Agile Approach: How to Transform Team Dynamics and Motivation?

Treat people as if they were what they could be, and you will help them become what they are capable of becoming. J. W. Goethe

Introduction

People have gathered together since time immemorial, live in social communities, and work in teams. Teamwork as a strategy is historically proven and more successful than trying to do things individually. Without cooperation, our ancestors would not have caught large animals, built monumental structures, defeated enemies, and we could list many more examples. Most things humanity does are done in teams. Over historical development, under the influence of technological innovations and the advancement of science, approaches to human resource management, understanding of management, and its essence have changed. Changes bring organizations new opportunities, challenges, and approaches to potential markets. It is not enough to merely adapt, but to respond appropriately, anticipate socio-economic impacts, disruptive breaks, and technologies, innovate, gain competitive advantages, and use them for the benefit of the organization and customers. According to Truss (1999), the shift from traditional forms of work leads to ongoing change in team work, self-control, self-governance, and self-organization of activities, work time and place, personal responsibility, job redesign, adaptation to mental and emotional demands, continuous learning, flexibility, and job insecurity. Digitalization and globalization redefine employer-employee relationships and affect organizational structure. Companies are employing fewer internal employees and are increasingly relying on external resources, which brings new methods of management but also various problems and misalignment with corporate culture. According to Kravčáková (2013), organizations strive to influence performance, creativity, self-development, cooperation, stability, and employee loyalty. More flexible working conditions raise new questions about collaboration, management, and control in teams, and require a new conception of tasks. Workers and managers must find a new balance. In information and communication technology areas, strategic agility is a decisive performance factor for the organization, while other sectors increasingly face the need for change. (Doz, Kosonen, 2007) The aim of this article is to highlight the importance of developing work teams through an agile approach.

1 Dynamics and motivation in the team

Technical aspects and work procedures have no longer long been among the decisive factors in designing performance and efficiency management. Current trends increasingly focus on soft elements of team work, satisfaction and motivation, the effect of cohesion, communication, a team’s ability to cope with conflict, and so on. A considerable amount of literature and expert sources addresses the issue of motivation. The motivational process begins with a physiological or psychological shortage, a need that triggers behavior and actions directed toward achieving a goal. The motivational process is linked to human needs, initiated by conscious or unconscious recognition of unsatisfied needs (Arnold et al., 2016). Needs create demand: people set goals, which once achieved satisfy their requirements and desires, choosing a path of behavior and action where they expect to reach that goal (Armstrong, 2010). We agree with Palmer (2005) that a primary component of motivation strategy is the very process of achieving the goal. Several authors regard dynamism as the foundation of motivation. As Kollárik (2002, p. 101) aptly says: “Motivation expresses the dynamic component of personality, and motives are seen as causes of action and sources of behavior in both people and social groups.” Herzberg (1959) captures motivation most clearly through the employee’s attitude. In studying the concept of internal attitude, which stems from a state of mind, we discover the most practical information about workers’ engagement and motivation. Šauerová explains: “In the focus on motivation, the personality of an individual, the structure of their value system, previous experiences, abilities, skills and attitudes developed throughout life are at play. It is strongly tied to an individual’s aspiration and causal attribution when evaluating the results of his or her previous work.” (Šauerová, 2012, in Průcha, 2014).

Group dynamics was named by Kurt Lewin (1940), who observed its effect on changes in behavior and role within a work group. Team dynamics influences organizational success, affecting a team’s direction of behavior and performance through unconscious psychological factors. Several authors (Lewin, 1951; Thompson, 1967; Cartwright, Zander, 1968) define group dynamics as an area of research focused on expanding knowledge of group nature, the laws of their development, their relationships with individuals, other groups, and institutions.

Job satisfaction may be described as a subjective feeling, state, set of attitudes, and also as a process, but also as a primary determinant of performance with motivational force. Many organizations have come to realize how team moods and emotions affect the environment and play a significant role in performance. Kohn (2018) confirmed that external motivational stimuli, including “A” grading in schools, are ineffective and counterproductive in the long run regarding the desire to learn, moral principles, and commitment to proper values. Experts studying human behavior (Deci, Ryan, 1985) agree that self-determination and intrinsic motivation provide more effective fulfillment. In practice, not all team members are internally engaged, so it is necessary to identify factors that arouse their motivation. Any external motivation is only effective for a short period. When people are offered a reward for completing a task that requires some degree of problem solving, creativity, or simply doing the work well, they tend to perform lower-quality work than those who are not offered any reward. The psychology of internal control, Choice Theory (Glasser, 1998; Sullo, 2007) presents that we are born with specific needs that we are genetically primed to satisfy. It emphasizes personal choice, personal responsibility, and personal transformation. Every behavior is an attempt to satisfy basic needs or genetic drives at any moment. In addition to the physical need for survival, it identifies four core emotional-psychological needs, universal human motivators:

• belonging to a group - alliance, community-building, and connection with others,
• recognition - power through competence and mastery,
• freedom - autonomy in decision-making,
• fun - learning that is enjoyable.

