Team Building

Team building is an ongoing process that helps a work group evolves into a cohesive unit. The team members not only share expectations for accomplishing group tasks, but trust and support one another and respect one another's individual differences. Your role as a team builder is to lead your team toward cohesiveness and productivity. A team takes on a life of its own and you have to regularly nurture and maintain it, just as you do for individual employees. Your Development & Training Organization Development Consultant can advise and help you.

Managing diversity well can enhance team-building; Managing Diversity in the Workplace offers information and resources in this important area.

Guiding Principles Other Resources Steps to Building an Effective Team Symptoms that Signal a Need for Team Building

Guiding Principles

Team building can lead to:

Good communications with participants as team members and individuals

Increased department productivity and creativity

Team members motivated to achieve goals

A climate of cooperation and collaborative problem-solving

Higher levels of job satisfaction and commitment

Higher levels of trust and support

Diverse co-workers working well together

Clear work objectives

Better operating policies and procedures

Steps to Building an Effective Team

The first rule of team building is an obvious one: to lead a team effectively, you must first establish your leadership with each team member. Remember that the most effective team leaders build their relationships of trust and loyalty, rather than fear or the power of their positions.

Consider each employee's ideas as valuable. Remember that there is no such thing as a stupid idea.

Be aware of employees' unspoken feelings. Set an example to team members by being open with employees and sensitive to their moods and feelings.

Act as a harmonizing influence. Look for chances to mediate and resolve minor disputes; point continually toward the team's higher goals.

Be clear when communicating. Be careful to clarify directives.

Encourage trust and cooperation among employees on your team. Remember that the relationships team members establish among themselves are every bit as important as those you establish with them. As the team begins to take shape, pay close attention to the ways in which team members work together and take steps to improve communication, cooperation, trust, and respect in those relationships.

Encourage team members to share information. Emphasize the importance of each team member's contribution and demonstrate how all of their jobs operate together to move the entire team closer to its goal.

Delegate problem-solving tasks to the team. Let the team work on creative solutions together.

Facilitate communication. Remember that communication is the single most important factor in successful teamwork. Facilitating communication does not mean holding meetings all the time. Instead it means setting an example by remaining open to suggestions and concerns, by asking questions and offering help, and by doing everything you can to avoid confusion in your own communication.

Establish team values and goals; evaluate team performance. Be sure to talk with members about the progress they are making toward established goals so that employees get a sense both of their success and of the challenges that lie ahead. Address teamwork in performance standards. Discuss with your team:

What do we really care about in performing our job?

What does the word success mean to this team?

What actions can we take to live up to our stated values?

Make sure that you have a clear idea of what you need to accomplish; that you know what your standards for success are going to be; that you have established clear time frames; and that team members understand their responsibilities.

Use consensus. Set objectives, solve problems, and plan for action. While it takes much longer to establish consensus, this method ultimately provides better decisions and greater productivity because it secures every employee's commitment to all phases of the work.

Set ground rules for the team. These are the norms that you and the team establish to ensure efficiency and success. They can be simple directives (Team members are to be punctual for meetings) or general guidelines (Every team member has the right to offer ideas and suggestions), but you should make sure that the team creates these ground rules by consensus and commits to them, both as a group and as individuals.

Establish a method for arriving at a consensus. You may want to conduct open debate about the pros and cons of proposals, or establish research committees to investigate issues and deliver reports.

Encourage listening and brainstorming. As supervisor, your first priority in creating consensus is to stimulate debate. Remember that employees are often afraid to disagree with one another and that this fear can lead your team to make mediocre decisions. When you encourage debate you inspire creativity and that's how you'll spur your team on to better results.

Establish the parameters of consensus-building sessions. Be sensitive to the frustration that can mount when the team is not achieving consensus. At the outset of your meeting, establish time limits, and work with the team to achieve consensus within those parameters. Watch out for false consensus; if an agreement is struck too quickly, be careful to probe individual team members to discover their real feelings about the proposed solution.Symptoms that Signal a Need for Team Building Decreased productivity

Conflicts or hostility among staff members

Confusion about assignments, missed signals, and unclear relationships

Decisions misunderstood or not carried through properly

Apathy and lack of involvement

Lack of initiation, imagination, innovation; routine actions taken for solving complex problems

Complaints of discrimination or favouritism Ineffective staff meetings, low participation, minimally effective decisions

Negative reactions to the manager

Complaints about quality of serviceHow can I build a successful team?

Six items are crucial to help teams function effectively. 1. Mission: It is the shared commitment to a specific mission that helps define a team. A mission statement can provide powerful documentation about the team's purpose. Creating a mission statement requires team members to think about, discuss and come to agreement on the following questions:

What is the work we were brought together to do?

