1
Team Development and Leadership Consulting
Within a Turbulent andHypercompetitive Environment
A Master’s Thesis Field Project
Submitted to
BastyrUniversity
And
The Leadership Institute of Seattle
In partial fulfillment
Of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts in Applied Behavioral Science
By
DEBORAH HENDRICKSON
September 2003
Abstract
This master’s thesis project occurred with the User Research group at Gryffindor Technology. Aworld leader in the development of software, Gryffindor Technology existed within, and itself embodied, a turbulent and hypercompetitive environment. The User Research Group was a newinternal service group, and the leader was a recently promoted manager whose goal was to develop the group into a collaborative team. After a series of critical incidents, she abandoned this goal mid-way through the project and replaced it with a new goal to develop her leadership skills through individual coaching sessions. The leader’s belief that some growth had occurred for her was agreed upon as measurement of achievement of the goal. The leader indicated at the conclusion of the project that she believed growth had occurred, and so the project was determined to be a success.
Table of Contents
Abstract
Chapter 1: Introduction
The Client System
The Client Group
Client Group Leadership
My Role as a Change Agent
The Evolution of Project Goals
Chapter 2: Literature Review
Client System
Client Group
Developmental stage
Socialization
Characteristics
Leadership
Content
The initial project goal: Creating a collaborative team
The final project goal: Leadership development
Effective leadership
Methodology
Contracting
Leadership coaching
Action research: History and descriptive analysis
The action research process
Sponsor-agent-target-advocate model
Chapter 3: Intervention
Chronological Overview
Sponsor-Agent Relationship Development: January 2002
A First Critical Incident
Contracting: January 2002
Diagnosis and Analysis: February-March 2002
A Second Critical Incident
Analysis: March 2002
A Third Critical Incident
Feedback: April 2002
Action Step: April 2002
A Fourth Critical Incident
Diagnosis, Analysis, and Contracting: May 2002
Chapter 4: Results
Scientific and Statistical Measurements
Goal: Leadership Development
Numerical data
Client observations
Consultant Observations
Chapter 5: Personal Impact
Family of Origin
Culture of Origin
Learning Style
Interpersonal Behavior Tendencies
Conflict Handling
Personality Type
Personal Authority
Feedback from Sponsor and Client Group
Chapter 6: Summary and Conclusions
Project Summary
Lessons Learned: Theory
Lessons Learned: Experience
References
Appendix A
Appendix B
Chapter 1
Introduction
This chapter offers an introduction to my master’s thesis field project. I introduce the client system, client group, client group leadership, my role as a change agent, and the evolution of project goals. I describe the impact of the sponsor’s unwillingness to go through with the action step I believed to be necessary to accomplish the project’s initial goal and the resultant change in project goals. I introduce my responsibility for the project’s turn of events as well as insights I learned during this experience.
The Client System
My client system, Gryffindor Technology[*], is a world leader in the development and manufacturing of consumer and business software. Most high technology business observers agree that Gryffindor Technology established its prominence through innovative product development along with insightful business practices.
Gryffindor Technology is a company that frequently reorganizes its internal structures and processes. For example, top company leadership reorganizes at least once annually. Gryffindor Technology frequently appoints new executives and reassigns established executives. Both events require entire divisions under these executives to realign under new organizational matrices. The business environment in which Gryffindor Technology exists demands this level of change in response to highly competitive and rapidly changing market conditions.
The frequency and scale of reorganizations within Gryffindor Technology have both external and internal ramifications. Externally, technology analysts view the company as capable of delivering relatively quick product adaptations in spite of its size, resulting in a distinct marketplace advantage. Internally, according to several journal articles, individuals and teams experience a corporate culture that mirrors the high technology marketplace in which only the most agile and competitive employees thrive. Numerous news accounts and profiles report that Gryffindor Technology employees at all levels compete vigorously with their internal colleagues for recognition and new opportunities. I am not citing these sources in order to protect the client’s confidentiality.
The Client Group
My client group, known as “User Research,” formed in early December 2001, one month before my introduction to this system as a consultant. The purpose of the User Research group is to observe how customers use Gryffindor Technology products. These observational research findings influence future product design enhancements. Group members conducting this research are referred to as engineers.
The group’s creation resulted from one of Gryffindor Technology’s broad reorganizations. Before the reorganization, individual engineers were dispersed across a large division of the company, with each engineer reporting directly to a manager within a discrete product team. With the creation of User Research, these engineers merged into one service unit. While they continued to service many different product teams, the new User Research group members now reported into one newly appointed User Research group manager, Abigail, my project’s sponsor.
