Leading Teams That Last

Abstract

This chapter presents concepts to manage teams designed for sustained success over years and even longer. Grounded in the adaptive leadership model (Heifetz et al., 2009), identifying adaptive challenges is necessary for a team leader, as these almost inevitably arise over the course of time. Addressing these challenges requires creating a holding environment for teams to work through how they can navigate such challenges. We also describe the Cynefin Framework (Snowden & Boone, 2007) for identifying different types of problems that teams face to address the problem appropriately.

To more comprehensively understand how individuals within the team interact with each other and you as the team leader, Bolman and Deal’s (2017) framework suggests that teams can be viewed through four different frames or lenses: (1) the structural frame (teams as factories), (2) the human resources frame (teams as families), (3) the political frame (teams as jungles), and (4) the symbolic frame (teams as temples).

High-performing teams consistently generate original and useful ideas through engendering creativity and innovative thinking. Effective team leaders know how to support the generation of creative ideas from their individual team members and how to harness those individual creative ideas in team settings. Lastly, we recommend intentionally creating productive chaos and instability within your team to help leverage a culture of experimentation that will be necessary under shifting conditions that inevitably arise as a team conducts its work over long time periods.