Larger Teams Require Different Methods

As teams get larger team leaders need to organize their team around optimized sub-teams. Teams are increasing their members these days. It’s not uncommon to find that there are 12-20 members on teams. These numbers make team meetings difficult to facilitate in that “air time” becomes difficult for team discussions. Two little known rules for team development apply in these cases, and I will even throw in one of my own. 

The first rule is that the norms that get established in small groups, get carried over to the large group. As much as possible organize your meetings into small groups that can work and feed their information to the large group. There is no need to break out to do this. Table groups work fine. In fact I call these “break-in” sessions where we assign the tasks to the small groups. 

The second rule is to optimize the real working sub-teams. Every large team has sub-teams, members that have to work closely together to achieve the results. These teams are the key to producing outstanding results. Map the sub-teams and have them do real work at the meeting. In many cases these teams also have to combine and re-combine in all the ways necessary to get the work done. Map this as well. Nowadays team members need to work face-to-face, virtually, alone, in pairs, and in different combinations. Aim for small. Less is more. Make sure only the actual people that are responsible to accomplish the work are on the sub-team. As a facilitator, work with the leader to set all of this up, and then get out of their way. It is critical that these teams find their own way. 

The third rule I call the rule of Twos and Threes. I got this rule from Yogi Berra, who reportedly once said, “Pair up in threes.”  This rule, maximizes air time and is useful for break-in sessions. Use threes as much as you can and when the numbers don’t work out, break out the remaining members in pairs. Small groups of threes are powerful. As two talk, the one can observe, give feedback, play devil’s advocate etc. Pairs are not at helpful. Paring can lead to distraction and flight from the work. It’s common in groups for pairs to collude, complain, retreat as the two support each other. 

Keep these rules in mind as you lead and facilitate larger teams.