Eleven members, including Abigail, comprised the group, (see Figure 1). Seven members were male; four members were female. Members appeared to range in age from their 20s to their 50s, with the majority (seven) appearing to be in their 30s. I did not inquire explicitly into team members’ ethnicity; upon observation, only two team members appeared to be non-Caucasian. I chose not to conduct a closer examination of the gender, age, ethnic, and other diversity aspects of this group as a research aspect of this project. While these areas could lead to interesting topics of study, they exceeded the project’s time and focus constraints, and did not appear to me to pose a direct impact upon the project’s goals or eventual outcome.
Throughout this project, my study indicated that User Research members demonstrated little familiarity with each other’s work and lacked any meaningful cross-group personal connections beyond direct reporting relationships. It seemed to me that the single point of meaningful connection for the User Research group was its manager and this project’s sponsor, Abigail. The User Research group seemed to enjoy only rare visual or verbal contact between members because member offices resided in separate buildings.
During the second month after the team’s formation, I began working with the User Research group. At this time, User Research members had experienced only one opportunity to meet as a group. Abigail communicated to her team that attendance at this event was optional; as a result, not all group members showed up. I believe that the low priority given to this event set an early precedent for the User Research group’s view of themselves as individuals loosely connected through a reporting relationship rather than as a group united behind a common purpose.
Figure 1. User Research’s organizational hierarchy.
Client Group Leadership
Leadership of the group represented a promotion for Abigail, who had held a supervisory position prior to User Research’s formation. Abigail developed her professional career in the usability discipline without benefit of formal education beyond
high school. Many group members held doctoral degrees and some even held multiple doctoral degrees. Despite the discipline’s emphasis on academic credentials and stated requirement that Gryffindor usability engineers hold at least a masters degree in a psychology-related field, Abigail had achieved success and visibility within the User Research area at Gryffindor Technology. Abigail’s lack of formal education did not surface as an issue during the course of this project.
I found Abigail’s personal demeanor informal and inviting. Consistent with Gryffindor Technology’s corporate culture, Abigail dressed casually, usually in jeans. She exhibited a relaxed, conversational tone in most of her interactions with me and in all of the interactions that I observed her having with others. Abigail demonstrated friendly approachability, an engaging sense of humor, and what seemed to me to be an earnest sincerity. I intuitively sensed in Abigail tenacity and toughness that I perceived to mean that she was not afraid to engage in heated dialogue or conflict with others at Gryffindor Technology. Her managerial position and years with the company virtually assured her competence in this regard. However, I never personally observed Abigail exhibit anything other than friendly behavior toward others.
It became apparent to me, based on data gathered in an initial group survey as well as my own observations, that Abigail placed herself as the central hub of User Research. Members seemed to direct their energy toward and through her, sometimes via their supervisors as intermediaries, rather than share any significant interaction with each other. I will talk more about how this affected the group in Chapter 3.
My Role as a Change Agent
A fellow student at the Leadership Institute of Seattle (LIOS), Sandy, introduced me to Abigail. Sandy, a recent graduate of LIOS and a member of the User Research group, reported directly to Abigail.
Sandy and I had remained in touch since her graduation, and she knew that I wanted a master’s thesis field project (MTFP) opportunity in the business sector. Sandy also knew of my background and interest in the high technology industry. Sandy spoke to Abigail to determine her interest in doing organizational work and in sponsoring my MTFP project. Abigail responded positively to Sandy’s inquiry.
I met Abigail in January 2002. During our first meeting, Abigail expressed enthusiasm about conducting organization development work within her team and demonstrated a high level of energy when discussing the potential benefits. Abigail expressed that her primary goal was to solidify User Research into a collaborative team. Abigail stated that she wanted to start by assessing and fixing any trouble spots in the group.
Abigail responded quickly to my follow-up communications and proactively contacted me with questions and suggestions. Given these indicators, I concluded that Abigail possessed the necessary commitment to be an effective sponsor. Combined with my interest in finding just such a project, the foundation for a successful collaborative partnership appeared to me to be in place.
