FEATURE
Taking stock of the team
Regular reviews of team effectiveness are essential. Sarah Cook
and Steve Macaulay explain how to conduct a team audit
N
ew teams often start
off their lives with a
lot of attention and
fanfare. However,
after a while of
business-as-usual, the focus on
team effectiveness can begin to
dull: new members join the team
and do not share the same sense
of understanding of purpose, ways
of working and the knowledge of
the people themselves.
Still further down the line, new
co-opted project members and virtual members may join the team,
working with less attachment to
it. Over time, there develops an
increasing lack of shared common
understanding of purpose; daily
issues blur the team’s insight into
what it is all for. Team performance can often suffer as a result.
There is another way – auditing your team is the first step in a
revitalising cycle. Periodic internal ‘stock-takes’ for mature and
established teams are advocated
where the workings of that team
can usefully be examined and the
improvements acted upon.
By examining the following
issues, you will give yourself a
comprehensive insight into where
your team’s strengths and weaknesses lie, and what you need to
improve. If topics important for
your team have been missed, add
extra questions.
Clarity of mission and
objectives
Two fundamental things can
happen to a team: strategic drift
can occur where the original
Strategic drift can occur
where the original objectives
are no longer clear and
relevant
objectives are no longer clear and
relevant and, secondly, individuals’
commitment to the team’s overall
goals diverge and diminish. What
the team must achieve – its priorities and overall mission – is clearly
an important area to review. At first
sight, one would imagine this is a
non-contentious aspect of a team
– not so!
Pressures
Teams can absorb a lot of pressures from inside and outside their
groups. It is important to gauge
the forces at work that affect
how the team is operating and to
assess their impact. In a virtual or
scattered team, which rarely meets
face-to-face, pressures from lack
of trust or understanding can be
less visible but strongly present.
Internally, pressure may be
relieved by making additional
resources available, or extra development might allow a quicker
contribution from inexperienced
team members.Top management
pressure may be relieved by better
information on both sides.
Roles
A lot of muddle and confusion in
the team can be put down to difficulties connected to roles, either
through lack of clarity, over- or
under-load, or gaps in expectations
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and accountability. One way to
assess team roles is to look at how
that team is composed in terms
of members’ respective specialisms: for example, whether there
are any deficiencies or overlaps in
skill-sets. A team with too many
detailed and analytical roles may
spend too long looking at detail
and insufficient time considering
the broad implications ahead.
Workload should be reviewed
to ascertain if it is fairly allocated,
or if some roles are overloaded,
some under-loaded, and the way
in which work is allocated. You
should also look at the extent to
which team members are held
accountable for their results.
Any honest assessment
of a team must involve
looking at how capable its
members are of doing the
job in hand, today and in
the future
Skills and abilities
Any honest assessment of a team
must involve looking at how
capable its members are of doing
the job in hand, today and in the
future. This requires a look not
just at individuals but also collectively at what capability and
resources the team has available
to draw upon. An ideal team will
have complementary skills and
will have a leader with sound
skills, to help bring it together.
Atmosphere and climate
The atmosphere and climate in
a team is sometimes rather hard
to define, yet it has a substantial
impact on how the team works.
Almost certainly, supportiveness
and free expression will be visible
in a strong team, where people can
say what they feel without fear of
retribution or blame.
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Agree
strongly
Clarity and relevance of mission
The team’s mission is relevant to
today and the future
Everyone is clear on the team’s goals
The team is committed to its goals
Pressures
The team handles internal and
external pressures well. For example
internal from top management,
and external from customers,
competitors, financial and regulatory
The team has sufficient resources
and facilities
Team members receive appropriate
amounts of coaching and
development
Conflicts of time and priorities are
resolved effectively
Roles
Team roles are defined and
complementary
Workload is distributed evenly and
appropriately
Team members are accountable
for their results
Skills and abilities
Team members have sufficient
• technical skills
• business skills
• emotional/relationship skills
• political skills
• clarity of purpose
Team members have complementary
skills
The core competencies of the team
leader are strong
Atmosphere and Climate
The atmosphere within the team is
supportive
When mistakes occur, they are they
dealt with in a “no blame“ fashion
There are no inappropriately overdominating personalities in the team
There is a positive “can do” climate
Opinions and emotion are freely
expressed
Neither agree
or disagree
Disagree
strongly
FEATURE
Agree
strongly
Neither agree
or disagree
Disagree
strongly
Overall Strengths of the team
Values and Beliefs
The team holds common values
The team’s top priorities are clear
and understood
The team is committed to putting
these priorities into action
Team Cohesion
The team ‘sticks together’ and
supports members’ decisions
Key areas for improvemen and enhancementt
The team deals openly and
appropriately with conflict
Diversity
Diversity is encouraged in the team
Diversity is positively managed in
the team
Processes and communication
The team performance is regularly
and appropriately reviewed
Team working methods are fit for
purpose
Communication within the team is
effective
Team recognition and rewards,
financial and non-financial, are
relevant
The team leader effectively sets
and communicates objectives
Response to change
The team is flexible and responsive
to change
The team has the freedom and
opportunity to test out new ideas
The team anticipates and plans for
changes well
Leadership and decision-making
The team makes sound decisions
Team members are appropriately
involved in key decisions
Team leader’s competencies are
well-developed
The team leader maintains focus
The team leader is relationship
orientated
The team leader has an effective
style of communication
Having determined the nature
of the working climate, the relevant question to answer is how
does this affect the workings and
output of the team?