Self-rewarding is a way of being proud of oneself and serving as a model for others so that they seek their own enjoyment more than reward or praise. From my own managerial practice, we can observe that when employees are paid for performance, their ambition is often to achieve the result by the shortest route, sometimes even through cheating—they bring nothing new to the organization and primarily try to complete the assignment. Paradoxically, when paid by hourly wage, we often encounter counterproductive handling of working time. The key is to enjoy doing the work itself, look for ways out of problems, and bring innovation and new solutions.

Winsborough (2017) describes general principles of agile rewarding:

1. Publicly—everyone must understand what and why is rewarded. The goal is to reinforce and signal expected behavior and strengthen joy in work.
2. Do not promise a reward—it should be unexpected, for good work, so it does not undermine intrinsic motivation.
3. Small rewards.
4. Every day is an opportunity for celebration and reward.
5. Reward behavior, not output.
6. Encourage peer-to-peer rewarding (not only from supervisors).

Successful organizations have exceptional corporate culture, aligning motives of individuals, teams, and the organization. We agree with Pink (2011) that major motivational attributes contributing to work satisfaction are autonomy, mastery, and meaningfulness of work for others. Agility makes this idea of fairness, cohesion, autonomy, mastery, and purpose transparent for everyone. Finances are needed for life but they are not sufficient on their own; very few people choose a job offer solely on salary. Consistently satisfied people at an individual level deliver the required results for the team. Work in agile teams can significantly increase both team and organizational satisfaction and performance.

2 How to transform team and organizational dynamics through an agile approach?

Agility is the ability to act quickly and flexibly, to renew, adapt, change fast, and succeed. Organizational agility enables predicting and quickly reacting to dynamic market conditions, creating its own conditions, and using the advantages of available resources in a thoughtful, purposeful, fast, and efficient way. More agile organizations win in markets together with customers and investors. Agile management is based on the twelve principles of the Agile Manifesto (Beck et al., 2001), written by a group of software developers to improve work processes:

• the highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software,
• changes to requirements are welcome, even in late development stages. Agile processes can turn changes into a competitive advantage for the customer,
• working software is delivered often, in intervals of a few weeks to a few months, with the shortest intervals preferred,
• business, together with development staff, must collaborate daily throughout the project,
• projects should be built on motivated people. Provide them with an environment, support, and trust that they will complete their task,
• the best way to convey information to the development team and within the team is through face-to-face conversation,
• a working piece of software is the primary measure of progress,
• agile processes support sustainable development. Sponsors, developers, and users should be able to sustain a constant pace indefinitely,
• continuous attention to technical excellence and good design stimulates agility,
• simplicity—the art of doing only what is truly necessary—is essential,
• self-organizing teams create the best concepts, requirements, and solution designs,
• the team regularly evaluates itself at regular intervals to become more effective and adapts behavior accordingly.

The agile approach has also been successfully adapted in forms beyond the IT sector. It is not a method, but a set of techniques characterized by agile ways of activity. As with any other approach, it is not suitable for every type of project or company. Agility may not work optimally if the customer is uncertain about goals, the project manager or team is inexperienced, they do not perform well under pressure, or if the end-user experience is not prioritized throughout the whole process. Due to less formal and more flexible processes, it may not be easily absorbed in larger traditional organizations with rigid processes, policies, or teams. It can also face issues with stakeholders who have rigid processes or operating methods. There are multiple agile approaches and variants derived from them; the most well-known are Scrum, Kanban, Lean, XP, and Management 3.0, among many others. Benefits of agility for an organization include resource savings, flexibility in decision-making, reduced shortages, process transparency, employee and stakeholder satisfaction, and many others. It is not incompatible with stability; on the contrary, it requires organizational stability. As mentioned, agility needs dynamic capability, speed, readiness, and responsiveness. It is conditioned by an established platform of things, a base that serves as a springboard while many other things are constantly changing. Changes cannot be implemented simply by accepting and adapting to new frameworks, structures, or methodologies. Organizational culture, as well as certain competencies and capabilities that are sources of competitive advantage, usually do not change quickly or easily. It is important to ensure that people do not give up during the implementation phase; the positive effect comes from focusing on controlling motivation strategy and the process of achieving goals. An organization transforms into agile only if the strategy is regularly communicated in line with corporate culture. Significant elements affecting organizational culture, with motivational impact on team dynamics and performance, are fairness, mutual trust, cohesion, communication, and conflict. Without communication it is impossible to create and build interpersonal relationships. Communication is a powerful activator of sustainable change.

