Asian Team building

It is now over 10 years since we started introducing Margerison-McCann Team Management Systems principles into Asian organizations. Before that, the first 10 years were spent on research with many hundreds of managers worldwide, with a good proportion from Singapore and Malaysia, and early applications were with companies in the UK, Europe and Australia, with the United States following soon after.

Very early, the reaction was that Team Management would never work in Asia, the culture was unsuited for participative methods in cultures dominated by more authoritarian and rigid organizational structures, and which were proving their viability by great success and growth.

However, the past ten years have seen many changes in Asian business, which underlie the success that Asian companies are now having with team management. These are:

In the past 2 years we have seen an economic crisis that has separated the strong organizations from the weak. Companies that hitherto survived on the basis of their contacts or guanxi and location in a fast growing region are now having to make fast changes to survive. Strong substantive organizations like Singapore Airlines and the Bangkok Bank, both of which are committed to working in teams and professional management are in the former case even thriving in the crisis, and the latter case, showing remarkable strength in what was an almost hopeless situation.

All these factors have contributed to the need for developing more flexible organizations that can react to opportunities faster, and the realization that "No man can be an island".

The successful manager of the next century can not be expected to have a monopoly on all knowledge and wisdom. International Business is too complex for that. The successful manager of the next century must be first and foremost a skilled manager of teams, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of his people and turning a group of individuals into a team. This is as true in Asia as for any other region.

First, think about the make up of your team. There are several functions that have to be performed by any team, be that a small two person team or team of 200,000 members. Management writers have often written about these, and they have been incorporated into our work. They are the functions of:

Unless teams and organizations pay attention to all 4 areas, the process falls down. Margerison and McCann's work further developed these areas into a model that explains how they all inter-relate.

Think about your team at work, be that the top team, a department, a team or unit you lead, or a team of which you are a member. Which of the 8 types of work are done well and which are not?

First of all, note down on a piece of paper the 8 Types of Work and write down next to them the percentage of time you would spend in each area.

Now lets take a step back from your job, and let us look at everybody's favorite subject...themselves!

We have found that even though work places a structure on us that means we cannot always do what we are good at, people nevertheless work better at those things that match their work preferences. There is more opportunity now for matching jobs with people's strengths, skills and preferences than ever before, mainly because of the increasing specialization and complexity referred to in the first step above. Think about the Types of Work wheel and the areas you enjoy working in and those you do not. That may give you a clue to your preferences.

A Swiss Psychologist called Carl Jung, who interestingly enough had a great interest in Eastern religions, and a contemporary of Freud, found that there were only a few significant psychological constructs that could explain the difference between people. Even though he wrote in the 1920's his work has been adapted by many since and it is also important for managers and organizations, as simple effective for understanding individual differences between people is critical to understanding strengths and weaknesses.

When adapted for the management situation we find that these 4 areas are best described as:

While we have developed the Team Management Index to measure in an objective and standardized way how people score on these dimensions, you can also guess yourself. The Team Management Index provides 3,000 words on your personal preference but for our purposes at present you may just want to guess what your preferences are.

We have found that these preferences are related to the Types of Work that people prefer. For your convenience we have included the diagram here:

Bearing in mind that people with Extravert preferences tend to prefer Types of Work at the top of the wheel and people with Introvert preferences tend to prefer Controlling types of preferences at the bottom; Practical people track to the right-bottom sector and Creative to the left-top, now take a minute or tow to fill in your preference for the types of work.

The Team Management Index, based on 60 questions, finally allocates you a "role preference" which indicates the areas in which you would naturally, and by your experiences be able to best contribute to a team. It also lets you know your related preferences and goes into much detail about how you can best work with others, improve your decision making and leadership skills and improve your effectiveness as a team leader generally. Your role preference is located on the Team Management Wheel, which shows how your individual work preference works in with the roles of others.

The central part of Team Management is Linking. That is made up of skills of leadership. decision making, and communication that are skills that can only be learned by experience and practice. While there is not enough space to go into the Linking Skills here, these are the cement that hold a team of disparate individuals together. The Linking Skills Index is a questionnaire filled in by yourself and members of your team that rates these skills and suggests areas where you can improve.

But even if you don't look at Linking Skills in more depth, the following principles developed in my work with Asian organizations could help.

Look for diversity in your teams. Make sure you do not have all "ideas" people or "detail" people. No matter what the industry you need both eventually. The best two examples are the Top Team of a bank in Australia who had all risen through the ranks, proving themselves as excellent "Controllers" in their work as tellers, then accountants and auditors. When bank regulation came about in Australia, this bank was caught napping with no "ideas" people to help them compete in a de-regulated environment. We helped them develop creative people for the top team, they engaged Creative people on contact to negotiate with outside "Creator Innovators" from the advertising agencies, and they had a 20 minute brain storming session at every board meeting. They did not drastically change their Top Team. It was the awareness of their failing that helped them become competitive.

In an opposite example a top Advertising group had too many Explorer-Promoters and Creator Innovators. Surveys with customers reinforced that they thought the quality of work was great, but that they group was always missing deadlines. Action points here included appointing a strong Conclude Producer to the Top Team and improving quality control.

Once you have diversity, you will have to deal with Conflict. Linking Skills are useful here. Better a diverse enthusiastic team that is well linked and managed rather than a group of Yes men or women who never argue! Its all very comfortable but you miss opportunities.

Schedule a definite regular time where team members ONLY discuss how teamwork can be improved and keep each other informed on their work Encourage people to know each other personally and encourage openness. Sharing personal profiles from the Team Management Index is very useful for this.

Delegate what is not in your area of expertise or interest. Somebody else may be able to do it better, leaving you empowered to do more suitable tasks.

Managing a team is far more demanding (but far more effective) than managing individuals. Move your style to having more group meetings rather than individual meetings but maintain a strong presence especially in setting and following up tasks and actions for the group and individuals.

This exercise has been designed to get you thinking about principles of team management and how it can be used. We hope it has been useful and will give you several ideas to talk about with your team. A formal discussion period where you and your team sit down to discuss nothing but how they work together will produce benefits if you focus on the following questions:

Do not let the session become a "gripe session". The best way to avoid this is to concentrate on the jobs and not the personalities and make sure nobody makes personal comments. You also need to produce an atmosphere of openness.

Always finish with an action plan. Every meeting, as you know must conclude with agreed actions, responsibilities and dates.

While some progress will be achieved without the needs of others, it is always very effective to have a trained facilitator run the session rather than one who is already involved with the team.

There is no better way to motivate your teams and improve the process than use the objective instruments that have been developed expressly for this purpose and also for recruitment, selection and organizational turnarounds. The Team Management Index is the oldest and most established instrument, and provides a dozen pages of feedback for each team member that facilitates discussion and openness. The Types of Work Index is used to indicate the "fit" between job and person, for re-engineering, and job analysis prior to recruitment or re-organization efforts. The Linking Skills Index measures Linking Skills.

Over 100 articles have been published and over 200 written about Team Management Systems and how it is used, as well as many analyzing the data collected by the Institute of Team Management Studies, the Research Arm of Team Management Systems.

Those interested in trying out the Margerison McCann Team Management Systems instruments for themselves or in their work teams, a service is available from OPC's Malaysian office for Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, India, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and the Philippines, and is detailed on our Asian Team Building Services page.

Rod Davies
Principal, Orient Pacific Century
Founding Director, Institute for Team Management Studies

Team Building in Asia Tutorial

Team Building in Asia

60 minute tutorial