I recently had a call from a client who was faced with the negative impact an Affirmative Action appointment in a leadership position had on a business unit in her company.

You mentioned yesterday that a new team leader was recently appointed at the Sales Department and you are worried about a sudden drop in motivation and team performance in general. Because this was an Affirmative Action appointment, team members feel disgruntled and angry. Apparently one of the current team members was overlooked because of his race and gender.

Although Transformational practices have a negative impact on organisations in general, most of these appointments are managerial positions where individuals or groups report to the appointee.

When appointees function as leaders soft skills are at work and technical skills are less important. Leadership is a function and the role of the leader is to act as facilitator (relations expert) to provide his team with the best possible resources to execute their specialised skills.

The above diagram taken into account suggests that the leader should apply soft skills with less emphasis on technical skills. If the leader feels incompetent and insecure he/she will apply bureaucratic practices and blindly enforce the “letter” of the law when uncertain. The “letter” of the law provides a safe haven to those insecure and afraid to be advised by others or junior employees. This behaviour is apparent when trust levels are low and the leader is afraid to be vulnerable in front of subordinates.

When a new leader is appointed the impact on team members can be quite dramatic, leading to loss in motivation, absenteeism and even resignation. If the appointed leader does not “read” or try to understand the existing organisational culture and approach the team in an autocratic or laissez-faire way, members may experience conflict amongst “old friends” and a new destructive organisational culture may be visible where team members play “organisational games”; e.g. withholding the truth, manipulative tactics, forming of cliques, nobody takes responsibility; etc, 

Team Building is a powerful intervention which introduces the Affirmative Action appointee elegantly to the team.

The significance of this intervention is to unfreeze the team and facilitate the birth of a new culture in which the new leader is assimilated.

The purpose of team building is to rediscover the value existing behaviours have and to discard dysfunctional behavioural patterns.

Tuckman and Jensen (1985) came up with the concept of “Stages of team / group development”: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. The moment a team member is added or taken away from a performing team, the team reverts back to “storming”. If nothing is done, the team will become dysfunctional.

The intervention we propose for next week is aimed at speeding up the storming and norming stages to arrive easier with fewer casualties at the performing stage. Please keep in mind that team building is not an “event” but a process and a business principle which should be institutionalised. One should already plan a follow-up intervention one to two months from the initial intervention.

I suggest that we divide the team into two groups and present the programme over two days and on the third day have a conference where the whole team is present. The third day could also be framed as a celebration of the newly found identity of a united team by planning the way ahead. The “new” leader should participate in the whole process to optimise his/her exposure to all members. The ideal size of a team for this type of intervention is 12-16 members.

We will try to accommodate your current arrangement by having two facilitators available at the same time and splitting the team up from time to time to optimise learning and participation.

The Team Building Institute has launched a service which focuses on project teams. A programme  was developed to optimise team efficiency within project execution. This unique intervention assists teams to arrive earlier at the performing phase of group development.

AEL implies learning by participating experientially in activities. These activities simulate the desired behaviour the project team members identify to be key to successful project execution.