266 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
266 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
May 1991
|
|
|
|
|
|
TEAMWORK: AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH
|
|
|
|
By
|
|
|
|
Alan Youngs
|
|
Captain
|
|
Lakewood, Colorado, Police Department
|
|
|
|
and
|
|
|
|
Eric K. Malmborg
|
|
Management Consultant
|
|
Boulder, Colorado
|
|
|
|
|
|
As humans, we strive for individuality. We pride ourselves
|
|
on the unique talents and problem-solving capabilities each of
|
|
us possesses. Our individual capabilities, when combined with
|
|
those of others in a professional setting, work to build a
|
|
successful team. However, effective teamwork does not come
|
|
easily; it requires coordination, cooperation, and communication
|
|
on the part of all involved.
|
|
|
|
THE NEED TO WORK TOGETHER
|
|
|
|
At times, individual needs and goals, as well as an
|
|
inability to communicate effectively, interfere with effective
|
|
team building. And, while the diverse skills of several persons
|
|
working together can solve problems, combining these human
|
|
efforts successfully to achieve a goal poses difficult
|
|
challenges. Nonetheless, as society becomes more complicated
|
|
and as individuals become more specialized, effective teamwork
|
|
becomes an essential requirement to solve common problems.
|
|
|
|
For example, the problems facing society as a whole
|
|
increasingly require the input and joint coordinated action of
|
|
the police and the community. As these problems become more
|
|
complex, the consequences of ineffective solutions increase
|
|
correspondingly. The recent upsurge of gang activities in
|
|
metropolitan areas is only one problem that points to the need
|
|
for a team effort.
|
|
|
|
Then, there is the realization that police departments are
|
|
becoming more "civilianized," another emerging trend. More and
|
|
more, civilians perform many jobs within police departments that
|
|
do not require the training and skills of professional police
|
|
officers. For this transformation to work, the barriers between
|
|
these two groups must come down.
|
|
|
|
Therefore, police departments must begin to promote team
|
|
building within their ranks. Then, the strategy can be adapted
|
|
to work with members of the community. As Sir Robert Peel, the
|
|
first commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, pointed out
|
|
in the first part of the 19th century, "The police are the
|
|
people and the people are the police."
|
|
|
|
PROPERTIES OF SUCCESSFUL TEAMS
|
|
|
|
What are the secrets of successful teams? Why do some
|
|
teams achieve remarkable success, while others fail or are
|
|
assigned to mediocrity? To find the answers, Dr. Carl Larson, a
|
|
former Dean of Social Sciences at the University of Denver, and
|
|
Dr. Frank M. J. LaFasto, Vice-President of Human Resource
|
|
Planning and Development for a private health care corporation,
|
|
conducted a 3-year study of individual teams and their
|
|
achievements. (1) By interviewing a wide range of teams,
|
|
including a space shuttle team and a championship football team,
|
|
they discovered a surprising consistency in the characteristics
|
|
of an effective team.
|
|
|
|
Larson and LaFasto identified eight properties of
|
|
successful teams:
|
|
|
|
1) A clear, elevating goal--a worthwhile and challenging
|
|
objective that is compelling enough to create team
|
|
identity and has clear consequences connected with its
|
|
achievement;
|
|
|
|
2) A results-driven structure--a team design that is
|
|
determined by the objective and supported by clear
|
|
lines of responsibility, open communication, fact-based
|
|
judgments, and methods of providing individual
|
|
performance feedback;
|
|
|
|
3) Competent team members--members who possess the
|
|
essential skills and abilities to accomplish the
|
|
objective;
|
|
|
|
4) A unified commitment--a team goal that is given a
|
|
higher priority than any individual objective and
|
|
inspires members to devote whatever effort is necessary
|
|
to achieve success;
|
|
|
|
5) A collaborative climate--a common set of guiding values
|
|
that allows members to trust each other;
|
|
|
|
6) Standards of excellence--high standards that motivate
|
|
members to constantly strive to improve performance;
|
|
|
|
7) External support and recognition--necessary resources
|
|
and support required to accomplish team objectives,
|
|
including recognition and incentives; and
|
|
|
|
8) Principled leadership--leaders who take the
|
|
necessary actions to inspire commitment, reward
|
|
superior performance, delegate meaningful levels
|
|
of responsibility, and confront inadequate
|
|
performance. (2)
|
|
|
|
BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE TEAM
|
|
|
|
The Lakewood, Colorado, Police Department recently
|
|
implemented an innovative approach to help its management-level
|
|
officers understand and develop a more successful team approach
|
|
to problem solving. Faced with the growing realization that
|
|
well-executed team-work is required for effective law
|
|
enforcement, and successful participation in the community team
|
|
as a whole, the department developed a strategy to train its
|
|
management personnel to become more effective team participants.
|
|
|
|
Department administrators realized that traditionally, law
|
|
enforcement training has been confined to the classroom. And,
|
|
although classroom training provides the opportunity to listen
|
|
to instructors and exchange ideas with fellow students, it is
|
|
not the ideal place to experience and assimilate what is being
|
|
taught. Oftentimes, when students return to the work setting,
|
|
they do not have the opportunity to practice what they learned.
|
|
Therefore, hands-on experience should reinforce classroom
|
|
instruction.
