Team Building
Do you see people just going through the motions at work rather than pulling together as the most effective team they can be?
Productive teams get the job done faster, more correctly and make it a pleasure to get the work done. Even teams that function well together could often do with a helping hand to ‘raise the bar’.
What will delegates get out of the course?
- Learn effectively how to nurture and build teams
- What makes teams successful
- How to strengthen the communication between teams
- Exercises and games to make the team function as a real team
Do you work within an efficient and effective team?
Can your team do the job rapidly with very small margins of error? Are they able to meet deadlines, manage the internal culture and efficiently blend with the other members of the organisation to produce top quality work that increases company productivity?
This course will outline tips to effectively work as a team that is committed to achieving goals and targets. It is crucial for all team members to know their importance within the organisation as a whole; how their actions indirectly, or directly, increase company sales and productivity, thus producing better results for themselves and their organisation as a whole.
Building an Effective Team
A team is basically a combination of different people to perform a specific task to achieve a particular goal. Usually different organisations compile teams when they start a new project; they hire people, give them training and put them to work.
Building an efficient and effective team involves four basic and well-known concepts created by Tuckman and Jensen in their book “Stages of Small Group Development Revisited”1. These stages are FORMING, STORMING, NORMING and PERFORMING. Forming is the first stage of team building. For example, an entrepreneur plans to start a business venture in the services industry. It’s not enough to only have a great idea, to have a successful business the entrepreneur needs to build a team to put the idea into action. He/she needs to hire the right people capable of doing the job; this is the stage of formation.
After formation, comes the important stage of Storming – brainstorming, that is. A crucial element in the Storming stage is communication - staff must be trained and managed to accomplish the goals of the business. Every business needs to have a mission or purpose that must be known by all employees. It’s important in this stage for the communication to be an open dialogue between management and staff, everyone must feel free to contribute their ideas and opinions to accomplish “buy in” from all.
After Brainstorming comes NORMING stage. This stage resolves conflicts and finds agreement on any points of contention. The leader may reject some ideas at this point but again this is done with agreement from all. In this way, there is mutual understanding among all the members. This is the Normalisation stage.
When all the discussions have finished its time for action and this is the PERFORM stage, the final stage where a perfect group identity is created. There is independence and interdependence, learning as well as sharing knowledge, speed and efficiency. All glitches have be solved by the team leader and performance is measured by set targets and milestones agreed previously as a team
Building an effective team is not an easy task but it is attainable and realistic. An organisation just needs to understand the concepts of having a well-rounded team and have leaders who would be willing to lead by example. A team’s performance will often reflect its level of motivation and this is inspired by the team leader. Each team should continually strive to improve; members must make a conscious effort to improve their own skills in so doing making the team more productive. Growth in any organisation comes from its team members discovering new tools that will enable them to do their tasks more effectively, team leaders must manage their team in such a way as to enhance this idea of constant improvement. Ongoing training and keeping up with technology can help members and teams become better team players and leaders resulting in more efficient and effective teams.
Reference:
1 Tuckman, B.W. & Jensen, M.A.C., Stages of small group development revisited. Group and Organizational Studies, (1977)
