team building for leaders

Dynamic Leadership Essential Five: Team Building for Leaders

© Family, Career and Community Leaders of America, Inc. | www.fcclainc.org

TEAM BUILDING FOR LEADERS Dynamic Leadership Essential Five

Dynamic leaders know how to build groups into teams. They lead team-building activities, help individuals understand the team process, and gather resources. They empower team members to share leadership. As dynamic team builders, young people gain and apply knowledge in:

• Types of teams in families, careers, and communities • Group dynamics • Stages of teams • Team roles • Leading groups through change • Collaboration

Leadership Achievement TEAM: Together Everyone Accomplishes More

A team is more than just a group of individuals. A team works together to achieve shared goals. Teamwork is joint action by a group of people who put the team's vision above their own benefit. Members of a team:

• Share a goal • Cooperate • Accept one another • Accept differences • Are united.

Dynamic leaders know how to build teams. They are effective team members who participate, carry out responsibilities, and show loyalty to the team. Dynamic leaders set the stage for team success by providing information and a positive atmosphere. They also know how to share leadership on a team. When other team members have the skills and knowledge to take the lead, dynamic leaders become followers.

Build Teams for Leadership Achievement

You can be a dynamic leader who builds teams that accomplish the most they possibly can. You can learn to take and share leadership while encouraging teamwork. Consider how you might act in a team by completing Choose Your Role (Attachment 9). Then, discover even more ways to be a team builder in FCCLA. Learn to be a dynamic, team-building leader in families, careers, and communities.

**Remember: Use any of the FCCLA national

programs to practice your Dynamic Leadership skills!



Team Building Projects for Leadership Achievement

Here are 10 things you can do to build teams as a leader. See how many you can complete. Ask your adviser about earning recognition for your team building activities.

• Talk to adults about the kinds of teams they work with on the job. Report what you learn to fellow Family and Consumer Sciences students.

• Volunteer to serve on a chapter committee. Be an effective team member. Find ways to build teamwork for the whole committee. Report results to your FCCLA adviser.

• Create a skit that illustrates team roles. Ask other students to perform it with you. Perform it in class or at a chapter meeting.

• Welcome new members to the FCCLA team. Present a brief orientation about how to participate in your chapter. Give new members information they will need to be part of your chapter team. Sign them up to help with current projects and events.

• Look in books to find a hands-on activity that teaches people about teamwork. (Look for books about youth leadership or cooperative games.) Lead a team-building activity in your class or chapter.

• Create a bulletin board, Web page, or display that shows different types of teams, like families, work teams, FCCLA chapters, learning teams, etc. Include teamwork tips for youth.

• Write a slogan to improve team spirit in your FCCLA chapter. Share it with chapter members. Lead a team to create posters, buttons, flyers, and more with the slogan and use them throughout the school.

• Think about how members of your family can work as a team. Identify your team role(s). Develop a family team motto and share it with your family.

• Publish a flyer with tips for building teams. Give it to all your school's student organization leaders and advisers. Note that it is provided as a leadership service by the FCCLA chapter.

• Form a team to participate in FCCLA STAR Events. Use your team-building knowledge to work together. Report to your adviser about what you learn.

Leadership Excellence Teaming Up for Success

Dynamic leaders know that a successful team is more than "the sum of its parts." When people work together toward a shared vision, something special happens. It's called synergy; unique results that grow out of your team's one-of-a-kind combination of personalities, ideas, and energies.

Team synergism doesn't "just happen." Dynamic leaders learn to guide teams through the following stages to success.

"Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success." —Henry Ford



• Forming: learning about one another and defining the shared vision. • Norming: choosing ways to work together and figuring out group roles. • Storming: working through disagreements. • Performing: working smoothly together; experiencing synergy.

Groups experience the stages in any order and sometimes invent new ones! Dynamic leaders expect and guide teams through changes.

Shared Leadership Shapes Synergy

Team building is a flexible, "in the background" role. Dynamic leaders focus on the team's vision. They lead team-building activities, help individuals understand the team process, and gather resources. They encourage other team members to take the lead whenever the situation fits their special skills.

