By Kyla Nicholson, CHRP Candidate

It’s time for a new buzzword. Rather than “building teams”, Harvard business professor Amy Edmonson who studies teams, says we’ve moved onto “teaming”.

As the nature of work changes, we are moving away from the traditional, structured, intact teams that are function specific and supported by well-defined roles. We are moving toward a more fluid, cross-functional, project and goal oriented style of work which responds to the dynamic nature of business, and which requires teaming.

Teaming is a verb and a skill. To do it successfully people need to build their ability to “team”, but not necessarily during team building sessions (a great idea, but who has the time?).

Edmonson says teaming is best built through on-the-job experiences, and relies on the ability of people from diverse professional backgrounds, brought together in collaborative work structures, to build trust quickly, and facilitate knowledge sharing and synthesis. These are areas that traditional teams have struggled with for years. So how can we develop these requirements for success in a limited timeframe, and within multiple groups at the same time? Here are a few thoughts.

When teaming occurs, the organization must foster and participants must demonstrate:

• A clear and shared understanding of their ultimate goal from the outset.
• An understanding of how each functional skill set contributes to the ultimate goal of the business.
• An ability to communicate in clear terms; remove the jargon and speak a shared language related to the business and its goals.
• A genuine inquisitiveness and respect for other skill sets and interests.
• An openness to diverse ideas and perspectives.
• The ability to work collaboratively and patience to foster collaborative behaviours in those who are still learning.
• A commitment to ultimately driving the organization’s success, rather than a functional agenda.

Perhaps none of these things are earth-shattering revelations, but in reality I would venture that we often miss “teaming” opportunities because some or all of these conditions do not exist. Organizations must examine their gaps against these criteria in order to fill them.

View the interview between Karl Moore, Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University for The Globe and Mail and Amy Edmonson, professor at the Harvard Business School.

Kyla Nicholson, CHRP Candidate, is the Manager of Professional Development at BC HRMA. Kyla is committed to providing high-quality learning opportunities that build the capabilities and the organizational impact of HR practitioners. She also sits on the editorial committee and writes for PeopleTalk Magazine.