Koning (2019) explains how to lead agile teams so that they fit within a broader organization:

• use architectural environments that help the team learn, grow, and thrive over the long term,
• obtain early feedback that everyone can use to improve,
• co-create customer-focused goals, not internal-organization goals,
• help teams with brainstorming and visualize the value of work for the customer,
• enable teams to take ownership and accelerate team learning,
• support cultural change and establish healthier team habits,
• make bigger changes faster.

Agility strengthens change and becomes a source of competitive advantage. It is necessary to define what is stable and what is dynamic for people. One dynamic parameter is resource redistribution; stability aspects are important in setting human resources. Agility is designed with shared values and recognition that team collaboration is part of a larger whole. In the agile approach, success or failure is never attributed to one individual but to the team; this conviction must be instilled from the start so the collective works as a team. Team composition should be set so that it brings together people sharing relevant attributes, attitudes, and ways of thinking. Agility requires responsible individuals who use collective effort to achieve team success. To introduce such a mindset, it is necessary to work toward preventing negative influences on the team, the formation of cliques, suppression, and argumentative attacks on individuals for mistakes during meetings and retrospectives. Pay proper attention to team members’ behavior leading to unwanted dominance and the creation of a traditional hierarchical management structure within an agile team. In an agile approach, everyone has a role, equally important and valuable, so the whole functions as a system.

In agreement with Appel (2016), team transformation requires:

• creating, at least for a time, a mission and a goal far stronger than individuals’ interests and desires. This unites the group, and a shared win is a motivating satisfaction,
• building a psychologically safe and healthy environment that accepts dissenting views, debates, and different perspectives,
• mutual respect—do not allow the team to move into personal attacks. Members become open to the challenge of learning, appreciating others’ experience and perspectives, from which the team will benefit,
• supporting cross-training, which helps relationship-building and empathy,
• promoting interaction and collaboration by embedding it in team norms. Regularly request and appropriately provide feedback,
• everyone can be creative; it is a comprehensive ability that must be developed.

Many skills and competencies are trainable, but training should not be drill-based. According to Hoverstadt (2009), drilling reduces the choice of options, imposes strict solutions for task completion, and restricts creativity. We have also found this in practice. Education has the opposite role: to develop the capacity to respond to different situations, support multiple problem-solving options, deepen competencies, participant creativity, and transform knowledge and abilities. Education and development have always been associated with leaving the comfort zone. Suitable practices should be used, and not predefined training packages that are expected to work everywhere. Everyone can create their own agile procedures and exercises with specific instructions through communication, trust, and interpersonal relationships. It is important to run activities that the team enjoys, to improve team dynamics, interpersonal relationships, innovativeness, and cognitive functions through games, experiential exercises, and more. There is consensus and conviction that an intuition-based approach leads to high-quality outcomes. Data availability expands possibilities, but it is crucial to correctly select and process only relevant information. Not only key actors with decision-making authority, in an agile organization everyone has the chance to make changes, which is decisive in shaping the whole.

3 Selected problematic areas of work teams

Teams have unique composition, communication and language, identity, values, relationships, dynamics, processes and strategies, engagement, cultural background, influences, and beliefs. They continuously evolve, transform, and crystallize relationally. Leaders can identify and appreciate differences and talents that an individual brings to the team and know how to use them fully. Such leaders are emotionally intelligent, they unite individual members into a team and enable full potential to be expressed. They know how to move people out of their comfort zone, to test whether they are willing to accept challenges or not. They evaluate alternatives for achieving goals and focus on intrinsic motivation and creativity (Crainer, 2000, p. 183).

Decision-making and management strategy - good intentions in management often do not translate into team engagement and satisfaction. A management strategy does not always correspond with employees’ preferences, which has a negative impact on many areas of collaboration, communication, performance, flexibility in task completion, and more. The goal of building a satisfied company and engaging people so they take personal responsibility for work requires a change in mindset, deepening trust in the organization, and expanding teams’ competencies. The agile approach does not exclude hierarchical management, nor does it necessarily eliminate it. It makes achieving best results easier by shifting part of decision-making and responsibility to teams. It is important to set and manage the system and processes correctly, not the people. Many times, companies themselves make work difficult through unclear goals, dysfunctional management, complex processes, excessive administrative burden, and unclear systems that reward incorrect behavior.

