ISACA COBIT 5 – Team Management (BOK III)

6. Team Motivation (BOK III.B.1)

As a Six Sigma team leader, you need to make sure that your team is performing. And for that, you need to make sure that your team is motivated. Motivate to generate new ideas, motivate to implement whatever ideas have been generated, motivate to complete the tasks which have been assigned to individual members. So how do you motivate your team to understand that? Let’s go through some basic theories of motivation. Here in this section, we will be covering three motivational theories. One is Abraham Maslow’s. Need hierarchy. Then we have Herzberg’s two factor theory.

Then we will go through the third theory, which is Douglas McGregor theory X and Theory Y. So we will be going through Need Hierarchy. We’ll be going through two factors theory, and we will be going through theory X and theory Y. Let’s go through them one by one to understand how do you motivate your team members, starting with Maslow’s Hierarchy of need. Maslow’s Hierarchy of need gives you five levels of satisfaction, five levels of needs. People start from bottom of that and go up the hierarchy. If you look at the bottom of this hierarchy or the pyramid, the bottom of this is physiological needs, which is here. That’s the first thing people look for. Physiological needs is food, air, sleep, those sort of basic things which you need to survive.

Those are the first thing people will look at that. So if a person doesn’t have a food, air or sleep to live, then you can forget about any other thing at the top of this hierarchy, because these are the first level of needs which need to be fulfilled. The next level of needs is safety. Safety, shelter, house, which protects the person or the family.

That is the second level of need. So if you look at these two needs, which are safety and physiological, these needs are sort of the basic needs a person need to have. A person need to have food, clothing and shelter. That’s all this is asking. At the bottom of this hierarchy, once you have crossed that, once you have these things met, then the next thing is love and belongingness. So your team members or people you are working with, if you want them to be motivated, they have the next level of need, which is love and belongingness to the team, being a part of a group, that is their third level of need.

And this includes social interaction, social linking, getting the social recognition. That’s a part of this need, which is love and belongingness. Once a person has that as well, then the person will be looking for next level, which is level four, which is esteem, which is here, which is self esteem or the status. So people look for status in the organization, what is the title given to them, how the organization recognizes them. That’s the fourth level of need.

And at the top of hierarchy, you have self actualization, where people are self motivated, self motivated to do anything and everything they want to do because that motivation is coming from within individual. So what this hierarchy says is you need to satisfy needs from bottom to the top. So you see what needs are being met and then you look for the next level of needs this individual has. So this is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Another theory of motivation is Herzberg’s two factor theory. This is a much simpler theory of motivation. What it says is there are few things which provides satisfaction or which provide motivation. So these are called as motivators.

So there are some factors which are motivators and some factors are hygiene factors. Having motivators, having more of motivating factors increases the motivation. Hygiene factors are sort of a basic things which need to be there. Having more of these, having more of hygiene factors doesn’t help in increasing the motivation. However, the absence of hygiene factors basically the motivates people. So let’s take some examples of motivators.

So motivators example could be challenging work, recognition, responsibilities. These are sort of things which motivate people, give them recognition, give them responsibility, give them challenging work. More of that will help more in motivating that individual. However, if you look at hygiene factors, the money, the salary, the fringe benefits, all these are hygiene factors. If you have a low salary, then that is a d motivator. But giving more and more money doesn’t really motivate an individual because that is considered to be a hygiene factor. So that was a simple Herzberg two factor theory.

So let’s move on to the third theory of motivation on the next slide. So this theory was developed by Douglas McGregor and this is called as theory X and Y. So what this theory says, what theory X is theory X says that people dislike work. So this is theory X which says people dislike work, people like to be directed, people have little creativity.

So this is sort of a negative image of people that worker needs to be coerced, worker needs to be forced, worker needs to be told to do something. If you don’t do that, you will not get the output. On the other hand, what theory Y says is theory Y is that people like work.

Actually people like work and they are ready to take responsibility and they are creative as long as the right environment is provided to them. So under right condition, people will like the work, people will take the responsibility and people will create new product or will be creative. So that’s theory X and theory Y. So this completes our discussion on the basic motivational theories which can help you in understanding how you can motivate your team members towards achieving your goal.

