Chapter 5Working in Teams 177OBAT WORKSports Teams Are Not the
Model for All Teams
There are flaws in using sports as a model for developing
effective work teams. Here are just four caveats.^87
All sport teams are not alike.In baseball, for
instance, there is little interaction among teammates.
Rarely are more than two or three players directly involved
in a play. The performance of the team is largely the sum
of the performance of its individual players. In contrast,
basketball has much more interdependence among play-
ers. Usually all players are involved in every play, team
members have to be able to switch from offence to
defence at a moment’s notice, and there is continuous
movement by all, not just the player with the ball. The
performance of the team is more than the sum of its indi-
vidual players. So when using sports teams as a model for
work teams, you have to make sure you are making the
correct comparison.
Work teams are more varied and complex.In an
athletic league, teams vary little in their context, the
design of the team, and the design of the task. But from
one work team to the next, these factors can vary tremen-
dously. As a result, coaching plays a much more significant
part in a sports team’s performance than in the work-
place. Performance of work teams is more a function of
getting the team’s structural and design variables right.
So, in contrast to sports, managers of work teams should
focus less on coaching and more on getting the team set
up for success.
A lot of employees cannot relate to sports
metaphors. Not everyone on work teams is conversant in
sports. Team members from different cultures also may
not know the sports metaphors you are using. Most
Canadians, for instance, are unfamiliar with the rules and
terminology of Australian football.
Work team outcomes are not easily defined in
terms of wins and losses.Sports teams usually measure
success in terms of wins and losses. Such measures of
success are rarely as clear for work teams. Managers who
try to define success in wins and losses imply that the
workplace is ethically no more complex than the playing
field, which is rarely true.Sports Teams Are Good
Models for Workplace Teams
Studies from hockey, football, soccer, basketball, and base-
ball have found a number of elements in successful sports
teams that can be applied to successful work teams.^86
Successful teams integrate cooperation and com-
petition.Effective team coaches get athletes to help one
another but also push one another to perform at their
best. Sports teams with the best win-loss records had
coaches who promoted a strong spirit of cooperation and
a high level of healthy competition among their players.
Successful teams score early wins.Early successes
build teammates’ faith in themselves and their capacity as
a team. For instance, research on hockey teams of rela-
tively equal ability found that 72 percent of the time the
team that was ahead at the end of the first period went
on to win the game. So managers should provide teams
with early tasks that are simple and provide “easy wins.”
Successful teams avoid losing streaks.Losing can
become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A couple of failures can
lead to a downward spiral if a team becomes demoralized
and believes it is helpless to end its losing streak. Managers
need to instill the confidence in team members that they
can turn things around when they encounter setbacks.
Practice makes perfect.Successful sports teams exe-
cute on game day but learn from their mistakes in prac-
tice. A wise manager carves out time and space in which
work teams can experiment and learn.
Successful teams use halftime breaks.The best
coaches in basketball and football use halftime during a
game to reassess what is working and what is not.
Managers of work teams should build in similar assess-
ments at about the halfway point in a team project to
evaluate how the team can improve.
Winning teams have a stable membership.Studies
of professional basketball teams have found that the more
stable a team’s membership, the more likely the team is to
win. The more time teammates have together, the more
able they are to anticipate one another’s moves and the
clearer they are about one another’s roles.
Successful teams debrief after failures and suc-
cesses.The best sports teams study the game video.
Similarly, work teams need to take time to routinely reflect
on both their successes and failures and to learn from them.
POINT COUNTERPOINT