Team Dynamics
A modern guide to team dynamics — including diversity, cross-functional work, culture, leadership, and remote teams — with examples, pitfalls, and playbooks.
When competitiveness and individual achievement dominate the workplace, teamwork and team dynamics are often overlooked. Yet just as a great script and a strong director increase an actor’s chances of earning an Oscar, solid team dynamics and healthy communication in the workplace bolster employees’ ability to work to their full potential.
Team dynamics in the workplace refers to how members of a team interact with each other in pursuit of shared goals. Psychological safety, trust, accountability, and clear communication norms are all defining attributes of healthy team dynamics that result in high-performing, happy teams.
McKinsey found that teams with high levels of trust, for instance, are 5.1 times more likely to produce results than other teams; those with exceptional communication norms are 2.8 times more efficient and 3.1 times more innovative!
Below, we explore the fundamentals of team dynamics in the workplace, why they matter, and actionable ways to improve them. Whether your teams are on-site, remote, or hybrid, we’ll offer real-world strategies and tactics that can help you build a high-performing team regardless of your organization’s culture or managers’ leadership style. Then you’ll discover why teamwork really does make the dream work.
Diversity and Cross-Functional Teams
Team dynamics in the workplace thrive when diversity and inclusion are built into daily operations. This includes both cultural and cognitive diversity, which both lead to a variety of problem-solving approaches, information-processing styles, and perspectives. Cognitive diversity in particular facilitates cross-functional collaboration, but workforce diversity, in general, leads to a 12% improvement in performance, according to Gartner.
Diversity and Inclusion at Work
It’s easy to see how diverse cultural backgrounds, communication styles, and ways of thinking among members expand a team’s problem-solving capacity. A team consisting exclusively of logical thinkers, for instance, might make decisions based on statistics without considering how the emotional impact of the decisions might affect customers, teammates, or outcomes.
Especially among diverse groups, psychological safety must be embedded in cultural norms in teams. Ways to do this include:
- Establishing what is considered acceptable and unacceptable behavior and communication in the workplace.
- Promoting inclusive team communication. Motivate all team members to speak up and express their opinions, and ensure they can do so without fear of repercussions.
- Actively listening. Give speakers your full attention, demonstrating engagement with verbal and nonverbal cues, paraphrasing points to ensure comprehension, and asking questions.
- Encouraging experimentation and positioning failures as learning experiences rather than a cause for punishment.
When team members feel safe, they’re appreciably more likely to offer constructive criticism and outside-the-box suggestions. As a result, there’s less likelihood of bias in group decision-making, particularly confirmation bias, which overlooks information that contradicts existing beliefs and the status quo.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Especially as more organizations adopt skills-based hiring, cross-functional and innovative teams are becoming essential to continual growth and development. That makes it more important than ever to establish decision rights, handoffs, and ownership before embarking on cross-functional collaboration.
A RACI matrix/DACI model can be an indispensable tool here. Also known as a responsibility assignment matrix, a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) framework spells out which team members have responsibility or accountability for each task, as well as who needs to be consulted and informed for each. The alternative DACI model takes a similar approach, assigning the roles of driver, approver, contributors, and informed to team members.
A third option is the DARE (Deciders, Advisers, Recommenders, Execution) framework. The decider is the ultimate decision-maker. Advisers provide informed opinions and, often, differing perspectives to the decider. Recommenders conduct any necessary research and provide the subsequent analysis. Execution stakeholders ultimately implement the decision and should feel free to point out any obstacles or ask questions. Proponents argue that the DARE model reduces the number of meetings required while still seeking input from team members.
Whichever framework you choose is less important than making sure to implement and adhere to one. The job clarity and group alignment that these models offer are integral to effective team dynamics in the workplace.
Team Dynamics in the Real World
Examples of effective team dynamics are often plainly visible when you know how to look for them. Structured debate and meeting norms that welcome multiple viewpoints and lead to innovative problem-solving are a case in point, as are daily standup meetings, pre-mortems/post-mortems, and other collaboration rituals that foster inclusive team communication and alignment. We’ve gathered a few team dynamics examples from powerhouses such as Pixar, Costco, and Microsoft for more inspiration.
