Team work is arguably the most momentous developmental issue challenging China’s reforming organisations today. After decades of Taylorisque hierarchical regimentation, a new form of liberation is imminent, if not urgently required.

Sadly, this daunting task remains ancillary to quick fix, Band-Aid productivity improvement measures with the term “team work” itself remaining nebulous and, more often than not, misunderstood. When a training firm responds to an inquiry about “Team Building Training” one is usually presented with a request to put on a three-day out-door camping jubilee vindicated by rope games and pole climbing psychical activities requiring more than one pair of hands at a time to accomplish. Whereas “internal team building” is generally carried out under the guise of a night out to the Kareoke. This form of cognition can be liken to suggesting a poodle puppy is an exemplary representation of the canine species.

Verily, “team work” requires a team of people to pitch their efforts together to accomplish a common task. It also requires a group of people to share a singular goal and to identify with each other and to maintain affinity. But the are other considerations:

Sequential vs Parallel

A bowling team in a league as compared to the football team. Production line team work asks that we work sequential as a team, separately and in an orderly fashion, without much regard for the mistakes of others. To which Chinese enterprises – from manufacturing to service industries – are snugly accustomed.

“Mind your own business, speak little, and do a lot” exhorted the good parents and the stern teachers.

Modern day team work demands that we integrate our efforts and work cross-functionally. A rare guard in a football team has as much of an obligation to score a goal when the opportunity presents itself as does the centre forward. It matters not in what position your are slotted on the organisation chart, but rather, the station your are at when the task is ripe for adjournment.

Anarchy is by no means suggested here, rather, a new form of organisation that is organic in shape, has multiple dimensions, filled by empowered people equipped with prudence, discretion, and courage. It will also require its team members to have a broader grasp of the business, be multi-skilled, and are charged with making decisions at the proper level.

Another hurdle to effective team work is the deep-rooted Chinese canon of “Sweeping the snow on your own door steps and ignore your neighbour’s ice laden roof”.

Role Identification

The word “Leader” has long been abused in China as it is conveniently and expediently used to denote authoritative people with no formal titles. The ubiquitous “Ling Dao” does not equate with the sparse “Ling Xiu”. So when the leadership development trend swept through the western world in the late 80’s and continued on into the 90’s, it hardly make a noticeable dent in the armours of the Chinese management juggernaut.

One quite deservedly obscure training programme actually commissioned the title “Total Leading and Harnessing” (Ton Ling Jia Yu) for one of its programmes on offer, quite oblivious to the fact it has, in the process of which, coined an oxymoron par excellence.

The role of a leader in a team is dynamic. It does not rest with a designated person but rather, leadership revolves as each knowledgeable person takes the lead in turn. Different situations require different modes of thinking and courses of action. The tidal wave of changes that renewed the infrastructure of China for the past ten years taught us as much. Team work recognises that no single supremo can fulfil the multiplicity of needs thrust upon us by our modern day market demands, and that we need to tap on the resources of a variety of people with differing viewpoints and backgrounds to maintain a competitive advantage. We have to accept diversity as a propellant, not a hindrance.

Making Yourself Heard

Confucius said, “The gentleman may disagree but he maintains harmony, whereas the little person agrees readily but harbours disharmony”.

It takes more than courage for a traditional Chinese person to voice opposing opinions publicly or to stand up for their beliefs in the face of authority. Millenniums of admonishment had implanted reticence as a virtue from school rooms to board rooms – whereas in a functional team it is an imperative for each member to share his or her perceptions, insights, or even intuitions.

The gravest task for any team work training programme is to help the participants realise differing opinions leads to quality decisions, questioning entrenched beliefs merits applause, and it is often through polarisation that optimal solutions can be forged.

But for this to happen, the “Ling Daos” will have to get off their high horses and be in touch with reality. So any team work training worth its while is more likely than not starting from the top down, not from the bottom up.

A leading joint-venture pharmaceutical company recently conducted a Performance Improvement Initiative Workshop where it congregated the managers of its Rx division for 4-days and ask that they articulate the strategic intent for certain areas of its operations, (with these areas being named by the participants themselves in the first place) analyse the performance and opportunity gaps that separate them from the fulfilment of the intent, determine the root cause for each, build solutions, and make action plans to enhance performance in each area. Not only was the Workshop successful in generating a host of profitable actions, it also augmented morale, ownership, empowerment, and team work.

But this bountiful harvest was possible only because the company has included in its Mission Statement, staunchly practised from top management down for two years prior to the Workshop, behavioural standards such as: “Transparency and Openness”, “Active Communication”, and “Objective Listening”. Whilst also under the same Mission Statement it enunciated values such as: “Customer, suppliers, and our people are partners in growth” and “Every team member can improve and contribute”.

Caring

When presented with the rhetorical question: “Is team work good?” in a training session a participant responded to the negative. When questioned why, the reply was: “Team work means I will have to do what others don’t want to do.”

When caring is discussed here in refers not to filling in for others when they are sick, staying late to help complete a last minute rush job, or covering up for the mistake of co-workers. Least of all, caring by no means equate with lending money to colleagues to help carry them to the next pay cheque.

