‘Veterinary nurses must work together and with others in the veterinary team and business, to coordinate the care of animals and the delivery of services.’
A team can be distinguished from a group of people in the sense that its members are committed to a common goal, for which the team members are mutually accountable (Adair, 1987). Unlike a group of people who may be randomly brought together through a shared interest (for example, those attending a conference) but who work independently, the nature of a team is that its members have interdependent roles. For veterinary nurses, the most likely common goals in practice are the health and welfare of animals entrusted to their care and service provision to clients; the effectiveness of the care provided is dependent on how well the team works together.
Teamworking is one of the core professional skills in veterinary nursing. Given the importance of this skill to effective practice, this article introduces examples of teamworking theory and discusses its application to veterinary nursing, specifically, the stages in team-building and team roles versus functional roles.
Creating the team
How does a group of people become a team? As long ago as 1965, Tuckman defined four main stages in teambuilding: forming; storming; norming; and performing.
Forming
In the first stage, forming, the team (at this stage still a group) are assembled for the task at hand. This is a time of considerable anxiety, as the roles that each member will play are not particularly clear, although each individual will be aware of their own knowledge, skills and the expertise they can bring to the group in a functional sense. The task itself, at this stage, may also be unclear.
Storming
The second stage, storming, is characterised by conflict and disharmony within the group. This is the stage when the task may be questioned, and the authority of the leader will be challenged. There is likely to be disagreement and discord, as members of the group push the boundaries to determine what will and will not be accepted.
Norming
In the process of testing these boundaries, the group will start to establish roles within the team, clarify the task at hand, and lay down rules. This is the third stage, known as norming, a prerequisite for moving to the fourth stage: performing.
Performing
By now, the group members have become a team and are working effectively towards their common goal in a collaborative and supportive fashion.
Teams evolving
It should be emphasised that team theory does not only apply to newly formed teams. Teams are constantly evolving as members come and go, e.g. when joining a new team in another practice, or rotating around different branches of a larger practice. Ideally, all teams will reach the performing stage, although there may be regression to earlier stages as staff move around, when the team members need to re-clarify their roles and goals. Veterinary practices rely on a stable and functional team to deliver optimal health care; however, when one member leaves and is replaced by another, some reorganisation is inevitable. Although this creates some initial uncertainty, this can be beneficial, often leading to a reinterpretation of the role through a ‘fresh pair of eyes’.
Team roles
Meredith Belbin studied managers at Henley Management College during the 1970s (Belbin, 1993; Belbin, 2004). From these observations, he was able to identify eight team roles (and a ninth, later) and argued that teams require all of the different team roles to function effectively. Teamworking difficul-ties may be the result of not having the required range of roles, including an absence of leadership, or as a consequence of individuals’ allowable weaknesses overshadowing the unique, complementary strengths that each role brings to the team (see Table 1 for an overview).
| Role | Contribution to the team |
|---|---|
| Coordinator (CO) | Leader, ‘looks after’ the team in a parental way |
| Shaper (SH) | Manager, drives change |
| Resource investigator (RI) | Creative, extrovert/social, brings new ideas back to the team |
| Plant (PL) | Creative, introvert, generates new ideas intrinsically |
| Company worker (CW) or Implementer (I) | Gets on with the task at hand |
| Completer fnisher (CF) | Ensures the task is completed on time |
| Team worker (TW) | Makes the team ‘gel’, has harmonising effect |
| Monitor evaluator (ME) | Helps the team make diffcult decisions, sees potential diffculties |
| Specialist (SP) | Provides singular expertise |
Teams need leaders in order to provide them with direction. There are two types of leaders according to Belbin's scheme, coordinators (CO) and shapers (SH), and these reflect different management styles. COs can see the viewpoints of all their team members, and they encourage them to achieve their goals through mentoring, role modelling and leadership. At their worst, they may delegate personal work, but more commonly they will be the parental figure for the team, who they consider a ‘family’ of sorts. SHs are more dynamic; they like change and will not be happy with the status quo. They typically adopt more of a management style; setting down rules for the team members to comply with, and in their determination to bring about change that they feel is necessary, may be insensitive to others’ needs or allowable weaknesses.
The team also requires one or two creative types; the resource investigator (RI) and the plant (PL). The RI is an extrovert, sociable individual who is likely to spend most of their time either in meetings or on the phone, exploring and generating ideas through collaboration. They are enthusiastic about new ideas, but this is rarely maintained beyond the initial stages of a project. They are therefore good people to send to conferences to bring back new ideas, but should not be expected to implement them in practice or carry a job through to its completion! The PL is also creative although introverted and as a result, sometimes fails to communicate their ideas to others. They are also not as engaging as RIs, however, they display flashes of genius as they generate new ideas intrinsically — PLs are classic inventors (Belbin, 1993; Belbin, 2004).
