Back2Basics - Episode 15: Is there a such thing as a bad team?

Feliciano School of Business faculty members in the department of Information Management and Business Analytics, Dr. Mahmoud ElHussini and Dr. George Elias discuss issues and problems being faced by business professionals. On this podcast, they discuss how to manage teams with difference levels of competence and dynamics. Dr. Moe and Dr. George breakdown issues and problems being encountered by entrepreneurs, executives, and all levels of managers.

 Co-Hosts Background:
  
 Mahmoud (Moe) Elhussini, MS, MBA, DBA, is an Instructor Specialist at Montclair State University.  He is also the president and founder of The Growth Coach Allentown - Somerville.  A consulting and business coaching company.  Moe has worked in data & operations management for over a decade.  He then switched to business consulting, helping companies build ERP and customer interface systems.  After that he transitioned into international business development, helping companies manage their internal organic growth or through mergers and strategic alliances.  Moe has published a couple of handbooks, one on emotional intelligence and another on servant leadership.  He is currently working on a third that revolves around overcoming sales objections.  Moe has a BA in Biology from Rutgers University, an MBA in Global Management, and MS in Information Management, and a DBA in Geopolitics and Strategy.  At Montclair University, Moe is part of the Information Management and Business Analytics Department.  He teaches Business Decision Making, Operations Management, and Statistics in Business courses.
  
  George Elias, Ph.D., PMP is Chief Systems Engineer for Space and Airborne Systems leading initiatives in integrated spectrum management and mission avionics at L3Harris Technologies. Additionally, Dr. Elias is as an adjunct professor at Montclair State University’s department of information management & business analytics where he teaches business operations and statistics. Dr. Elias is experienced in leading the development and production of complex hardware and software system solutions including: electronic warfare systems, communication systems, and space systems. Previously, Dr. Elias served as the Director of Capture Excellence & Business Development Operations for the Electronic Warfare Sector. As an L3Harris Technologies Certified Enterprise Capture Lead, Dr. Elias was responsible for directing large, complex pursuits across the enterprise. In addition to systems engineering and business development, Dr. Elias has held roles in finance, quality assurance, operations/manufacturing, modeling and simulation, project engineering, program management, and Internal Research and Development (IRAD). Dr. Elias has a Doctorate in Systems Engineering, a Masters Certificate in Project Management, and a Masters in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology. Additionally, Dr. Elias has a Bachelors in Computer Information Systems from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey & New Jersey Institute of Technology. Finally, Dr. Elias has a Mini-MBA from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hello everybody, welcome back to our podcast. Back to Basics. I am Moe Hussaini and I'm here with my good friend, george Elias. How are you doing, george?

Speaker 2: 0:18

Doing great. Moe. It's a busy beginning to the semester, but it's nice to do these podcasts with you.

Speaker 1: 0:27

How's the weather going Baye?

Speaker 2: 0:31

Well, today was supposed to be a reasonably good day, but it's been on and off, thunderstorms and pouring Again. It's a nice activity to do inside as you're recording podcasts.

Speaker 1: 0:45

Yes, the feeling is mutual. I actually love the summer, the fall and the changes in seasons. I'm looking forward to Halloween and Turkey Day. But tell me, what do you have in mind? What do you want to talk about today?

Speaker 2: 1:03

Moe, we've been talking back and forth on the side about good and bad teams and good and bad managers and the interaction between that. I think it's about a good time at this point to just talk about. Is there such thing as a bad team? Are all teams good? I'm curious, what are you at with that? I've been in some management books and there's statements that come out there that there are no bad teams, they're just bad managers. I was wondering how you feel about good and bad like that.

Speaker 1: 1:45

Good question. I heard. Yes, of course we heard about there's no bad teams, only bad leaders or bad managers. I agree that is true. I remember we talked about this maybe, I think, about 10 or 8 episodes ago. We thought of that point, we talked about it and we'll bring it up again. We'll focus on it at some point. Let me I'm buying myself some time. Let me think about this. You know what it is, george. I think there are.

Speaker 1: 2:11

Okay, let's open it up a little bit. Is it that there's good teams and a bad environment that makes them a bad team, or is it kind of? This is what I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of an example of a team that I worked with before, right, where we had a really good engineer, a really good programmer, a really good developer, a really good project manager, a really good of everything, one of everything. They were together on one team. I can't even really say that their manager, the lead, was bad. He was good, but for some reason, all of those best of the best together, overall, the team was underperforming. So your question made me think about this scenario. I don't know what would make us label the team as bad. Is it what they're assigned to do by their superiors, and it's not the way it fit for them. Is it the environment that they were placed within? Is it the manager? What do you think? What do you think would cause us to label a team as bad, or what would create the situation to lead to that title?

