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Sheet
S06 of 12
Part
Leading people

Teaming

Team leaders manage tensions that never fully resolve, and they decide which conflict to encourage and which to defuse.

01

Readings

Linda A. Hill · HBS note, 2005

Managing Your Team

Leading a team means managing ongoing tensions, not solving them once.

  • Unity and diversity: enough shared identity to act together, enough difference to think well.
  • Support and confrontation: back people, and challenge them.
  • Performance and learning: deliver now, and build the team’s capacity for later.
  • Leader authority and team discretion: when to decide, and when to let the team decide.
Case
(Re)building a Global Team: Tariq Khan at Tek (Tsedal Neeley, HBS)
02

See it

Every person you add multiplies the conversations

Lab 06.A
6

15links

The newest person, highlighted, adds 5.

Links = n(n-1)/2. Hackman argued most teams are too big; past about six to eight, coordination eats the gains.

Three kinds of conflict: sort them

Lab 06.B

  1. We disagree on which market to enter first

  2. He thinks she’s arrogant, so they avoid each other

  3. Nobody agrees on who owns the client deck

  4. Two analysts argue over the model’s assumptions

  5. Meetings keep running over because no one sets an agenda

  6. A comment in a meeting felt personal and still stings

Task conflict, kept to ideas, often helps. The other two usually hurt.

03

Frameworks

Team tensions

Hill

S06

Manage the balance; do not try to settle it once.

Unity and diversityShared identity versus different views
Support and confrontationBacking people versus challenging them
Performance and learningDeliver now versus build capacity
Authority and discretionLeader decides versus team decides

Three kinds of team conflict

Team conflict research

S06

Encourage the first, defuse the second, settle the third early.

TaskDisagreement about ideas and the work. Often helps.
RelationshipPersonal friction. Usually hurts.
ProcessDisagreement about who does what and how. Hurts if it drags on.
04

Check yourself

Q1Which conflict type usually helps a team?

Q2Adding one person to a team of 6 adds how many new communication links?

Q3Hill’s support versus confrontation tension means

0 of 3 answered.
05

Think it through

  1. P1Which of Hill’s tensions do you lean too far on?
  2. P2How would you rebuild trust on a team that has never met in person?