Front line
involvement
in decisions
makes for
better decisions.
Effective Front Line Teams

An effective front line team can be of value in several ways:

• It generates and processes ideas from a variety of people who are directly involved in the work, including those who interface with customers or with key operations. Front line involvement in decisions makes for better decisions, says Warner B. Wims, Ph.D. of WBW & Associates.
• It helps employees feel empowered to make a difference, resulting in increased satisfaction and identification with results.
• It creates a sense of mutual accountability beyond what a supervisor or manager alone can generate.
• It provides avenues for employees who are close to the action, and who share responsibility for implementing the results, to address relevant problems, issues, and opportunities.

How can you increase the effectiveness of front line teams?

• Goals. A group without clear goals will drift out of existence. Identify short and long-term goals and their measures of success. Which goals fall within the prerogative of the team? Which goals are internally generated within the team versus from higher levels of management, and how do you integrate the two? Which are team goals and which are individual goals? Where can the team be most effective? How does the work of the team link with the overall performance needs of the organization?
• Membership and roles. This includes determining who should be on the team and clarifying expectations for each member. It also includes clarifying meeting management roles (e.g. facilitators, communicators, implementers). How will ongoing individual responsibilities and team meeting responsibilities coincide? How will input be gathered?
• Scope. This includes determining what falls within the purview of the team versus that of other organizational entities.
• Working with multiple teams. This includes clarifying the relationships between the particular front line team and other teams, including how to combine the efforts of more than one team.
• Knowledge and skill development. This entails educating team members on the major elements of effective teams, including the purpose of the team, ground rules, and working practices. Given the goals of the team, what additional skills are needed? How will these skills be acquired? How will the acquisition of these skills be integrated into the ongoing workload?
• Creative joint-problem solving. An advantage of a team is the ability to reap the benefit of different perspectives. How can individual perspectives within the team be brought together creatively to solve problems?
• Establishing trust. Teams are most effective when members trust that they will be heard, that other members care about them, and that there are no negative consequences for their ideas or participation.
• Conflict resolution. Learn and employ the most effective and constructive ways to resolve conflicts.
• Facilitation. This includes determining facilitation options and approaches that will best create involvement, commitment, and results.
• Meeting protocols. How often will the group meet? Who can call a meeting? How are meetings planned? How are decisions made? How is communication handled between meetings?
• Higher management support. Higher management must understand how to support the team rather than impede its success. This includes updating the supervisory culture from one based on giving orders to one based primarily on helping managers learn how to act as guides, facilitators and coaches.
• Aligning incentives. This includes determining how individual and team performance will be recognized, and ensuring that both individual and team-based rewards are aligned.
• Gaining results. The ultimate test of the accountability and success of teams is if they can succeed in achieving exceptional results.

© Copyright 2009 WBW & Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.