Why can this work best be done as a team?

What will be different as a result of our working together?

What will our work create for our organization, our team and ourselves?

For project teams: What will a successful outcome look like for our team? How will we know we've completed our task?

For standing teams: How will we measure our success in an on-going way?

A team's mission may be based on a directive from management or others outside the team. But good team discussion about how each member -- and the group collectively -- understands that mission will make the mission statement meaningful and useful to the team. Mission statements may be short; they should be written in everyday language that each team member understands and supports.

2. Goals: Mission statements give a team guiding principles, but goals give the team a real target for their activity. Goals should be something worth striving for -- important results that the team can provide for the organization.

The best goals areS-M-A-R-Tgoals:Specific,Measurable,Achievable,Relevant and Time-bound."Improving customer service" may sound like a good goal for a team, but it doesn't really meet the S-M-A-R-T criteria. A more effective goal would be "Reduce call-back time to customers to two hours or less within six months." The revised goal is:

Specific (reduce call-back time to customers)

Measurable (to two hours or less)

Achievable (The team would need to decide this. Maybe call-backs need four hours, or maybe the time can be reduced to 30 minutes.)

Relevant (Again, the team will know - is slow call-back time an issue for the customers? For the team's manager? Is reducing call-back time important enough to merit team effort?)

Time bound (within six months)

3. Roles and responsibilities: It's particularly important in a team environment that team members know what is expected of each of them. Without these expectations, members can't develop mutual accountability or trust in the team. When a team's expectations are clear and members meet (or exceed) expectations, trust and an increased sense of "teamness" are natural by-products.

Team leaders are the individuals who are held accountable for the team's results by the team's sponsor. The Team leader often serves as a spokesperson for the team and may also be responsible for coordinating the team's work. Facilitators may be a member of the team or a resource person for the team. The facilitator is responsible for guiding the team's process. This might include helping to set agendas for team meetings and running the meetings. Sometimes these two roles are played by one person. (Learn more about facilitators in theMeeting Design and FacilitationLearning Topic.)

4. Ground Rules: To be effective, teams need to be explicit about the ways they will work together. Ground rules are guidelines for specific behaviors. Teams don't need a lot of ground rules to work together well, but everyone on the team should agree to the ground rules and share responsibility for ensuring that they are followed.

Possible areas for ground rules include:

How you communicate DURING team meetings(Are interruptions OK? Should the Facilitator call on you before you speak? What about side conversations?) How you communicate BETWEEN team meetings(How quickly should you respond to emails? Are there suggested length limits on emails or memos? How do you keep everyone on the team informed of your progress?) What constitutes respectful behavior towards other team members?

Some sample ground rules include:

1. Be respectful of others -- don't bad-mouth team members within the team or outside the team

2. Share your own experiences and opinions; avoid "they say" statements

3. One speaker at a time

4. Keep discussions focused on topic at hand

5. Honor time limits - start and end on time

5. Decision-making: Teams may choose different models for making decisions; the most important factor is that the decision-making model be explicit and understood by all team members. A clear decision making model describes who makes the decision and how others will be involved.(Will decisions be made by consensus where everyone can agree to support the final decision? Will the team leader get input but make the final decision? Will the team vote?)Knowing what decision-making model will be used lets team members know what to expect and what is expected; this can help build support for the final decision.

Good decisions have two characteristics: quality and commitment. Quality decisions are logical, supported by sound reasoning and good information. Steps towards making quality decisions include checking to see if all available information has been gathered and shared, that all team members have been consulted, and that critical input from stakeholders (individuals or groups affected by the decision) outside the team has been considered as appropriate.

Commitment is demonstrated by the active backing for the decision by every team member. Each team member agress with the decision, is committed to carrying out the decision, and understands their individual role in doing so.

6. Effective Group Process: Communication:Using groundrules as a starting point, teams need to develop practices for open communication. Examples include:

1. Listen respectfully and respond with positive interest to ideas from team members.If an idea is confusing or seems unconventional or odd to you, ask for more information to understand the idea better. (Saying,"Can you tell me more?"is a great way to continue a conversation.)

2. Help create an environment that encourages team members to share all ideas - even the "half-baked" ones.3. Most great ideas are built by teams building on an initial thought. Sometimes it's the "crazy" ideas that really spark the team's creativity. Treating every idea as important keeps team members from holding back some "half-baked" thought that could be just what the team needed.

4. Don't hide conflicts; try to surface differences and use them to create better results that all team members can support.