Caring means the empathy that enables members of a team to challenge each others viewpoints as equals, the ability to accept others having a right to feel the way they do and voicing their opinions, caring also infers recognising people we work with are flesh and blood beings subject to tempers and emotions, has physical limitations, susceptible to illnesses, and are vulnerable to periods of spiritual feebleness.

Again, this basis for effective team work must be build and maintained by all, it has to be woven into the very fabric of the organisation, permeating the formal and informal structures, and regarded as a foundation for stellar performance by the entire team.

Francis Bacon said, “A crowd is not company”. Neither is a group of co-worker labouring together necessarily a “team”.

Feedback

The purpose of feedback is not to pass judgement on the other team members actions, whether it is right or wrong, good or bad, but rather, how one feels about the action itself. In order for a team to realise its true potential all members will have to be comfortable with each others roles and relating activities, which are, to begin with, dynamic and shifting constantly. Timely feedback will build acceptance, mutual respect, and dignity into the team’s relationships.

Feedback also goes hand in glove with the previously discussed principles of Caring and Making Yourself Heard. Team members have an obligation to inform each other of how they feel about the work in progress, real and perceived problems, and personal concerns and trepidation. In the increasingly affluent Chinese business world job opportunities abound for those who can make profitable contributions. Money alone does not retain people as in the early days of China’s opening up and reformation when a position with a joint-venture company was priced as a golden rice bowl. Letting your people bobble incessantly in a tepid sea of frustration, futility, and foreboding will only land them on the shores of your competitors’.

As a hotel says at its entrance: “We never forget you have a choice, thank you for choosing us”. That surely will keep people coming back.

Trust

The Cultural Revolution demolished not just the culture of China when it rear its evil head back in the sixties and the seventies, it shattered the one most treasured rectitude that is indispensable to team work, trust.

From hidden agendas leading to fruitless meetings, Machiavellian measures requiring more time to devise than productivity improvement plans, diabolical schemes and counter-schemes concocted to fortify one’s position in the company, people busy themselves half the working day as a result of lack of trust for one and other.

Contrary to common belief, trust can not be build by putting slogans on the wall, falling off two meter platforms and allowing your mates to catch you before you hit you head on the ground, nor can it be implemented by decree. Trust is not merely believing in the other person. Trust means first believing in yourself.

Sufficient self-confidence to trust others is the issue to tackle first and foremost. We can not believe we are a person worthy of the respect of others, or, in our course of actions, or, our compassion for others will be returned in kind . . . or, all three combined.

Once we have established the type of self-confidence required we can proceed to trust others. The principle to use is simple, it lies with the golden thread the runs through the English judiciary system – one is innocent until proven guilty. Which sadly, is not practised by the Chinese judiciary, or by most authoritative persons in its business enterprises.

To facilitate team work we need to build pride into each person, we need to help them realise their contributions, we give feedback, we care, we hear them out and we create opportunities for them to become leaders. In short, we have to groom our people from being dependent into independent, before they can become inter-dependent.

“People can not be trusted” is the type of common sense that will demonstrate to us the world is flat.


In conclusion, when selecting or designing a team work training do the following:

1.Before running the training, make sure you are ready to cultivate and maintain a company culture that supports true team work. As much as we are tired of the phrase, a “paradigm shift” is, indeed, necessary. Should you continue to run a régime that rewards submission and acquiescence, not only will the training efforts be nugatory and the dollars invested wasted, it will also be detrimental to collective morale and personal resolves.

2.The training must have integrity, ensure it does not stop at turning the participants into mere cheerleaders for each other’s efforts. Failing that, the esprit of the corps can only be found, literally and figuratively, on the team members’ clothing labels. The training must begin with a changing of the participants’ mindsets, equip them with the skills to get consensus, using personal influence, and how to lead and participate in meetings; its must build trust and mutual acceptance, and even before that, self-confidence and reliance; it should include sessions on personal values and company cultures, explaining how these issues support or impugn effective team work. Above all, the training must be tied into real life work situations, demonstrating to the participants how these skills will lead to more satisfying relationships and rewarding results.

3.It is the individual in a team that makes the team, work on each person, not just on the creation of a team by edict. Calling you dog by the name “Cat” does no make it anymore a feline in look, feel, or function.

4.Communications, open and transparent, timely and to the point. Again, work not on the skills alone, but the attitudes that compel and perpetuate such behaviours. Giving feedback to reinforce each others positive behaviours is a skill that warrants priority in the training.

5.Role identification and enrichment. Why is this person on this team? What does he bring? What can he help develop? Just an extra pair of hands? Do you believe the Chinese saying: “More people, easier the task”, or are you a subscriber to Parkinson assertion of “Work expands with the time allocated for its completion”?

6.The training should laud the creation of partnerships at work, hails win-win relationships and amplifies its desirability. Making your people do personality tests and publishing the results only stereo-types them, it does not recognise each person is unique and deserved to be treated as such. The training should be used as a platform for on-going team members to get to know each other more personally, sharing values, judgements, and perceptions.

7.Builds trust amongst the team members by helping them see how they will personally stand to benefit from trusting others. Assure them of the ease of mind, the personal gratification, and the warm camaraderie that is sure to follow. Distinguish blind trust versus earned trust.

8.Finally, work from the top down. Remember the French saying: “The fish stinks from the head”.