Teambuilding

A team should accomplish much more than the sum of its individual members, and yet all too frequently teams are seen to achieve less than could have been accomplished by the individual members alone.

 

The success of the team depends not only upon individuals’ skills but on the way the team is led.

 

“It is important”, says Sir Terrence Conran “to stimulate innovation within ... to create an atmosphere which encourages people to speak their minds .... and then you must reward them”.

 

All this is built from the building blocks of good teamwork

• Clear Objectives
• Openness and confrontation
• Support and Trust
• Co-operation and positive conflict
• Sound procedures and practices
• Appropriate leadership
• Regular Review
• Individual development
• Sound inter-group relationships

 

Symptoms of Bad Teamwork

1. Frustration - loss of inspiration, commitment and motivation - no clear way of meeting one’s needs and aspirations
2. Grumbling and Retaliation - bar room chat is often a better indicator of organisational health than the most elaborate attitude surveys - mistakes are not seen as learning opportunities but as excuses for punishment.
3. Unhealthy Competition - unhealthy competition engenders - backbiting, dirty tricks, politics - leads to missed opportunities
4. Facial Expressions and “air” about the place - you can tell as soon as you walk into the area
5. Unproductive Meetings - unproductive meetings which serve no real purpose; meetings that people try to avoid or dread attending; meetings where only a few contribute or are used by management to lay down the law - good meetings should utilise the collective skills of the people present whilst working on common problems or opportunities.
6. Lack of Trust, Openness and Honesty - team members cannot confide in, or trust, their manager or colleagues.  Conversations are on the superficial or trivial level.
7. People not developing - there is no momentum within the team to develop its members, and individual members lack the motivation or the encouragement to develop
8. Duplication of Effort - work is duplicated because they didn’t know someone else had already done it or didn’t trust them to do it properly.  Conversely some work doesn’t get done at all.
9. Lack of co-operation between Departments - barriers are built up between departments.  Territory is protected.  Finger pointing is prevalent when things go wrong.
10. People Working in Isolation - people do, and know, only their own job.  They don’t know why they do it or how they contribute to the overall effort of the team.

 

Building Blocks For Effective Teamwork

1. Clear Objectives and Shared Goals - more than just the end results, with members having some ownership of them.
2. Openness and Confrontation - statement of differences of opinion without the fear of retaliation, or ridicule about their ideas or beliefs, allowing problems to be brought out into the open
3. Support and trust - without them the above two building blocks would not be supported. Three factors can adversely affect support and trust; differing backgrounds, values and expectations; competition for territory, and information; the imposition of, rather than the agreement of performance goals.
4. Co-operation and conflict - without openness and trust co-operation cannot exist, healthy co-operation needs a degree of conflict is seen as a necessary part of organisational life.  The right amount stops the team becoming complacent and lazy.  Positive conflict is intended to help individuals or the team improve through problems until understanding is reached.
5. Sound Procedures and Practices - the effective team thinks ‘results first and methods second’ but also realises that sound working methods and decision making lead to achievement of objectives.  The decision making process must be agreed upon and committed to.
6. Appropriate Leadership - good teamwork demands management or leadership which is both flexible and appropriate.
7. Regular Review - this can improve performance by:
1. ensuring that adequate effort is directed into planning
2. Improving decision making
3. Increasing support, trust, openness and honesty
4. Clarifying objectives and ensuring that the team does not deviate from its objectives and keep its end results in perspective
5. Identifying development needs and opportunities
6. Increasing the effectiveness of team leadership
7. increasing the effectiveness of team leadership
8. Making people feel part of the team by keeping them a aware of their role within the team.
9. Increasing involvement and commitment
10. Decreasing the number of emergencies

 

8. Individual Development - effective teams pay attention to the development of individual skills, thus the effectiveness of the team is further enhanced
9. Sound Inter-group Relations - a group is rarely an Island, invariably it relies on interrelationships with other groups.  In an effective organisation structure each team can be thought of as an individual member of the organisational team.

Other Models

High Performance Team Essential Elements

High Performance Teams demonstrate the following characteristics and behaviours:

 

Shared Vision

All team members share and support a common vision that the team is working towards. Team members are highly focused on attaining objectives. High performance Teams have developed a vision that brings real meaning to the work that is being performed. The vision describes a future state that team members find personally appealing and exciting. Defensive visions such as "keep our jobs," or "retain market share" are not particularly inspiring. Teams need a winning vision.  One that inspires team members to extraordinary efforts when such efforts are required. Developing an inspiring vision is an essential first step to achieving high performance.

 

Time Oriented

The team operates under specific deadlines for achieving results. Teams that operate without deadlines will ultimately evolve into rap sessions. Focus shifts from what is to be done to endless discussions about what the real mission of the team is or to finding the best approach to solving the problem. Deadlines can be as much as nine months to a year away. Any longer and the team runs the very real risk of being overrun by larger events that affect the organisation: major shifts in organization direction, budget changes, new responsibilities, etc. 90 to 120 day or even shorter timeframes are more desirable and achievable by high performance teams.

