Book Summary Preview : Develop Your Team Building Skills

The Big Idea

Many view teams as the best organization design for involving all employees in creating business success and profitability.

However, how to develop and implement the disciplines, frameworks, and techniques required for team building and good team performance – and/or how to improve upon what is already in place and in play – is a question that many executives, organizations and companies, both large and small, are constantly asking themselves.

There is a real need for groups of all sorts to learn about team building and how to go about it.

Why You Need This Book

This book on team building provides tools for the development of individuals, teams, and organizations, with a especial focus on the formation of teams and motivating them to achieve their goals. It tackles each step of the team-building process, beginning by discussing the need for team building in the first place, and ending by providing advice on what to do in case the teams fail to achieve their objectives.

The Need for Team Building

When a team in an organizational development context embarks upon a process of self-assessment, it gauges its own effectiveness to improve performance. The symptoms that signal a need for team building are:

• 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 service

The Ingredients of Team Building

Ingredients seen as important to the successful set-up and launch of such team efforts include:

• Selection of participants
• Establishing visions, goals, missions and/or objectives
• Distribution of workload
• Timetabling
• Balancing skill-sets
• Metrics
• Harmonizing personality types
• Training on how to work together

Types of Teams

INTERDEPENDENT TEAM. No significant task can be accomplished without the help of essentially all team members and the success of every individual is inextricably bound to the success of the whole team.

INDEPENDENT TEAM. A tennis team is a classic example for this where matches are played and won by individuals or partners, every person performs basically the same actions, and whether one player wins or loses has no direct effect on the performance of the next player.

VIRTUAL TEAM. Consists of members joined electronically, with nominal in-person contact. Virtual teaming is made possible with technology tools, especially the Internet. This allows teams to be formed of players otherwise unavailable.

PROJECT TEAM. A team used only for a defined period of time and for a separate, concretely definable purpose, often becomes known as a project team.

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