In addition to the goal setters and ideas people, others are needed to help translate these ideas into action and finish the job; these are the company workers (CW) or implementers (IMP) and the completer finishers (CF). A CW will get on with the task at hand; they will work methodically and consistently until the job is done, and apply proven and practical techniques to achieve it. They feel uncomfortable trying a new technique when the ones they are used to work well. The team also needs a CF to finish the task; to tie up the loose ends and ensure that the work is delivered on time. These individuals can be prone to nit-picking and need support from other team members to ensure that they do not get bogged down in the details (Belbin, 1993; Belbin, 2004).
The two remaining key roles include the team worker (TW) and the monitor evaluator (ME); these are extrovert and introvert roles respectively. The TW helps the team to become more cohesive; they are easy-going, communicative individuals who facilitate dialogue between team members. They can, however, be so eager to please that they become indecisive and easily influenced, therefore, they struggle with making difficult decisions. This job falls to the ME, a sober, strategic individual who will work quietly in the background, intervening only when a difficult choice has to be made. This is the person who will see flaws in arguments, thus, they are not the most inspiring individuals, but they are essential to helping the team make appropriate decisions. Belbin (2004) later identified an additional role — the specialist. This individual has singular expertise, therefore, this role normally emerges in later professional development. In nursing practice, specialist roles might include theatre nursing or more client-focused roles such as running obesity clinics.
Applying theory to practice
How might team theory be applied in practice? Members of a newly formed group, on its way to becoming a team, ought to have an appreciation for the fact that a team cannot be formed overnight, and that tensions and boundary testing are normal in the early stages of teambuilding and when staff changes occur within the team. It should also be clear that understanding team roles within the practice can help individuals within the team to understand one another better. Those wishing to find out their teamworking preferences can complete the Belbin team roles inventory (Belbin Associates, 2012), which provides a score on each of the nine roles. On the basis of the results, most people will find that they have a clear primary and secondary role; others find that they are equally capable of two or more roles, e.g. CW and CF. Problems may arise if there are too many individuals in the team with the same role. For example, if there are too many leaders (SH or CO), then one may have to rely more on their secondary role(s) to avoid the ‘Apollo syndrome’, identified by Belbin (2004) as characterising teams solely comprising leader-managers. These teams are rarely successful as their members are constantly competing for leadership and they lack the other necessary roles. Similarly, a team composed solely of ideas people (RI or PL) will generate some fantastic conceptual designs but will be unable to implement them in practice or see them through to completion. It has been shown that members of a profession have a similar personality profile in terms of their thinking preferences (Herrmann, 1988); however, while many nurses will be suited to a career in veterinary practice, others may choose to engage in a teaching, administrative or leadership role within the profession, dependent on their preferred team role(s).
Team theory also helps to explain why some people just seem to ‘rub us up the wrong way’. Team roles influence the way people think and how they work with others. It can be difficult to appreciate the viewpoints of other team members, particularly if their personality is very different from other members of the team, yet this is critical for the development of emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1996). Having a solid understanding of personal team role preferences, and those of other team members, should help members of the team to appreciate each other's allowable weaknesses as well as strengths. Therefore, when recruiting, it is worthwhile considering team roles and future interactions.
In discussing teamworking, it would be remiss not to acknowledge the importance of functional (job) roles. In addition to team roles, it is critical that members of a practice have a sound knowledge of each other's functional roles, that is, the tasks for which they each have unique or overlapping responsibility. Veterinary nurses have more responsibility than before — amendment to Schedule 3 (order 2002) of the Veterinary Surgeons Act means that more clinical work may be delegated to veterinary nurses from veterinary surgeons (Branscombe, 2012). In turn, registered veterinary nurses have to be confident in delegating tasks to student veterinary nurses. Effective communication is critical to the team understanding each other's functional roles. Team meetings, appraisals and staff training can all serve to increase transparency and avoid confusion about responsibilities within the practice (Shilcock and Stutchfield, 2008).
Conclusion
The authors have worked in many different teams and understand the challenges associated with effective teamworking as well as the immense benefits accrued from working well together. Having an appreciation of teamworking theory, and being able to ground it in daily practice, helps in terms of understanding one another better. In veterinary nursing, this will lead to greater job satisfaction, a more effective and efficient business, a better service for clients and most importantly – improved patient care.