 

Communication

The team makes extra-ordinary efforts to make certain everyone on the team understands the plan and progress towards its completion. An old military saying is that there are always 10 percent of the people who do not get the word. A High Performance Team recognises this phenomenon and uses all communication vehicles available to get new information to every team member. Team members recognize that they have an equally strong obligation to keep themselves informed.

 

Zone of Concern

The work of the team is beyond the team's zone of comfort. It either doesn't know how to achieve the desired results, or it doesn't know how to accomplish them in the time allowed. At first glance this seems like a crazy notion. Why would any team want to attempt anything it didn't already know how to do? Paradoxically, we get the greatest satisfaction when we achieve results that at the outset we don't believe we can accomplish. When a team operates in the concern zone, between its comfort zone and perhaps its terror zone, it is most likely to perform better and consequently bond better and become stronger when it does achieve results.

 

Reviews Quality

The team stops at appropriate times to check the quality of its recent work. This is done to determine where the process could be improved and what learning can be shared with other team members. It is this act of stopping to check quality, even in the anxiety zone, where the team internalises it’s learning and improves its collective performance.

 

Involves Everyone

Team members work to make certain that every member of the team is involved. Watchers and wonderers are mobilized to get behind the team’s march toward achieving its vision. It is human nature to make judgments about the capabilities, intelligence, and motivation of our fellow team members. But when we do so, we limit the possible accomplishments of team. Every team member has a unique insight or contribution it can make towards team goal achievement. It may very well be true that every team member must contribute for the team to achieve full success. It is the responsibility of each and every High Performance Team member to search out and discover the capabilities of all the other team members.

 

Self-Directed

High Performance Team Members are self-directed. If the team is to be managed, management must be careful to focus the team on "what" needs to be achieved. The "How the work is to be accomplished" must remain the sole purview of the team. When management goes to the point of telling a team how work is to be accomplished, the team becomes de-motivated and perhaps subconsciously says, "We'll see about that."

 

Celebrates Success

High Performance Teams take the time to celebrate small victories toward goal achievement. This activity builds a sense of team success as the work of the team progresses. Sometimes, the celebrations are over new team learning's or insights, other times the team celebrate the completion of a small task. Together these celebrations build-up the team's moral and increase the team’s determination to achieve the ultimate goal. Celebrations make take the form of a team cheer or the simple matter of collectively shouting "YES!"

 

Characteristics of High Performing Teams

 

Team members:

• Share a common purpose / goals
• Build relationships for trust and respect
• Balance task and process
• Plan thoroughly before acting
• Involve members in clear problem-solving and decision making procedures
• Respect and understand each others’ “diversity”
• Value synergism and inter-dependence
• Emphasise and support team goals
• Reward individual performance that supports the team
• Communicate effectively
• Practice effective dialogue instead of debate
• Identify and resolve group conflicts
• Vary levels and intensity of work
• Provide a balance between work and home
• Critique the way they work as a team, regularly and consistently
• Practice continuous improvement

DIAGNOSING THE STAGES OF GROUP DEVELOPMENT

  

	FORMING	STORMING	NORMING	PERFORMING
	Will I be accepted?	Will I be respected?	How can I help the group?	How can we do better?
Personal	·           Who’s here? ·           What role can I play? Gatekeeper Harmoniser Organiser Leader Fact Finder ·           Fell uncertain, tentative	·           What ideas, experiences, expertise, can I contribute? ·           Do I agree or disagree? ·           What’s in it for me? ·           The credential game ·           What do I like?  Dislike? Accept?	·           Here’s how I do it on my job ·           Feel comfort about the role I’m playing ·           Want to help                      “I”	·           Free to share ideas, options, feelings ·           Unselfish enthusiasm for group members, the task ·           Feel a need for closure              “We”
	Politeness	Bid for power	Cooperation	Enthusiasm
Inter-personal	·           Small talk ·           Generalities ·           Limited disclosure ·           Relationships begin to form	·           Who will lead? ·           With whom can I align myself? ·           Compete with others based on personal agendas ·           Fight or flight ·           Quiet apprehensions	·           Self-disclosure ·           Here’s how I do it ·           Recognising other ideas ·           Listening more carefully ·           Commitment to emerging leadership	·           Praise and criticism ·           Straight talk ·           Having fun too ·           Paraphrasing, perception-checking occur more naturally
	Orientation	Organising	Data Flow	Creative problem solving
Group	·           Why are we here? ·           What’s our assigned task? ·           Identify strengths of the group	·           What’s the real problem? ·           Resistance to others’ ideas ·           What’s our mission, goals, and strategy? ·           How will we proceed?	·           Open exchange of ideas and information ·           Problem definition ·           More trust ·           Urgency to identify, evaluate solutions	·           Decision making ·           Intensity about task completion ·           Relationship and results oriented ·           Shared responsibility for group process
	Why	How	What	Criteria

 

We Offer

We offer bespoke teambuilding workshops.  With our group of associates we can offer a huge range of events, workshops, practical ideas, from half day facilitated meetings to multiple day workshops based in an outdoor environment.  We pride ourselves with over 20 years in the executive development arena to being able to deliver just about anything that matches the needs of our clients.  We have hired helicopters, castles at one end of the market to facilitating team meetings in the organisations training rooms, from the wilds of Vermont to the tranquil hotel settings of deepest Surrey.