failure is viewed as inevitable bump in a longer, purposeful road. Conflict is anticipated, and there are ground rules about how the group will handle disagreement.

As discussed, teams can become stuck for a variety of reasons. My advice is that the best teams have a performance challenge to focus on – goals that unite them and incentivise them to coalesce and work together to achieve something important. This focus on a shared challenge, with clear goals, will often begin to take care of a lot of the other teamwork factors, and is therefore a good place to start.

If you want to read more about teams, check out my other blog posts

Thanks for reading

Sam