Speaker 2: 3:31

You know, it's kind of just like an interesting question all together. I mean, I guess I have a problem saying bad teams, because these teams are being created by management, right.

Speaker 2: 3:46

So ultimately management put those I guess like the scenario you were talking about kind of like the engineering dream team, right.

Speaker 2: 3:56

So they try to assemble an engineering dream team and, depending on what the dynamics of the team are and the manager and the environment, maybe they're trying to one up each other, Maybe they're all used to getting their way and being leaders and they don't know how to follow and gel and do this sort of like handoff where they can put it together.

Speaker 2: 4:17

I mean, there's a lot of things that I've seen go wrong with what would otherwise be thought as being a high performance team end up picking each other apart, right. I mean, it's usually more for social reasons, or business social reasons or political social reasons than technical reasons, because you would think that the best of the best, if they were given the right direction by a strong leader, they'd be able to coalesce around. A strong, maybe a strong Y or a strong leader would be able to get them to maybe put at least a little bit of their egos away such that they can all fit in the same room together but, yeah, I think that there are right and wrong teams for jobs, depending on the skillset needed, the maturity of the team, the criticality of the exercise, the reason why there's an exercise.

Speaker 2: 5:23

So I think there's right and wrong teams. Like I wouldn't on an extreme case I wouldn't hire a bunch of firemen to put on a ballet dance recital or something because it doesn't make sense, right, that's not their skill set, but I would absolutely get them on board to saving some life or some of my unfortunate events, right no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 5:58

So do you think it's safe to say that some teams because I agree with what you said, first of all and do you think it's safe for us to say, then, that there are some teams that are just doomed from the beginning, before they even start working on the project, based upon who put them together and the reason they were put together If it was, like you said, for political reasons, for diplomatic reasons in the company do you think that could be safe to say that, right even before they even start working, that they're just doomed for failure?

Speaker 2: 6:32

Yeah, I think you know that's a good question. I hate to go to the extreme of do doomed for failure, but I would say it is very, very difficult to overcome a team that's been formed poorly. I think it's really hard to overcome, right, you can culture bad actors and put them all together and you know it's like you're almost waiting for them to fight in the room and see who exits somehow. And it's a bizarre thing to see people fight like that and I don't know why managers sometimes do that. I just think it's very, very poor leadership and I think it stresses out teams unnecessarily and it's not productive for work. So I really struggle why managers would purposely almost set off an experiment to see if people can work together. It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1: 7:39

Yeah, and you know, I think it was Willink and Babin and their book Extreme Ownership. I remember one of the sentences they wrote was managers have to appreciate the weight of their title, their authority, right. And what I was thinking about when you were talking is some mistake that may happen, or one situation that may arise is that an incompetent manager or director or VP puts a team together right Now. He chose the wrong people for the wrong job, but now that that team is together and they're sitting in a conference room, they're scared to go back question that manager or VP because they think they're going to come across as ignorant we, whatever it may be. So they assume that this person is all knowing, all wise. They must have put us together for a reason and they start working on whatever it is that they need to do.

Speaker 1: 8:42

And then there's this typical case of escalation of commitment the more time they put in, the more money they put in their schedule back out and little do you know they just started this avalanche of one misstep after the other, all because at the beginning they just hear going back to the person like are you sure Steve should be with Joe, with Lucy, to work on this? Should you maybe consider putting A instead of B? Do you know what I mean? So I think the manager should really open up the door when he puts the team together. Explain exactly what he said, george. The why. What is the mission, why I put you together and welcome some feedback before things go too far.

Speaker 2: 9:26

So something you said in there, moe, that I thought was pretty astute is that I think managers often fall into a number of bias and misperceptions. They get into the self-confirmation bias, they get into this sunk cost bias, they get into all these bias and the confirming themselves as being right in the teams or where the individual is being wrong, and I think that happens more often than not, unfortunately.