Engagement - management’s role is to engage and properly support employees in their effort to achieve set goals. Probably no one joins work intending to do it poorly. Yet it is not always that only those who want to contribute, take responsibility, and collaborate are present in a work team. Therefore it is important to diagnose problematic areas and create conditions with which employees will identify and stay positively motivated. Appelo (2016) notes that what bothers him most when people are asked about their best moments in life is that most people choose moments from their personal life. Low engagement, stagnation, and individualistic approach can damage team atmosphere and negatively influence results. One solution is to trigger a sense of urgency and gradually keep it going, as we propose in line with Appelo in the second chapter.

What prevents a creative team member from implementing ideas in the organization?
Among the most common barriers to creativity are organizational structure, hierarchical management, the change-implementation system, human-resource management, and workplace relationships. Failing to hear inventions signals organizational disinterest, deepening worker apathy and frustration. When problems remain unresolved, tension rises, motivation and loyalty drop, and work morale declines. From our own experience, one negative aspect of hierarchical management that affects inventions and change is the lengthy bureaucratic process, from drafting solutions for contentious points to approval by competent people, often passing through several levels of management repeatedly. People who identified the problem often have potential solutions within reach but seldom communicate them, or they are not heard. Proposals that conflict with management’s internal view and are seen as ineffective or not useful negatively affect performance, engagement, and the effective implementation of change.

Another important aspect of organizational culture in problem solving is supporting critical thinking. Whether a decision is correct often depends on context and perspective. The relativity of truth is strongly driven by experiences, knowledge, personality, organizational culture, and the situation, all of which influence how we see certain things. Applying the principle of relativity is a step toward creating and maintaining a culture of critical thinking in an organization, in line with a postmodern approach to education and development (Kilgore, 2004).

Continuous education and team morale determines teams’ aspirations and advancement; today it is necessary to possess broad knowledge with reach into other areas, making ongoing team education essential. According to Manning (1991), team morale consists of enthusiasm and perseverance with which members participate in team activities. Visualizing the path, goals, and victories creates space for personal and team development, supporting creativity, invention, critical thinking, increasing satisfaction, and enabling shared responsibility for managing and achieving team outcomes. Everyone can be inspiring, beneficial to the team, and improve themselves.

Psychodynamics of the team
Group attitude, collective interaction, and team emotional intelligence also affect efficiency and motivation. In this context, social psychologist Haidt (2008) showed that in a group we partly lose individuality, experience mass connection, and psychological elevation—a remnant from ancient times. This phenomenon is most visible at sporting events, protests, marches, church services, or concerts. It is an instinctive and emotional group identity. We identify and align ourselves with groups of people similar to us. He emphasizes that psychodynamic processes shape interpersonal relations, influence performance, and task outcomes. Groups and organizations are social systems, and the collective becomes a social entity with its own identity, distinct from the elements that make up its composition. Teams are not merely rational systems; they consist of complex sets of social relationships. In their transformation, developing individuals’ attitudes and removing barriers is important. To negative team dynamics contributes unclear direction, wrong priorities, and behavior and attitude of team members (aggressor, negator, disengaged participant, sycophant, comedian, parasitizing results or information, and others). Spetzler (2016) identifies main categories of biases and prejudices affecting teams: social influences, defense mechanisms, fear of evaluation, protection of beliefs, resistance to change, personality and habits, faulty and unsupported reasoning, and comparison. These can lead to many problems in team coordination and communication, making collaboration more difficult. If team atmosphere is cohesive, supportive, and favorable, it is unlikely that any negative mood of an individual will adversely influence the team as a whole, whereas positive mood improves team dynamics. Team success also depends on external factors beyond group dynamics. They contribute to creating a pleasant and stimulating work environment, organizational culture, and behavior. Group cohesion, trust, and psychological safety strengthen team work; by themselves, however, they do not increase performance.

In social psychology, Ringelman defined that with each additional person during a work task, engagement and performance decrease as a result of insufficient effort compared with individual work (Forsyth, 2014). By reducing group size, increasing individual sense of responsibility for outcomes among all team members, defining task importance, exploring alternatives to achieve the team goal, and through team cohesion and friendship, it is possible to achieve agility, optimize activities, and improve work performance. Team performance is also influenced by a person’s values and personality. Members who share their shadow sides can trigger and deepen disagreements through their reactions. According to Hogan (2005), most people show counterproductive tendencies under pressure—risk factors. Under normal conditions, these traits can represent strengths. Under fatigue, stress, boredom, or fears, they can reduce efficiency, disrupt relationship quality, and alter conventional behavior. An individual’s personality significantly affects moral, relational, and performance attributes. Moody, impulsive, and selfish individuals can cause many problems. It is important to identify personality traits that may enrich or damage team work. In recruitment and (pre)selection, it is harmful to keep “bad apples” in a team, and if any are present, they should be removed promptly.