|
|
|
|
This is particularly true when a group of individuals
|
|
endeavors to increase its ability to work as a team. In
|
|
essence, the group learns to be a team by actually working
|
|
together. Team training in an environment that is new,
|
|
unfamiliar, adventurous, and challenging allows each individual
|
|
to see the resources available in others, discover creative ways
|
|
to solve problems by using these resources, and develop the
|
|
communication skills and the trust needed to operate
|
|
successfully as a team.
|
|
|
|
This is why department administrators decided to take their
|
|
team building effort beyond the classroom. Working with a
|
|
management development organization, the department developed a
|
|
workshop designed to improve communication, increase team
|
|
effectiveness, and enhance the leadership capabilities,
|
|
creativity, and vision of its managers. The goal of the
|
|
workshop was to build an effective management team through
|
|
reinforcement of classroom training.
|
|
|
|
TEAM BUILDING WORKSHOP
|
|
|
|
To begin, mandatory attendance at the team building
|
|
workshop was required of every police supervisor from the rank
|
|
of sergeant to the chief of police, as well as every civilian
|
|
supervisor. The participants were divided randomly in teams,
|
|
although each team did include persons of every rank. The
|
|
program was repeated four times during a 6-month period.
|
|
|
|
Day one of the workshop concentrated on various practical
|
|
exercises designed to assess each participant's current ability
|
|
to work with others and to reinforce team building. This also
|
|
enabled the participants to learn firsthand the dimensions of
|
|
high performance teams as identified by Larson and LaFasto. By
|
|
the end of the day, these exercises surfaced issues such as:
|
|
|
|
* The importance of trust and clear communications
|
|
|
|
* Creative problem solving and the impact of
|
|
organizational structure on that process
|
|
|
|
* The importance of clearly defined goals and the need for
|
|
everyone to work toward those goals
|
|
|
|
* Role clarity and understanding individual abilities, and
|
|
|
|
* The need for team leaders to focus on team goals and to
|
|
maintain the direction of the team.
|
|
|
|
For example, in one of the more-simplified exercises, teams
|
|
worked together to get all their members up and over a 12-foot
|
|
wall safely. Each team member displayed different strengths
|
|
and/or weaknesses when encountering the wall. In order for the
|
|
team to be successful, team members needed to recognize and
|
|
adapt these individual abilities to obtain a common goal. Team
|
|
members had to align themselves with the goal, communicate with
|
|
others, place trust in team members, and use creative thinking
|
|
to solve the problem at hand.
|
|
|
|
In-depth discussions followed team exercises. Participants
|
|
voiced the trust and confidence they felt at the end of each
|
|
exercise and discussed experiencing, or not experiencing, these
|
|
same feelings on the job.
|
|
|
|
These exercises and discussions explored a number of issues
|
|
critical to team performance. Through this process, team
|
|
members became aware of their individual abilities to work as
|
|
part of a team and learned team skills that could be put to use
|
|
in their individual assignments.
|
|
|
|
During the second day of the workshop, participants "took
|
|
stock" of the first day's activities and examined personal and
|
|
team accomplishments. Workshop coordinators also presented a
|
|
review of the characteristics of high performance teams,
|
|
according to the work of Larson and LaFasto, and shared the
|
|
results of a feedback instrument that each team member filled
|
|
out before the workshop began. After reviewing the feedback and
|
|
assessing the information, teams focused on areas that they
|
|
thought were the most critical to team development and the
|
|
individual plans that should be used on the job to accomplish
|
|
team goals.
|
|
|
|
FOLLOWUP
|
|
|
|
In a followup study, participants identified the most
|
|
significant things they learned from the workshop. Some of
|
|
their comments were:
|
|
|
|
* "A team can work together to achieve goals and
|
|
objectives"
|
|
|
|
* "I was impressed with all the different ways that a task
|
|
can be solved when different members of the team provide
|
|
input"
|
|
|
|
* "Team functioning hands-on is far more effective than
|
|
mere talking or working"
|
|
|
|
* "Free, creative thinking should be encouraged within an
|
|
organization for effective problem solving"
|
|
|
|
* "The strength of our team was impressive."
|
|
|
|
Other benefits of this experience included the formation of
|
|
a committee to promote and facilitate communication within the
|
|
department and the establishment of a citizens' police academy
|
|
to increase community awareness of police operations and to
|
|
provide an opportunity for police and community members to
|
|
develop a team relationship.
|
|
|
|
CONCLUSION
|
|
|
|
Effective teamwork is critical to any organization.
|
|
But, a team is only as strong as its members. The
|
|
"out-of-the-classroom" learning experience assisted team members
|
|
to identify the elements of teamwork and to communicate them to
|
|
others. It also helped them to recognize their individual
|
|
strengths and weaknesses.
|
|
|
|
This program also allowed the civilian personnel and
|
|
officers of the Lakewood Police Department to discover that each
|
|
member's individuality is an asset to building a team. And it
|
|
is that individuality, combined with coordination, cooperation,
|
|
and communication, that makes for a successful team.
|
|
|
|
|
|
FOOTNOTES
|
|
|
|
(1) Carl Larson and Frank M.J. LaFasto, "Teamwork--What
|
|
Must Go Right/What Can Go Wrong" (Newbury Park, California: Sage
|
|
Publications, 1989).
|
|
|
|
(2) Ibid, p. 8.
|
|
|