Speaker 2: 9:57

But getting into the formation of the team, which is what you're really asking. I'll tell you a situation of mine. I work with a lot of very, very smart townspeople and sometimes smart towns and people. They don't get along. They don't work well together. It happens if students are listening. It happens within the faculty. You'll have very, very smart towns and faculty members that can't work together. Happens on engineering teams. Happens on medical boards, where people who are very, very smart and very good at what they do have different perspectives and have strong beliefs towards their style and the way that they do things. I've run into situations where I know I'm putting two people together that are explosive, and it's happened on the team and I've gone for it and I've done that when I'm looking to have breakthrough results. And let me tell you, it's dangerous and it's hard and I know it stresses people out, but I'll tell you what I do. I usually sit down and talk to them individually and I explain to them the project.

Speaker 2: 11:17

I explain to them why, before you put it together, before you put it together, I introduce them individually, I give them the scenario, I tell them the why, I tell them why I'm their helper, why I really believe they're the right person, and I tell them the rest of the team members, including the person that I know that there's a conflict.

Speaker 2: 11:40

And I ask them honestly if they believe they can put aside their emotions, if they can put aside some of these things. And I try to find out what are the circumstances and I try to make roles and responsibilities that are clearly delineated. But I'll say, look, if this person makes their decision, that's within their role. I'm not asking you to agree with it. You can voice your dissent. But once the decision's made, we make it as a team, we move on. So I'm not asking for them to yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:14

The whole reason to have them is because they're that good and that smart and I want their voice on the team and I explain to them how they're gonna be respected, but they also need to respect everybody else on the team. So I've done that, with limited good results. It's usually something that requires constant management and often high touch talk to these individuals, make sure that they don't, that they're just not bottling up emotions and they're gonna explode later. It's so. I've done it and I've done it for breakthrough results and I've gotten breakthrough results, but it takes a lot of management effort to keep a team like that together.

Speaker 1: 12:57

I was just gonna say I think it takes a very well-seasoned manager that also understands his team. Because, along the points of what you just mentioned, you said you wanted like breakthrough results. Right, that's the word you use, right, is that correct? Yeah, so I'm thinking about other scenarios. Right, what if you don't want results but you want some good brainstorming over an idea and the results come at another meeting? There's the right person when you're forming that team. What if you just wanna go very, very carefully through data, much, much detailed analysis of data? There's a different kind of manager to run that team. Right, you may not want a result or a conclusion or a decision.

Speaker 1: 13:41

So you bring up a good point in that formation. Who am I going to put in the team and, more importantly, who am I going to put in charge of that team? Am I just looking to create some kind of sense of stability, put people at ease during some changes that are happening? So, change management kind of manager, am I looking to go through data to do some analysis in the meeting? So, based upon what it is that we're doing, we have to keep the behavior aspect of those people, or their tendencies, their personal tendencies, what type of individual that is in mind when we're forming and when we're executing in that team and when we're managing it. I think that's a key part of yes, exactly like what you said, george 100%. What's the why, what's the mission, what are those tangible goals? What are the goals based upon that? Who are we putting in that meeting and who's going to be in charge? That's to be careful thinking.

Speaker 2: 14:43

So I've actually been had to lay out what I perceive as acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. To be very honest, these are with senior. I've been calling people so, for instance, I said, break the results. And you pick him up with a bunch of examples of things that I would want break through results Like, for instance, like one of the first things you mentioned was brainstorming.

Speaker 2: 15:09

Yeah, I want to bring some of the best, the best of the table for brainstorming. That's a perfect project to bring people together that I know are big thinkers. Right, and at the time where you bring a bunch of senior big thinkers and maybe a few of them have a chip on their shoulder or can't be wrong mentality and I'll talk to them, I said, listen, people are going to come up with ideas. We're going to write down your ideas, just like everybody else's, and we'll decide on the merit. And it's not because someone's going to say it louder, because shouting over people or yelling, that's not acceptable here. That's just, and if it gets to that, we're just going to.

Speaker 2: 15:51

If I understand, you get excited sometimes. Look at me and I'll put my hand, like this and me and think relax a little bit and we're all listening to you and if you can handle it, you're invited to give yourself a timeout. If you feel like you can't handle the meeting, it's okay. If you need to walk out, Give them that permission. Hey, it's okay if you remove yourself If you're getting too emotional. I want people that are bought in. I want people that think the project's important but at some point when they can't contain themselves, it can be an issue.

