Leadership in Action: Seven Common Beliefs About Teams: Are They True?

Teams are often out of touch with how their performance is viewed by their customers and key outside observers.

False.

Team members and outside observers typically agree about how the team is doing. Looking across the 107 teams for which we obtained both member ratings of the team's performance and outside observer ratings, the correlation between member and observer mean ratings was .70. On a scale ranging from −1 to +1, such a correlation is very high. Although members may or may not be aware of the specific perceptions of key outside observers, members and outside observers tend to agree on overall team performance.

Nonetheless, we have come across a few teams who were surprised, some even shocked, by how they were viewed by outside observers. ...