When he was dean of Brigham Young University’s Graduate School of Management in the early 1980s, William Dyer wrote the pioneering text on team building, entitled appropriately enough Team Building. The book is now in its fifth edition. From the beginning, Dyer cautioned against using teams for anything but team-oriented work. He also was wary of trying to implement team building if an organization’s leadership was halfhearted or skeptical about committing the time and resources needed to do it right.

You don’t have to look far to find people who are skeptical, or even cynical, about team building. The irony is, when you ask them why, you soon discover they never participated in true team building at all.

Here’s why. According to organizational surveys, 78% of so-called team building efforts within companies who reported having tried it consisted of one-time events. The surveys also showed that department heads or managers with little or no training or expertise in developing teams typically led these events.

Team building is not necessarily a good fit for all organizations. In fact, studies show that certain organizational structures, cultures, programs, and procedures actually undermine teams. No matter how much team-building initiatives are pushed, teams won’t be effective in these work settings. These types of organizations include ones with:

1. Hierarchical or bureaucratic structures.
2. Authoritarian cultures, which lock power and control in one place.
3. Cultures that primarily reward individual performance and initiative.

Teams have been defined as a small group of people with complementary skills committed to a common purpose and specific performance goals. The work of real teams requires collaboration and interdependence among team members. This means that the leadership role tends to shift among team members rather than remain static. And it means that people with different jobs and skill sets must work together in a coordinated effort, and at the same time, to be effective.