Speaker 1: 16:31

Yes, yeah, and there has to be that, yeah, like that room to vent or to manage that situation, if it does exist, or it will come up. So you have to plan for it, like have a contingency for it, so kind of like the point, and you add onto it or correct me, change it, george. One of the points we've made so far is that it's the concept of a good or bad team is much bigger than just the goal, the objective and making sure that they do what they need to do. There's a bigger picture and there's some steps that need to take place before you even tell that team go right, get it done. There's careful thinking and there's a methodology and there should be a process to understand how and who to put into that team and make sure that there's direction given and kind of like what you said earlier Prepping to put that team together.

Speaker 1: 17:36

You have to sometimes meet with some individual separately before they're thrown into the thrust of things and putting them into the team. You have to meet with them to mentally prep them to what's coming, make sure they are ready, make sure that they are the right person for that job. I don't want to call it interviewing, but you know, there's some kind of prepping up to the point where that team is together. It's not just pay, sending out an email. You, you, you are going to be working together. Here's the objective get it done by December 1st. No, there's more prepping to that process. There's more science that goes into it, into putting the team together, making sure they succeed.

Speaker 2: 18:18

Yeah, absolutely. I mean to me. That's why I keep on coming around to the fact that there's really no bad team If you are a manager, set that team up, put it together. If that team doesn't perform, doesn't do or act the way it should, ultimately you're responsible for that team. You're responsible for asking a team member to remove themselves. You're responsible for bringing on the team members and making sure they can work together. You, as the manager, you know it should be your first. You're responsible, right? So I think managers need to take a huge section of responsibility for all aspects of the team and not just blame the team for underperforming or not performing.

Speaker 1: 19:10

You know the mission at hand, yes, and you know what I just thought of two, george, I think one. One other point that the manager should keep in mind is that there will not be I don't think there will be one motivator for all the teams together in unison. Your members of the team will take different types of motivation strategies. Somebody will be motivated and that team by a challenge. Someone else will be motivated by a pattern. Someone else will be motivated by getting a sense of security that listen, I'm right behind you if you need anything right. There will be different triggers to motivate those team members that could vary from one person to the other.

Speaker 2: 20:01

You know, I agree with you. You know everybody's an individual and I would say not just in terms of motivation, but even their skill set and how they might perform on the team. So, for instance, I'll give you an example. Let's say it's a brainstorming session. There might be some individuals that are chomping at the bit to get their ideas out and they can't say them. They're fast enough or loud enough. There might be other members of the team that sit back and listen and need to be prompted.

Speaker 2: 20:36

You know it could be okay, joe. Joe, it's just up there saying the answer, saying the answer, saying the ideas and the answers, and I might have to go over to Sally. Hey, sally, joe, hold on a second. Sally did. Did you have to be in the country where you might actually have to prop them? And that's okay. That's a difference in style and that's how you need to know your team as a manager, not just as a team collectively, but also as individuals and get people the space and the room that they need in order to perform, while also helping other people that are maybe high performers and are really out there. Allow them to give room to other team members to participate in.

Speaker 1: 21:21

Good, good point. And to add on to that, I think also in the situation where you're in need of individuals from other departments or other business lines that need to come into work as part of your team, just on the way you said, if that, if you don't know them, then it's worth it to take the time to speak to your, to their managers, to get to know more about them, right? So that's kind of like knowledge exchange, knowledge transfer, to know about those individuals taking the time to do that, so you can apply exactly what you said to those individuals that you don't know, very well.

Speaker 1: 22:05

Now what do you think from the outside environment, besides the manager, could influence or impact the success or the failure of that team? So, besides the team members, besides the goal, besides the objectives, besides the manager We've done everything that we just talked about, all the due diligence this team is together. What could happen from the outside, or what could be happening from the outside, that could impact their performance?

Speaker 2: 22:48

So that depends on what you mean by environment. But let me just, I know, and I'm leaving it, let me just tell you.

Speaker 1: 22:54

Sorry, george, look, I'm being very vague with the question because, honestly, I'm thinking about the answer as I ask it to you as well. I'm leaving it open, exactly like you said, think of it any way that you want by environment. Take it any way that you want.

Speaker 2: 23:09

So let me just bring it to the business, the business social environment, right Things that are happening within this corporation or organization, and so let me just constrain it to that environment.

Speaker 2: 23:24

There's a lot of things that could upset a team compensation issues, the building itself, not having proper air conditioning right there's a lot of things that can really hurt a team. Just from a workplace Do I enjoy my environment? Do I have a squeaky chair? But let's just talk about the leadership environment, of what's going on. So I'll tell you that I've been. I've had a team where I'm leading and messages from senior leadership don't help.