Keep in mind that team dynamics in the workplace can change in an instant. (It’s right there in the term: Dynamic also means constantly changing and adapting.) Even exceptionally high-performing teams can too easily devolve into ineffective ones. Keep an eye out for dysfunctional team signs such as:
- Conflict avoidance
- Lack of trust
- Ineffective meetings
- Poor communication
- Unclear ownership and lack of accountability
- Inconsistent follow-through
- Gossip and cliques
- Increased turnover
The earlier you spot these red flags, the easier righting your team’s course will be. A team turnaround plan typically includes reestablishing goals and decision rights, revisiting accountability rituals and execution cadences such as daily or weekly check-ins, and reinforcing psychological safety.
Organizational Culture and Leadership
Healthy team dynamics sometimes arise amid unhealthy organizational cultures, and teams sometimes produce solid results despite poor leadership. But the effort to do so is similar to that of sailing against the wind: far more laborious and inefficient than when the wind is in your favor. Just think how much greater the results could be when, instead of fighting organizational dysfunction and compensating for ineffective leaders, a team can direct all that energy toward its common business goals.
Organizational Culture and Performance
Team behavior reflects what the organization actually rewards, which is why company and team norms and incentives need to be aligned. Recognition programs that give bonuses based primarily on individual performance metrics, for instance, can discourage collaboration in favor of competition, even if the company declares collaboration and cooperation to be important values.
Documented standards help ensure that organizations do more than pay lip service to the importance of healthy team dynamics in the workplace. Writing down organizational tenets points out inconsistencies between what the company says it prioritizes and what it actually rewards. Leaders, management, and HR must then resolve any discrepancies so that all teams know exactly what they should be working toward and in what way. This enables onboarding to culture — integrating new hires into the organization’s norms from the get-go. It also reinforces alignment among team members, as well as the alignment of teams to the organization overall.
Leadership Styles and Teams
Gallup estimates that managers bear 70% of the responsibility for a team’s level of engagement. In other words, a team with a poor leader is unlikely to have a high level of engagement. Why does that matter? Gallup also found that businesses in the top quartile for engagement were 23% more profitable than those in the bottom quartile.
Manager effectiveness depends, in part, on understanding which leadership style works best in which situations and for which teams and employees. A democratic style, which is built on a consistent exchange of ideas and feedback, typically results in higher levels of innovation and job satisfaction, but in times of crisis, a more autocratic style may be necessary. Transformative leadership emphasizes collaboration, while a laissez-faire approach can be more effective for self-starters.
Regardless of management style, the most effective leaders build a coaching culture that encourages continual improvement and employee development. They also model decision transparency and active listening, as well as establish, communicate, and reiterate performance expectations and celebrate successes.
Virtual and Remote Team Dynamics
Healthy team dynamics in the workplace are possible — and essential — even when team members work in different spaces, or even time zones. In addition, achieving and maintaining strong dynamics among distributed teams isn’t any more difficult than when the entire group is in the same building.
Virtual versions of team-building exercises, such as scavenger hunts and “two truths and a lie,” encourage camaraderie and virtual team trust. So does time-zone collaboration: making the effort not to favor one time zone and the employees who work there over others. This includes instituting an overlap hours policy, with meetings and high-bandwidth collaboration limited to predetermined times when all participants are available, regardless of their time zone.
Establishing remote team communication practices for async collaboration, such as using shared project boards to track progress and updates, further reinforces the sense of inclusiveness vital for productive team dynamics in the workplace. To set expectations across locations while increasing consistency and trust, create a clear communication charter. This can specify preferred channels by purpose (messaging over Slack for one-on-one updates, perhaps, versus email for one-to-many questions), reply-time SLAs, and when to set up camera-on versus camera-optional meetings.
In addition to a communication charter, successfully managing remote teams requires solid tool hygiene policies regarding cybersecurity and enacting outcome-based performance reviews. The latter, like an overlap hours policy, reinforces the sense of fairness and equity integral to psychological safety and inclusiveness.
How Wonderlic Helps You Build Stronger Teams
Efficient, effective team dynamics in the workplace are a bit like a duck swimming in a pond. From the surface, it looks effortless, but when you take a look underneath the water, you see how furiously the duck is paddling. When you look underneath the surface of high-performing teams, you see how continual oversight, adaptability, psychological safety, and open communication are needed to keep workers performing at their best.
Wonderlic Team Dynamics helps organizations build and maintain strong, effective teams. Its science-backed insights enable employees to better understand themselves and their teammates, leading to more effective collaboration. Team Dynamics also shows managers and other leaders how to align individual and team strengths to business goals, in addition to suggesting tactics to resolve team conflicts while improving communication.
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