According to Harvard’s Richard Hackman, a leading expert on teams, there is a widespread belief that teams make us more productive and creative and that they are the best way to get a job done. In a May 2009 Harvard Business Review interview, Professor Hackman cautions us that problems with coordination, motivation, and competition often cause a team to perform worse than expected. Here are some of his ideas for improving team performance. I have included my ideas about what they mean for a virtual team leader.

•  Set a clear direction. The team needs to have a clear direction that everyone agrees on. We have seen in our research on leadership in computer-mediated teams that clarity on what the team is supposed to do bolsters team creativity and productivity. In virtual teams, clearly specifying what the team is expected to do is extremely critical because even differences in locations from which team members come can give rise to differences in the agendas of team members (see our past post on how location matters in virtual teams). Moreover, getting the team to agree on the direction is critical too. Getting the team to work on a team compact is helpful for bringing about agreement.
• Teams should consist of people who matter. Professor Hackman cautions us against including team members for political correctness or to not look exclusionary. Such individuals often don’t want to be on the team and they lead to a dysfunctional team. Virtual team leaders should use the team’s direction to determine who can make a positive contribution to the team. In fact, the leader should use ideas about how a potential member could make a positive difference to sell the team to that member. People will join if they see that they can make a positive difference. The leader should make sure that there is a deviant in the team — someone who will challenge the team often and prevent it from becoming complacent. Also, the leader should avoid double digits, i.e., build a team of no more than nine people in order to keep the team manageable.
• Teams must be real. Professor Hackman tells us that his experience with teams, including senior executive teams, shows that team members are often unclear about who is on the team. This is likely to be an even greater problem in virtual teams because team members don’t see each other. We suggest the a virtual team leader should create a list of team members, their roles on the team, and their skill sets and strengths at the outset of the team’s project. These details should be displayed prominently in a shared portal or, if a portal is not available, they should be made available in a shared location. An example of what I mean here can be seen at the portal of the Organizational Communication & Information Systems Division of the Academy of Management. At this portal, pictures and other relevant details of division members are rotated for display every time somebody visits the site (when you visit the site, hit the refresh button in your browser to see pictures being rotated).
• Be who you are. Leaders should take advantage of their strengths and add members or bring outside help to compensate for what they lack. Virtual team leaders can take advantage of systems like IBM’s Beehive to determine who might have the skills that they lack (see our digest on IBM’s Beehive). Professor Hackman warns against leader’s trying to emulate someone that they are not or trying to follow any leadership model because there is no single right way to lead a team. Effective leaders are like jazz players who improvise constantly as they go along.
• Focus on the team’s processes. According to Professor Hackman, many team leaders focus on enhancing individual performance rather than enhancing teamwork. Leaders can enhance the level of teamwork by conducting a launch meeting, midpoint reviews, and a debrief at the end. We have advocated this whenever we have suggested creation a team compact at the beginning of a team’s functioning and conducting After Action Reviews (AARs) during the team’s work. During the AARs, leaders should make sure that the norms that the team laid out in the team compact are followed. Professor Hackman shared an interesting point that in organizations with the best HR departments, teams don’t perform well. This is because such departments focus on individual performance rather than on preparing the organization to be great at teamwork.

Teams, including virtual teams, can be beneficial to organizations. Too often, we think that teams will somehow figure out where to go and how to get there (see related post). But, as Professor Hackman has laid out, they require active leadership to ensure success. In a virtual team, active leadership is even more critical. I am not sure how many team leaders are aware of that and are trained for successful team leadership.