A key learning for me occurred later, while writing this paper. I realized that early in the project, Abigail failed to express a clear vision for success, and I failed to probe adequately for one. I define a clear vision for success as an explicit articulation of what would be different because of the change project and exactly how that change would positively influence specific business goals as well as individuals or groups. I realized later that I needed to look past my own excitement and relief in securing what seemed to be a premier thesis project to assess more completely the contract’s potential for success. In my enthusiasm, I failed to anticipate Abigail’s eventual disinclination to advance beyond the diagnosis, analysis, and feedback stages of our project to the action stage in order to accomplish her original goal. I will describe this failure to assess accurately the project’s potential in detail in Chapter 3. In retrospect, I believe I could have more effectively explored the potential for a failed outcome either before or during the contracting phase by asking Abigail to describe her definition of success for our project. I believe Abigail’s reticence to take action might have been apparent in this description, and I could have predicted the failure of the first attempted action stage of our project. Instead, I mistook Abigail’s passion and enthusiasm for data gathering and analysis as her strategic vision.
The Evolution of Project Goals
As we discussed the details of the project contract, Abigail reconfirmed for me that she desired to create a cohesive, interdependent team. This desire became our primary project goal: to transform User Research from a collection of individuals into a collaborative team.
We also defined a secondary project goal: to resolve four concerns held by Abigail. Abigail’s first concern was that team members lacked trust in Gryffindor Technology and in the new User Research team. Abigail attributed this apparent lack of trust to poor communication during the most recent reorganization. Abigail’s second concern was potential underperformance by some team members caused by competency gaps. Abigail’s third concern was that she had not set clear performance expectations for the group. Abigail’s fourth concern was that the lack of integration with team members’ respective product teams might result in User Research’s underperformance in its internal service role.
After development of her initial primary and secondary goals, Abigail and I agreed that she needed to communicate her intent to undertake this project to the rest of her group and ask for its members’ interest and support. I possess a background in employee communications so I volunteered to create a draft email for Abigail to personalize and send out to her group members. Abigail agreed, and after a few minor edits to the draft I offered, she sent the email to User Research (see Appendix 1).
With guidance from my adjunct faculty supervisor, I developed a list of anecdotal interview questions, which Abigail approved. I then met individually with each User Research group member and used a spreadsheet software program to compile and sort all of the data and identify themes. A key theme from the data that Abigail and I agreed to focus on had to do with the lack of group-wide goals and standards. Abigail shared with me what she thought those goals and standards should be, and we agreed to use the group-wide data feedback meeting as a means for communicating her view to the group.
As I worked with Abigail to develop content for the group-wide data feedback meeting, I made a choice to deviate from the action research process at this point. Rather than presenting the survey data to the group and asking its members for their interpretation of the data followed by collaborative development of any necessary action step, I took this responsibility upon myself as the project’s change agent. I determined the data analysis and action step. By trying to control all of the data in the meeting and leaving nothing open for dialogue and discovery, I prevented group members from engaging fully and collaboratively into the process. In retrospect, I believe this deviation from the action research process virtually assured the failure of this project. I will discuss this further in Chapter 3.
The week after the data feedback meeting with the team I suggested to Abigail that we advance toward fulfilling of our planned action step. Abigail declined to move forward with our intended action. I was surprised and confused by Abigail’s unwillingness to proceed. I surmised that this project had suddenly moved to the periphery of Abigail’s priority list, and my reaction was one of surprise and even anger. It was not until much later that I came to understand how my own actions and choices in this project had contributed to Abigail’s unwillingness to persevere. I will discuss all of this later in the paper.
In my next meeting with Abigail, I shared with her my recommendation that we end the project based on its stalling at the action step and its inability to accomplish her originally contracted goal. Abigail appeared to be very surprised at my suggestion and suggested that our work had offered much meaningful data to her and she did not want it to end at this point. She asked whether we could use another survey as a means of gathering more data about whether her original goal to build a collaborative team as actually the right goal, and whether the action we had agreed upon was, indeed, the right action to take. Abigail’s insistence convinced me to proceed with another survey and postpone my decision about the future of the project until after the tabulation of results. Abigail and I developed an online survey to send out to the group. The data collected supported data gathered in the first round of interviews. I told Abigail that I believed we should either re-commit to her original goal, or else end the project. Abigail surprised me once again by suggesting that instead of ending our work, we re-contract for a new goal of leadership development for her. We had discussed leadership development as an aspect of our work together early in our contracting discussions, and Abigail had even mentioned it specifically in her sponsorship statement to the User Research group.
Despite a growing sense on my part that Abigail was no longer interested in bringing about change within her group, Abigail and I agreed to contract for a new project goal of leadership development with a focus on increasing Abigail’s self-awareness regarding her own strengths and challenges. We negotiated that this work toward a new goal would take the form of four coaching sessions over a period of three months. We agreed that these coaching sessions would be conversational in tone and that the measurement of success would be Abigail’s own sense that they had added some value to her.