Effective School Management

10
Teams
THE NATURE OF TEAMS
We turn now to a different aspect of organizations, the building-block which
we call ‘the team’. A team is a group of people with common objectives that
can effectively tackle any task which it has been set up to do. ‘Effectively’
means that the quality of the task accomplishment is the best achievable within
the time available and makes full and economic use of the resources (internal
and external) available to the team. The contribution drawn from each member
is of the highest possible quality, and is one which could not have been called
into play other than in the context of a supportive team.
There is always dynamic interaction between the individual member and
the team, such that each continuously adapts to optimize the quality of the
team’s work. This optimization consists of matching the individual and the
team to the progressively developing technical requirements of the task.
Although this is how a team should work, it is often found that a group of
people brought together to form a team (such as a head and his or her
deputies) do not really ‘gel’, and a good deal of time is wasted because tasks
are not handled effectively. When many groups in the school (departments,
heads of department committees, pastoral teams, etc.) fail to work at peak
efficiency, then the effectiveness of the whole organization suffers. If groups
cannot work effectively by themselves, they are not likely to relate effectively
to other teams with which they have to do business.
The head of an organization plays a key role in making the best choices of
whom to bring together to make what happen for the good of the
organization. He or she then has to ensure that these groups work effectively
and collaborate with one another synergistically to achieve the task of the
organization. (‘Synergistically’ means that they enhance one another’s
contribution, so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.) The
head’s role may be compared to that of the conductor of an orchestra,
drawing from each group and player the highest possible quality of
performance.
There are two complementary components in the building of an effective
team: the selection of the members and the training of the team. Training

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EFFECTIVE SCHOOL MANAGEMENT
begins either with some kind of instruction so that members know what
makes for an effective team, or with some task that enables them to discover
it for themselves. Then they practise and repeatedly review their own
progress, so that they finally become proficient at any new skills required.
Collaboration between teams can also be improved through practice and
review, so that a process for developing effectiveness is at work throughout
the organization (Figure 10.1).
Although in industry a good deal of team-building training has been
systematically carried out along these lines over the last forty years (see
below), it is only in the last twenty that the selection of team members has got
much beyond the point of intuitive judgement. It was Meredith Belbin, a
Cambridge psychologist, who made the breakthrough, in what has been
described as one of the most imaginative and original pieces of research in
management for two decades. His book Management Teams: Why They Succeed
or Fail (1981) is a classic.