A 7 page handout about the six conditions needed to create a great team based on the work of Richard Hackman and Ruth Wageman.
Team Effectiveness Conditions Framework
The Team Effectiveness Conditions framework identifies the 6 Conditions that best predict performance in real-world teams. These conditions can be deliberately designed and actioned to create an environment where great teamwork will emerge and where significant accomplishment will be attained. The Framework comes from decades of research by Harvard University scholars Richard Hackman and Ruth Wageman.
3 Essential Conditions
The three essential conditions: the fundamental building blocks of great teams.
- Right People
A team with the right people has the range of perspectives needed to do the work, and the skills – including teamwork, facilitation, and management skills – to bring those perspectives to the work. - Real Team
To have a great team, you have to create a real team: one that is bounded so that members know who is on the team (and who is not), they need to work together to accomplish their work, and they are stable in membership long enough to accomplish something meaningful together. - Compelling Purpose
Teams need a purpose that engages their commitment and orients them in a shared direction.
3 Enabling Conditions
The three enabling conditions: accelerate a team’s development into a brilliant collaboration.
- Sound Structure
Every team benefits from a few elements of healthy structure: keeping the team small enough, tackling tasks together that make sense to be done as a team, and identifying a handful of explicit norms about what they should and should not do when they work together. - Team Coaching
Well-designed teams benefit from coaches who can help the team make excellent use of its resources. - Supportive Context
Every team operates in a larger context, and the structures and systems in that context (such as rewards and information) can either promote great teamwork, or create obstacles to excellent collaboration.
Download Handout
Use the Team Effectiveness Conditions handout to practice diagnosing your teams and plan next steps for creating the team effectiveness conditions.
Community Organising Fellowship
This handout is used by the Community Organising Fellowship as part of their training on building effective teams. Interested in COF? Express interest in participating in 2023.