7. Team Stages (BOK III.B.2)

In this section we will learn about team lifecycle, how team lifecycle works, from setting up of the team and completion of the project. So you have a six cycle, a project which you want to initiate. You get number of people from number of departments. These people work together as a team. And once the project is completed, these people go back to their own work. So they get out of the team how things work from the beginning to end. This team lifecycle, which was developed by Tuckman, it’s also called as Tuckman’s model. This explains how team dynamic works. As per this theory, there are five stages of team. These stages are forming when you form the team, then storming. During the storming, people try to understand each other. They have disagreements with each other. That is the storming phase of the team.

So you form the team, you put people together. People were new, not knowing each other. Then they started having disagreement in the storming phase. Then comes the norming stage when people start working as a team. In the norming stage, rules are set up. People know how to behave, how to act in the team. Once that stage is reached, the next stage is performing. This is the stage when most of the work, a big creative work is done. When the team work as a single team to achieve the common objective, that is the performing stage of the team. And once the team has achieved the objective, then the last stage is adjourning. Adjourning is when the team is broken down, breaking of the team and going back to their own workplaces when the task is complete.

So each team, when formed, goes through these five stages. Let us talk about these five stages on next few slides in a little bit more detail. Starting with the first stage of team formation. This is forming. This is when the team is formed. People from different groups are brought together to work as a team. Since people don’t know each other, there is sort of an apprehension here. You need a strong leader because the team depends on leader to tell them what to do. Idea creations are simple because team doesn’t know each other. So everyone is being kept to himself or herself. Since people don’t know each other, they keep their ideas and thoughts to themselves only. There is a tendency to avoid controversy because everyone is a stranger there.

And there is no serious topic discussion also. And there is a minimum feedback because the team is just formed. So what leader need to do at this time is leader needs to direct. So this is what I’m putting here. Leader directs in the forming stage because someone has to firmly tell team members what to do. Because team members do not know each other, they are apprehensive of the situation. And this is the time when leaders need to take a strong position and direct the team towards the goal. So this is the first stage of the team formation. Coming to the next stage which is Storming. Storming is the time when people start expressing their views. Each one has their own strong view towards that goal. They have a strong position towards that. They challenge each other’s idea because this is the time when they want to dominate the group and want to show their position.

The team will even challenge the leadership position or authorities. During this stage of the team formation, some team member even might withdraw because they don’t agree with other members. So they might even want to withdraw. At this time, there is a lack of collaboration and there is a competition for taking control of the team. As a team leader, your role at this time is to coach. Coach and help people to move towards the goal.

Coming to the next stage of team formation which is norming. Once the storming has been done, once people have fought for their position, once they have challenged the situation, now people slowly adjust to the situation and start to learn about the team. This is the stage which is known as norming. Here, people listen to each other. People find a way to work together and they are ready to change their views along with other team members, they are receptive to other team members ideas and actively participate in the team if there’s any conflict. That conflict is seen as a common problem, not as individual problems.

So every member looks at the problem as the group problem, not the individual problem. And then there is an open exchange of ideas. So that was the stage number three which is norming. And the role of leader at this time is to facilitate the team facilitate to help them take their own decisions. So the team takes decision at this time and the leader just helps them in taking those decisions. Coming to the fourth stage of team formation which is performing, this is the time that team is most productive. They are highly creative. They have been together for some time. The disagreement which they had with each other have been resolved now during Storming and Norming stage. Now they are in performing stage. They have a strong relationship. They make bond with each other. The personal bonding develops during this time and the achievements are high.

At this time, team is working in full swing. What leader needs to do at this time is just delegate, leave decision making and everything to the team members and take a backside position. So that’s the role of leader at the stage of performing. So leader delegates at this stage. Coming to the last stage of team which is adjoining. Adjoining comes when the project objective has been achieved. When the project objectives have been achieved. Now there is a breakdown of team because team members have to go back to their own places.

So team is breaking up at this time, they hope that they will meet next time on some other improvement project or some other work together as a team. This is the time team leaders need to recognize the efforts made by team members. And many times people are vulnerable at this time because they don’t know what will happen to them if this was a project and they don’t have another project to go to. So people are apprehensive of that.

So this is the time that team leader needs to communicate. Communicate to reassure them, recognize them, and recommend them for the next project if they have done the good job. So that’s the role of leader at this stage, which is adjoining. So these are the five stages which each team has to go through. Understanding these five stages will definitely help you. When you work as a Six Sigma team leader, you know that what stage your team is at and based on that, what sort of a strategy you need to take, whether you need to delegate, whether you need to coach, whether you need to facilitate, whether you really need to direct them. So all that will depend on what stage you’re team is at.

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