Speaker 2: 24:03

I'll give you one like an example. I'm working on a team and I'm telling my team that what they're doing is very important to the customer and very important for the company, very important for lots of reasons. I've given them all the why. And then my senior leadership holds a town hall and announces another project as the most important project in the company and it's all hands on deck, and so I've literally had senior management completely undermine the team leadership. So things like that can happen and that definitely disrupts teams. I've had leadership and teams promote awesome mentality, or what I'll say like toxic mentality, and it ends up pervading on the organization. So I do really, really think that you, as a leader of your team, you need to be ready for poor managers and poor leadership above you that sometimes undoes your good work. That's unfortunate, but it does happen.

Speaker 1: 25:25

Which also probably fits in. It'll be safe to say that sometimes, as the manager, you have to or the team lead, you have to manage some aspects of the company's culture that can hinder the performance of your team, because some of the things that you talk about the toxic environment you know that us against them and you know some of those things that could be embedded, intertwined in the company's culture, right, might be a force that the manager would have to manage with his team to ensure that it doesn't impact their performance. So, kind of, using one of the things that you mentioned as an example, us them mentality, do this. Instead of that, this is the priority, you're not important, right. You would have to manage those messages that the team is getting to give them some stability, some security, you know, some motivation to keep going right. So it's kind of like a bubble within the bubble. You know like this is. You know we're together in disguise, don't worry about what's going on the outside, I'm here for you, kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 26:38

Yeah, and I've actively been aware of that. In extreme situations where I feel like I'm being undermined too much by senior leadership, I have had to muster the courage to go, challenge them right and say to them.

Speaker 2: 27:01

hey, frank, you said that that's the number one mentality of priority and that's what you're saying. Hey, I got a team of five individuals that aren't working on that. I'll just send my team and have them all work on your project and they'll say oh no, no, that's not what we meant I said. Do you mind setting a note to me just complimenting my team or clarifying?

Speaker 2: 27:26

that the work that they're doing is important too, because they feel like what they're doing is important and, quite frankly, I'm questioning why I'm not on the number one priority over there helping you out, because that's you know, you made it sound like that's all that should happen, right? So sometimes calling on a manager. It actually becomes a healthy thing and allows them to clarify what they mean. Sometimes they don't even understand. What they said could be completely misinterpreted by the folks on the ground.

Speaker 1: 28:02

Yeah, and it goes back to that thing where there is no way those team members would ever dare or try to reach out to Frank in your example, right, there's no way. They would just have to deal by the bullet and deal with it. So, yeah, it's your job I don't want to say middleman, but as that person responsible to take that step and do that. You have to own up to it and do it, because other than that, no one else in the team is going to do it. So it is that manager's job to go and take that step and have that discussion.

Speaker 2: 28:39

Yeah, and so I'll say it this way Mo, I think as a manager, you need to both manage the internals of your team, but you also need to manage the externals of your team, and if that means clarifying messages that are coming from senior leadership. Another thing that I've done is, when I find out that maybe functional departments are asking my team members to do a lot of extra work or extra reports, I've actually volunteered to help them to try to get the burden off. If I know a team member is being extra burden, I'll say, hey, I know that's not my job, but we're a team. Can I help you do some of those reports? I'll let you read them. You know everything. But hey, can I help you Because we're a team, right, yeah?

Speaker 2: 29:28

So I think managing inside and outside, individually and as a team, culturally, is important.

Speaker 1: 29:41

Well said, my friend Well said. So I mean, I hope, some of the points that we shared here. They may not all be applicable in every scenario, but it just opens the listener's mind to some of the areas that they should think about when they're putting the team together. There's outside dynamics, like George talked about, things on the outside that you need to manage just as much and as well as things on the inside. George, anything else you want to add, I'll give it back to you.

Speaker 2: 30:14

to wrap up, buddy, Well, this is great, Great conversation so I have. Sometimes in this discourse I'm surprised at some of the comments and some of the places that we go in this conversation.

Speaker 1: 30:29

So very enjoyable. Great, great great.

Speaker 2: 30:34

I have to hear that so anyway, thank you all for listening to this episode of Back to Basics on the Business Edge, brought to you by Feliciano School of Business at Malkler State University. We hope you enjoyed this podcast and welcome any feedback you have for us, including suggestions for future topics.

Speaker 1: 30:58

Thank you, mr George, thank you everyone for listening and see you next time on the Back to Basics podcast.

Speaker 2: 31:04

Goodbye everybody, bye, goodbye, see you next time. Bye.