Mutual Accountability:Each member of a team is responsible for the success of the team as a whole. This is the interdependence that makes teams stronger than the sum of their parts. Working together towards specific tangible results is the best way to start creating mutual accountability. Recognize and celebrate small accomplishments and successes of individuals and milestones (large and small) for the team as a whole. By acknowledging successes, team members can develop an increasing trust in their teammates and the team as a whole.

Appropriate self-evaluation:It is be helpful for team members to "stop action" at regular intervals and check out how the team is working. These self-evaluations can be as simple as a team discussion: "Looking at X, what things worked well and what would we like to improve next time?" or they can be deep and reflective (e.g.,"How can we deal with conflict more effectively?").Regardless of the method or tool used, the real benefit of self-evaluation comes from the team discussion about their assessments of the team.

STAGES OF TEAM BUILDING

STAGE I FORMING

Why are we here? People express differences - check each other out; decide whether to be part of group

Feelings: Anxiety & confusion

Little work accomplished - Conflicts emerge, leadership, value & feasibility of task(s) challenged

Tasks: Feel included & expect that opinions will be respected

STAGE II STORMING

Can we work together? More conflicts emerge as members negotiate tasks

Power plays may occur, i.e., whos in charge & what actions taken toward goal

Feelings: Instability & polarization

Team must bring conflict out in open, encourage good communication skills & affirm that disagreement is healthy & resolvable

Tasks: Develop skills; redefine goals, roles & tasks; Learn to work together

STAGE III NORMING

How will we work together? Rules created; members learn to productively work together; team pride develops

Norms established for how people treat each other, how meetings are conducted, who will do what work & how it will be accomplished

Tasks: Deepen skills & understanding; increase productivity; share opinions & skills; evaluate critically & constructively

STAGE IV PERFORMING

How can we work smarter?

Group becomes functional team; can diagnose, solve problems & make decisions

Much work can occur; team may become creative & tackle new tasks

Team works together or delegates work; shares leadership & responsibility

Tasks: Achieve tasks; deal with group issues; build skills & knowledge; use time well.

STAGE V MOURNING/RE-FORMING

Should we continue? Group celebrates achievements or disbands & mourns loss of group

Most groups reform when goals achieved, new goals created or members & leaders turn over

Once group progresses thru stages, subsequent team building goes faster

Team Building TechniquesEffective team building techniques are very important to set a common goal in the minds of team members, especially in the corporate world.Team building has proven to be extremely useful in the business world where executives have different thought processes. They have different perspectives of looking towards a scenario. Due to this, personal ego and attitude can cause clashes among the employees and executives. This results in unhealthy relations which in turn affects employee performance. Due to such barriers between team members, the team won't be able to achieve what they are expected to. In such a situation, team building comes to the rescue.Concepts

Team building is a kind of bonding of all team members who come from different backgrounds and have different ways of thinking. It enables a mutual understanding and a common goal to be created in the minds of all team members. It helps them in increasing their performance levels and quality, better decision making, problem solving, innovative thinking, and resolving conflicts.Good Communication

Communication is certainly a crucial factor in team building. Techniques and activities which don't involve effective communication are unproductive. It is very important for team members to communicate with each other to pass on their views and ideas. With effective communication, every team member comes to know how the other person thinks, what work does he expect, and what he is capable of. This helps in working efficiently and dividing the work accordingly among the team members, which promotes proper coordination.

MotivationEmployee motivation is also a significant aspect of getting the best from the employee. Team building is an effective tool for the management to motivate and encourage employees to move forward towards the set goals. Motivation enables an employee to think that his contribution is truly important for the company. It includes building a person's confidence regarding his work, his team members, and the company goals.Projects

A good leader or manager would surely be aware of all strategies. There are many ways of promoting team building, be it at the workplace or on an outing. Team building strategies are put into practice when either the team has performed well and is expected to continue doing so, or the team is not giving its best for any specific reason. There are several processes in a company, and there may arise a need of two or more processes to work for a single project. In such cases, the leaders arrange some activities which would help the teams communicate and coordinate with teams from other processes for getting ready for the collective work.Every employee has different strengths and capabilities, and so roles and responsibilities should be assigned on that basis. Employees come from various backgrounds, so the company should take advantage of the diverse mentality in their working processes. Typical team building techniques normally consist of an outdoor trip with all the members of a team. In such activities, they play creative and informative games that include communication. There are also some informal corporate team building activities just to make the employees feel that it is solely not a formal event.There are many other team building techniques that can be used by experienced managers to bond a team together for a common purpose. After all, 'team building for success' is the most important motto in an organization.