Recent work has shown (Appelo, 2016; Winsborough, 2017) that critical moments tend to polarize group social networks. People prefer spending time with those who have similar or close-minded thinking, forming cliques that split the collective. A cohesive team has clear rules, behavioral norms, and a culture where creativity is taken for granted. It is necessary that people think and act in ways that are most natural to them, strengthen personal potential through connection with others in the team. Competent and skillful individuals alone do not always create a functional team. Lessons from team practice confirm that success does not lie in forming a team by selecting the best players, but in compatibility, synergy, complementarity, and joy in tasks. Managers should co-create a healthy work atmosphere, cultivate mechanisms that promote learning and critical thinking, set clear expectations from the start, and continuously coordinate and identify undesirable behavior. Successful agile leaders are authentic, trustworthy, and able to train and mentor teams so they can find needed answers themselves. They shield the team from external pressures and obstacles and help remove situational barriers that could negatively affect performance and work morale. Harmonious team work is the essence of agility; every member must feel equally important for their contribution to the team in any form. Collaboration is a matter of mutual trust, relationships, and space for realizing human potential.

The manager’s role is to be a partner and advisor, connected to the team. They have the ability to separate what is unnecessary and focus on essential work, exercise correct judgment under pressure, maintain calm, have strong intrinsic motivation, and coaching skills to lead and support teams through the entire project. They have exceptional organizational abilities to keep everything in order, prioritize, think flexibly, make decisions, respond to rapidly changing circumstances, and adapt to change while reducing unnecessary ambiguities and risks. Important prerequisites are state of mind and behavior, personality and attitudinal maturity, comprehensive action, analysis, and processing of information from diverse sources. They seize every opportunity to seek new ways of working, connecting with the right people to solve problems. They collaborate with internal and external experts, learn, adapt quickly, progress, and bring new ideas into practice. An agile team is creative; it senses trends and confronts competition and experts across disciplines, beyond the organization, combining information with experience and using varied activities to create new solutions. Current knowledge sets quickly become obsolete, so continuous education, new knowledge, and skills are necessary. Agile teams invest in personal development, improve themselves, absorb and utilize new information. They experiment dynamically, are determined to progress, seek out opportunities, and do not miss them even at the cost of mistakes.

Conclusion

The article addresses a current issue, team collaboration with emphasis on increasing team dynamics and cohesion through an agile approach. Globalization and a competitive environment contribute to changing preferences in management and control in organizations. The key factors of change are always people. Through their attitudes and positive mindset, they facilitate change adoption and move teams in the desired direction. It depends on the moral and personality traits of the manager, the team, self-awareness, self-management ability, and intrinsic motivation, but also on the approach and conditions created by the organization. The goal of the article was to bring closer the issue of team collaboration in an agile way. Agility is a comprehensive way of thinking and seeing the world, with a set of techniques characterized by an agile mode of activity. Agile approach is an innovative opportunity with potential benefit, offering concrete transformational tools, procedures, and activities to increase team-member satisfaction, organizational and customer gains. Many organizations innovate and adapt decision-making processes, transforming traditional methods toward agile developmental principles. According to Kravčáková (2013), organizations strive to influence performance, creativity, self-development, cooperation, responsibility, stability, and employee loyalty. Agile management adds meaningful-work joy, personal development, and freedom. By shifting competencies to teams, their autonomy, confidence, responsibility, agility, and performance rise. If teams are provided with appropriate freedom, support, and a favorable environment, they will be successful. From our own experience, we can confirm that the core of team functioning is communication, sharing of information, knowledge, emotions, and decision-making; agile approach contributes to higher engagement, creativity, and responsibility for results. It is assumed that happiness correlates strongly with team and organizational well-being. Many studies have shown that happiness at work is closely related to higher performance and productivity. People are motivated, better evaluated, mentally and physically healthier, and more satisfied with life. Agile management is one of the modern ways to develop teams and organizations, turning them into places where people are satisfied and internally motivated to achieve the best possible work results.

Author: Ing. Slavka Silberg, MBA Department of Pedagogy of PF UKF in Nitra

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