Team work and team building essentials
Team building skills are critical for your effectiveness as a manager or entrepreneur. And even if you are not in a management or leadership role yet, better understanding of team work can make you a more effective employee and give you an extra edge in your corporate office.
A team building success is when your team can accomplish something much bigger and work more effectively than a group of the same individuals working on their own. You have a strong synergy of individual contributions. But there are two critical factors in building a high performance team.
The first factor in team effectiveness is the diversity of skills and personalities. When people use their strengths in full, but can compensate for each other's weaknesses. When different personality types balance and complement each other.
The other critical element of team work success is that all the team efforts are directed towards the same clear goals, the team goals. This relies heavily on good communication in the team and the harmony in member relationships.
In real life, team work success rarely happens by itself, without focused team building efforts and activities. There is simply too much space for problems. For example, different personalities, instead of complementing and balancing each other, may build up conflicts. Or even worse, some people with similar personalities may start fighting for authority and dominance in certain areas of expertise. Even if the team goals are clear and accepted by everyone, there may be no team commitment to the group goals or no consensus on the means of achieving those goals: individuals in the team just follow their personal opinions and move in conflicting directions. There may be a lack of trust and openness that blocks the critical communication and leads to loss of coordination in the individual efforts. And on and on. This is why every team needs a good leader who is able to deal with all such team work issues.
Here are some additional team building ideas, techniques, and tips you can try when managing teams in your situation.
Make sure that the team goals are totally clear and completely understood and accepted by each team member.
Make sure there is complete clarity in who is responsible for what and avoid overlapping authority. For example, if there is a risk that two team members will be competing for control in certain area, try to divide that area into two distinct parts and give each more complete control in one of those parts, according to those individual's strengths and personal inclinations.
Build trust with your team members by spending one-on-one time in an atmosphere of honesty and openness. Be loyal to your employees, if you expect the same.
Allow your office team members build trust and openness between each other in team building activities and events. Give them some opportunities of extra social time with each other in an atmosphere that encourages open communication. For example in a group lunch on Friday. Though be careful with those corporate team building activities or events in which socializing competes too much with someone's family time.
For issues that rely heavily on the team consensus and commitment, try to involve the whole team in the decision making process. For example, via group goal setting or group sessions with collective discussions of possible decision options or solution ideas. What you want to achieve here is that each team member feels his or her ownership in the final decision, solution, or idea. And the more he or she feels this way, the more likely he or she is to agree with and commit to the decided line of action, the more you build team commitment to the goals and decisions.
When managing teams, make sure there are no blocked lines of communications and you and your people are kept fully informed.
The 21 century is the age in which it takes combined efforts in the form of a team to accomplish goals that are so challenging and hard to accomplish.
Great leaders are great because of team efforts. These leaders have been achieving great results on the basis of the fact that they are team builders. Their success lies in teamwork.
Let me share with you 11 ways that you must follow to be an effective team builder.
Talent is the most powerful tool to use to achieve great results. Effective team builders have right players with right talent. The first and foremost thing you need to do, if you want be effective in team building, is to look for players with potential and pick them to be in your team.
You cannot build a successful team on players who do not have talent. You want winners in your team, choose players with the potential to be winners.
You cannot build a winning team if you don't know the vision, the history, the culture, and the purpose of the team or the organization.If you really want to be an effective team builder, you need to know where the team is striving to go, and why it is striving to get there.
All that you need to do is to start where the team is Vision has the power to get you moving in the right direction on which you can take your team. It also has the power to keep you and your team going on in spite of obstacles, frustrations and mountains on your path to the top.
Successful team builders know the strengths and weaknesses of their players. They know the level of each player on the team. They also know that there are players who don't know what to do and how to do it. These kind of players need the direction of the team builder.
Team builders know that there are players who know what to do and how to do it but they need the coaching of the team builder to perform to their fullest potential. The other kind of players that successful team builders know are those who work well without the leader's direction but all that they need is the leader's encouragement and support. Lastly, the other kind of players they know are those who need to lift the load of the leader. They need to be delegated to perform certain tasks. They derive pleasure and fulfillment from being delegated by the leader.
You must work closely with every individual player on the team to know what they need. Know their level and you will be in a better position to be an effective team builder.
Effective team builders take their time to develop their team so that they can experience multiplied results. Spend resources like money, your energy and time to take your team to training, conferences and seminars.
When you pay the price to develop your team, they will feel so special and confident to be the best they are capable of becoming.
Great team builders do not ignore issues of ineffectiveness, incompetence, and poor performance displayed by certain members of the team. They deal decisively with players who are a weak link on the team.
There are members of the team who continue being ineffective and incompetent even after being trained, coached, and developed through relevant programs and resources. You must learn to take hard decisions against such team members. That is, get rid of them because they are bringing a negative impact upon the team's performance. Underperforming members will always slow down your leadership.
If you want to build an effective team, learn how to lead. Leadership is the determining factor of either success or failure, effectiveness or ineffectiveness in every team. Successful teams have strong leaders who provide effective leadership.
A good leader motivates, inspires, and influences his team to give their all to the greater good of the team. With good leadership comes good performance and good results.An effective leader creates positive changes on the team. He is the agent of change. He or she is not satisfied with the status quo on the team.
Effective team builders move things through their leadership. They focus on things like vision, morale, enthusiasm, attitude, hope, performance, momentum, and motivation.
Communication is one of the cornerstones for effective leadership. You must know how to communicate the game plan to your team. You also must know how to communicate the vision of your team or your organization.
Effective team builders have good communication skills. They know that the most important thing in communication is simplicity. They Keep their message clear and simple when they convey it to their team.
You must learn how to communicate your concerns and hurts clearly and effectively to difficult team members. You must also know how to communicate discipline to your team.
Successful team builders grow and develop in their character, in their skill, and in their leadership. They are committed to excellence. They attend seminars and conferences in their area of expertise. They buy tapes, books and material to help them grow and develop.
Good team builders don't deceive themselves by saying, "I have arrived." They admit wrongdoing and accept correction from the members of their team. If you want to be an effective team builder, you need to commit yourself to continuous personal growth and development.
Your team building will be successful if your character is well nurtured and development. Your team cannot respect you if your character is flawed.
Respect is a quality that you must work hard for and earn from your team. Team members cannot respect the leader who makes promises and fails to keep them. Embrace integrity and honesty and your team will consequently respect you.
When you have earned respect from your team, they will give you the privilege of influencing their lives. Work on your character and you will be an effective team builder.
Team players need appreciation, acknowledgement, motivation and encouragement to reach their fullest potential. This is the kind of support they need from you as their team leader. Some of them need you to say, "It will be alright".
Effective team builders possess problem-solving skills. They anticipate problems before they come. They prepare themselves to face them with courage. They have victory mentality.
Great team builders do not deny when problems occur. Instead, they acknowledge that they are there and they take action to solve them accordingly.