Effective team leadership. Five guiding principles.

At the Tavistock we believe that every group and team has a double life and that understanding this better can help leaders with the complex task of leading a team.

Sometimes teams seem capable of meeting together effectively to get on with a task – reviewing a strategy for example, or solving a dilemma.  At such moments teams feel energetic, creative, effective.

But there is also the shadow side of each group or team.  When this is to the fore, the team seems to have a different purpose - more primitive, more disruptive.  This shadow team may seem more concerned to make its members feel better, through humour for example. They may struggle to get through agendas.  They make it difficult for leaders to lead effectively.  They could be described as ‘avoidant’.

Here are five guiding principles to help leaders better understand group dynamics and lead effectively when a team is in the grip of avoidant behaviour.  

1. Firstly – don’t ignore the dynamics.  It might be tempting, but make no mistake a team ‘in the grip’ will not be able to work effectively.
    
2. Develop ‘double task’ capacity.  This involves paying attention to dynamics at the same time as helping the team get on with the task in hand.  It’s tricky, but if you can find a way of ‘naming’ what you think is going on ‘under the surface’ it can really help the team get unstuck and move forward in a more realistic, collaborative way.
   
   
3. Notice what sort of leader you are being asked to be.  At times you may feel your team’s needs are appropriate and that it is possible to lead effectively.  At other times you may not.  The army psychiatrist, Wilfred Bion, discovered three common avoidant patterns in teams.  He noticed that teams sometimes over rely on their leaders in a rather dependent way, that they sometimes seek a leader to fight an imagined enemy on their behalf, and that they sometimes get rather carried away with unrealistic plans.
   
   If you feel like you’re supposed to have all the answers, or feel pumped up by the team to take on a fight, or feel a pressure to sanction fanciful ideas – it may be a sign that the team is in avoidant mode.  So what do you do?
   
   
4. Encourage useful behaviours. If you feel overly relied on (the dependency leader) ask team members for their own opinions, encouraging everyone to speak.  If you feel you are being encouraged to shift the blame to another department (the fight leader), shift the focus back to the team.  What’s being avoided here?  What about our own struggles?  If suggestions are unrealistic – focus on the present. ‘This is all very well, but what can we do now?’
   
   
5. Make sure you have a reflective space yourself - peer to peer, or with a coach or supervisor to help you process and understand what’s going on - away from the heat.

Click links for further information on the D10 Masters programme ‘Consulting and Leading in Organisations: Psychodynamic and Systemic Approaches’ or to attend a free Open Evenings/ experiential taster sessions.