Key Elements of Team Building

• Connections It's not enough to call your group a "team." To build a real team, you need to help each team member feel recognized, valued, and known by other team members. Spend time as a team getting to know one another's interests and talents.

• Common Purpose Teams work together to achieve a common purpose. As team leader, you can help the team define and remember its shared vision.

• Commitment Your team must commit to working together to achieve success. Help all members see that each individual has talents, skills, or information needed to reach the shared vision. The team's most valuable strength is team members' diversity of experiences, ideas, and knowledge.

• Community Create a team atmosphere based on trust, encouragement, and cooperation. Each team member needs to feel that he or she has something unique to contribute to the team and also that the team has something to offer in return.

• Communication Guide your team to agree on basic ground rules for communication. The rules should include listening to one another, limiting interruptions, and keeping minutes of decisions that are made.

• Conflict Management All teams have differences and differences are likely to lead to disagreements. As team leader, learn ways to deal with differences while maintaining respect among individuals and commitment to the team's vision.

• Celebrations Build team spirit by celebrating achievements and the team itself.

• Build Teams for Leadership Excellence You can be a dynamic leader who excels in building successful teams. Through dynamic team leadership, you motivate team members to work



hard toward your shared vision and become leaders themselves. Use the FCCLA Planning Process to create a project that strengthens team-building skills for dynamic leadership. Your project should show that you understand:

Create a leadership project that shows you understand;

• Types of teams in families, careers, and communities • Team roles • Group dynamics • Stages of teams • How to lead a team through change • Collaboration.

Try one of the following ideas, or create your own.

• Teamwork Week Have your school declare a "Teamwork Week" during National FCCLA Week. Launch a school-wide service project and obtain pledges for student participation. Aim to include every FACS student; or all students at your school; in the project. Develop a team of leaders to organize the project.

• Team Analysis Identify and analyze teams you are involved with in your school, family, work site, volunteer settings, and community. First, list all the groups in which you are involved. Decide which ones function as teams. Learn about team roles and stages. Analyze each team on your list. Compare it to the key elements of team building. Report results of your comparisons to your Family and Consumer Sciences teacher. Choose one team and plan ways you will improve its teamwork. Complete a Power of One "Take the Lead" project in which you build that team.

• Local Team, Local Action Invite young people who live near you to create a neighborhood youth team. Begin with an informal gathering to discuss improvements young people would like to see in the neighborhood. Ask interested youth to form a team to tackle one improvement, like cleaning up the roadsides or making a park safer. Use effective team-building strategies to lead the team and complete a neighborhood improvement project. Publicize the project and its results in the local papers and with neighborhood leaders.

• Change in Teams Take the lead in a team that is facing change. This might be students moving to a new school, graduating seniors, or an FCCLA chapter learning to operate during classes or in a block schedule. Research how to lead a team through change. (Look in leadership and business management books and Web sites.) Apply the ideas to your changing team. Analyze results as a team. Publish a list of "tips for team change" so other youth groups can learn from them, also.

• The Home Team Build your family team. Discuss the Blueprint for a Dynamic Team (Attachment 10) as a family, and identify ways family members could strengthen teamwork.



As a family team, set specific goals to strengthen team connections, purpose, commitment, community, communication, conflict management, and celebration. Share results with other Family and Consumer Sciences students. Launch a Families First project to encourage other families to build their teamwork and team strengths.

• Collaborate for Impact Collaboration is the teaming of teams. Help lead a project that is completed by several groups working together. One possibility is an FCCLA FACTS (Families Acting for Community Traffic Safety) project that involves the police department, traffic safety agencies, parenting groups, and your chapter. Analyze the advantages and pitfalls of collaboration. Present information to youth leaders about how to collaborate effectively with other school and community groups.

• Team Building at Work Arrange to shadow a team leader where you work or volunteer. Compare the team leader's approach to ideas on the Blueprint for a Dynamic Team (Attachment 10). Share what you observe with your FCCLA adviser. Use what you learn to teach Family and Consumer Sciences students how to be effective team leaders and members on the job.

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