Developing, Sustaining, and Maximizing Team Effectiveness: An Integrative, Dynamic Perspective of Team Development Interventions

Abstract

Organizations regularly make significant investments to ensure their teams will thrive, through interventions intended to support their effectiveness. Such team development interventions (TDIs) have demonstrated their value from both a practical and empirical view, through enabling teams to minimize errors and maximize expertise and thereby advance organizational gains. Yet, on closer examination, the current state of the TDI literature appears so piecemeal that the robustness of extant scientific evidence is often lost. Accordingly, we seek to provide a more cohesive and dynamic integration of the TDI literature, evolving thinking about TDIs toward a system of interventions that can be optimized. Drawing on the existing theoretical and empirical literatures, we first broadly define TDIs. We then offer an in-depth look at the most common types of TDIs, in terms of summarizing the state of the science surrounding each TDI. Based on this review, we distinguish features that make for an effective TDI. We then advance a more integrative framework that seeks to highlight certain interventions that are best served for addressing certain issues within a team. In conclusion, we promote a call for evolving this robust yet disjointed TDI literature into a more holistic, dynamic, and intentional action science with clear empirical as well as practical guidance and direction.

Human–Autonomy Teaming: A Review and Analysis of the Empirical Literature

“…In our review, there are a number of team training methods identified as effective, particularly cross-training. Others include team coordination training, and team self-correction, and these methods have been shown to impact a variety of team processes involving task work and teamwork factors (Shuffler et al, 2018). It can be surmised that many of the outcomes related to these techniques could apply to HATs.…”

A systematic review exploring the content and outcomes of interventions to improve psychological safety, speaking up and voice behaviour

“…According to Shuffler et al [19] team building interventions, such as the ones reviewed here, are often judged subjectively by collecting data on participants perceptions of the interventions value. However, in order to fully understand if interventions are successful, more objective measures are needed.…”

“…Studies also illustrated the need to involve team members in the development of interventions. Effective team building interventions ensure that team members contribute their knowledge of the team's needs to inform the design of the intervention [19]. Four interventions in this review engaged with participants as part of the development stage of their intervention to ensure the intervention was grounded in reality of the participants work environment [43,[46][47][48].…”

“…This review aims to identify team building interventions which have focused on psychological safety and its related components, speaking up, voice and silence behaviours. Team development interventions have been broadly defined as intentional actions which attempt to improve or support teams that may be struggling or adequately performing or maximise the capacities of teams ready to advance to a higher level of performance [19]. These interventions are relevant to this review, because they are suited to targeting psychological safety, speaking up and voice behaviours.…”

Beyond Separate Emergence: A Systems View of Team Learning Climate

“…Because leadership activities may influence multiple team emergent states at once, it is fundamental to take a systems view (Sterman, 2000) of how the various states affect the rates of increase and decrease to TLC. It is when leaders are conscious of their influence on emergent states as a system that they come to realize that their interventions can simultaneously affect the various parts of the system in distinct ways (Shuffler et al, 2018), or that their interventions can have little impact because of the inertia found in the system (Ericksen and Dyer, 2004). A focus on one particular emergent state to the exclusion of others is often why practices intended to help wind up being net negative (Sterman, 2000).…”