Values and beliefs
If you delve beneath the surface of
the atmosphere and climate in a
team and the way it works, you will
find underlying values and beliefs. It
is vital to ascertain how far the team
holds common values, whether its
top priorities are clear and understood, and how committed it is to
putting these priorities into action.
Team cohesion
Cohesiveness requires well-oiled
mechanisms to resolve conflicts,
because differences of opinion and
direction will continually arise.
An important dimension of
cohesion is handling conflict. Any
team will have differences of perspective, interests or opinion that
can cause conflict, but how this
is handled will vary considerably.
Some teams will try to ignore conflict and bury it while others will
relish sparring, and team meetings
will often become a gladiatorial
ring in such circumstances.
Diversity
Diversity opens up new angles,
new possibilities and new perspectives. One aspect to consider in a
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team is how diverse it is and the
results of this. Teams should evaluate whether, in practice, diversity
is viewed as an advantage or disadvantage and how it is managed
and approached.
the whole process is necessary to
achieve maximum benefit from
the exercise as it will help to carefully frame the audit in the right
context from the start. The facilitator may interview individual
team members, using the checklist as the basis for discussion.
The next stage is to convene a
meeting at which the results are
presented and the implications
discussed. When these have been
fully explored and the implications viewed from different
angles, it is time to agree a set of
actions and objectives for change.
Processes and communication
The way work is done in a team
is of paramount importance.
Some teams get stuck in old and
irrelevant ways of working, and
therefore performance needs to be
regularly reviewed to ensure that
working methods continue to be
fit for purpose.
Communication is perhaps the
most critical team process. We
invariably find that the majority of teams want this to be
improved. What team members
often fail to take on board is that
they have individual and collective responsibility for making
this happen.
Ways to motivate the team
need to be relevant and up-todate, so that financial and nonfinancial rewards and incentives
stay relevant. Those in leadership
roles in the team need to ensure
particularly that their communication skills are up to the task in
hand and meet the needs of the
team.
Response to change
Lack of innovation and poor
response to change are all too
apparent, with many teams failing
to respond quickly enough to a
changing world and risking getting left behind. For any chance
of long-term success, the team
needs mechanisms to pick up on,
and deal with, change that must be
built into any team system.
Few teams, if any, are immune
to change. How that change is
Do you audit your teams on a
regular basis? How does your
audit differ from the suggested
format here? Post your replies
and comment on this article at
www.trainingjournal.com/tj
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July 2007
In conclusion
handled is, therefore, a key issue.
By holding a review, mature teams
can take time out to discuss what
changes they are dealing with,
as well as what changes will be
required.
Leadership and decisionmaking
Team leadership will always
attract, rightly, a lot of attention.
Making sound decisions in a team
is often done through a consultative process, particularly in key
areas. The team leader has a particular role in maintain the team’s
focus while building relationships
inside and outside the team.
The team audit can review
what the leader is expected to do
by its members, stakeholders and
by the wider world. The audit can
also describe how quickly and
how effectively decision-making
operates. It can pinpoint other
team members’ perceptions of the
leader and his distance from the
rest of the team.
Conducting an audit
Conducting an audit requires
careful management if it is to
produce real results – simply giving the audit questionnaire to
team members will probably fail
to uncover blind spots and lead
to an incomplete analysis. Skilled
facilitation and management of
Many people predict inevitable
decline for a team, once it has
reached its peak. We are more
positive: revitalisation can and
does come about, either frequently by small reviews or periodically
by thoroughly auditing a team
and its workings, using facilitation. This audit and review process will considerably strengthen
the life and effectiveness of a
team. With skilled facilitation,
new direction and energy arises
from the team, with that energy
and problem-solving coming
from within the team itself.
Rate your team effectiveness
Team members should individually complete this audit as fully as
possible. For each question, tick
one of the three columns according to your judgement of team
effectiveness. At the end, make
notes on what actions you and
the team should take as a result
of the questions, either to further
strengthen strong points or to
improve weaker areas. Be prepared to discuss your comments
within the team. 
Steve Macaulay is a learning development executive at Cranfield School
of Management. He can be contacted on +44 (0) 1234 751122 or at
s.macaulay@cranfield.ac.uk. Sarah Cook
is MD of leadership development specialist The Stairway Consultancy and can be
contacted on +44 (0) 1628 526535 or at
sarah@thestairway.co.uk