Team Building & Team Work
- Team building focuses on the formation of groups.
- While teamwork concentrates on the function of groups.
- Both are vital for success.
Team Building
- Abraham Lincoln said-If I had 6 hours to cut a tree, I would spend first 4 hours sharpening the axe.
- Team building is sharpening the axe. Invest in it, and it spin offs are huge. The results will make you wish you had done it much earlier.
Team Development/Formation
- Teams and groups are living organisms with certain predictable stages of development.
- These stages are inevitable in order for a team to grow to the point where they are functioning effectively together and delivering high quality results.
- Forming - This stage takes place when the team 1st meets each other. The team members are introduced to each other. They share information about their backgrounds, interests & experience and form 1st impression of each other. They learn about the project they will be working on, discuss the project's objectives.
- Storming - Represents the arguing that will likely occur as the team defines itself.
- There may be conflict about the purpose, leadership, and working procedures.
- During this stage people often feel the team will never come together. This stage is similar to the human developmental stage of adolescence.
- Is the stage that occurs when the team members are developing a shared vision and are setting goals and objectives.
- People are getting to know one anothers strengths and are learning how best to work together.
- The team experiences more stability and productivity.
- Performing - Indicates that the members now have a clear, shared sense of purpose, high trust, and open communication.
- The team is effective within the existing paradigm. Camaraderie, relationships, and team spirit are high.
- Adjourning- The project is coming to an end and the team members are moving off into different directions.
- The team leader should ensure that there is time for the team to celebrate the success of the project and capture best practices for future use.
- A team is made up of two or more people who work together to achieve a common goal.
- Teams allow skills, knowledge, opinions and experiences to be pooled together for the benefit of the business as a whole. This leads to better productivity for every member of the team.
Benefits of a good team-
- When a team works well together as a unit they accomplish more than the individual members can do alone.
- Teamwork creates higher quality outcomes that are more efficient, thoughtful, and effective.
- Individuals benefit from teamwork through mutual support and a great sense of accomplishment.
- Higher efficiency & Faster speed: Because teams draw on the efforts of many contributors, they can often complete tasks and activities in less time and more efficiently.
- More thoughtful ideas: Each person may bring different information and knowledge to bear, which can result in solutions and approaches an individual would not have identified.
- Greater effectiveness: When people coordinate their efforts, they can divide up rolesand tasks to more thoroughly address an issue.
Profile of an Effective Team
- Goals: Clear to all
- Participation: All get involved and listened to.
- Feelings: Freely expressed.
- Careful problem diagnosis; root causes attacked
- Shared leadership
- Decisions through consensus
- High trust level
- Creativity encouraged
- The atmosphere tends to be relaxed and informal.
- The group's task is well understood and accepted by the members.
- The members listen well to each other; there is a lot of task-related discussion in which most members participate.
- People express both their feelings & ideas.
- Conflict and disagreement are present but are centered around ideas not personalities.
Characteristics of a bad team
- Lack of communication among team members.
- No clear roles and responsibilities for team members.
- Team members throw work over the wall to other team members with lack of concern for time line and work quality.
- Team members work alone rarely sharing information and offering assistance.
- Team members blame others for what goes wrong. No one accepts responsibility.
- They are frequently absent causing slippage in the time line and more work for other team members.
Challenges to Team Building
- Lack of teamwork skills in the workforce: One of the challenges facing leaders of organizations will be to find employees who have the ability to work effectively in a team environment.
- Educational institutions mostly encourage students to work individually for a higher grade and succeed without having to collaborate with one another. This creates an emphasis in self-interest- rather than an orientation to collaborate with others.
- This can work against the kinds of behavior needed for successful teamwork
- Globalization and Virtualization: Teams will increasingly be composed of team members who have dissimilar languages, cultures, values and approaches to solving the problems.
- This challenge has been addressed by increasing the level of one to one meetings, an approach that has met with some success. In this case training to facilitate understanding of, and communication across, team members can address this issue.
- If we compare face-to-face communication and virtual project teams indicated that face-to-face communication is very important in building an effective working environment for the team.
- Informal contact was also mentioned, e.g. sitting down over lunch to break barriers. Team building training will need to be adapted to the needs of virtual teams who are working in geographically distant places.
Activity on Team work
Let us see some perfect team work
- Skit/acting exercise-
- Form groups composed of 3 to 8 people.
- You may either allow your group to make up their own skit or assign them a topic
- Skit should be of 3 min.
- They can use objects which they use every day like a pen can be a microphone etc. during their skit.
- Topics should be work related, may be acting out a meeting, process or event or any other topic of your choice.
- Give them 5 min time to prepare.
- Prizes for best performers.
A Winning Team !
- You can't simply buy, or wish for, a ready-made winning team.
- You've got to invest time and effort in building a team and keeping it together.
- This investment has a very high ROI: (Return of investment)
Think Of Problems As Oppertunities
- Captain Russell's challenge to Bhuvan to play the cricket match was taken up by Bhuvan as an opportunity to bring happiness into the lives of his village folk.
Dream Big And Define The Goal
- Bhuvan accepted the challenge to play the match as winning it meant 3 yrs. of TAX-FREE happiness.
- But he did not just dream BIG, he also chalked out a strategic plan of action to win the match. He then put it before eyes of those, whose involvement was of importance in the match.
Put Organisation Before Self
- Bhuvan did not dream for himself, he dreamt for the good of his village folk. Not once did this man of character put his self-interest before that of others.
- It was this that made him win the support of his villagers after some initial resistance.
Be Determined In The Face of Opposition
- Right from the start when the entire village opposes Bhuvan having taken up the challenge to play the game of cricket to the time when the rest of his team refuses to play because he wants to take in an untouchable in the team.
- We face this situation many times in our organizations. Many a times, we give up and accept what we feel is perhaps a lesser decision. It is at times like these that we need to speak up- as long as we know we are championing the right cause.
Build A Team
- Building the team is like recruitment.
- One needs to select the right people and motivate them.
- He understands the pressures and the soft points of people, and uses this knowledge to make them part of his team.
- Each one of his team members is treated as special, as being different.
Allocate Roles
- Bhuvan also assigns responsibilities to each of his people.
- Just getting the people in the team is not good enough.
- They have to be told what the goal is.
- A team consists of different individuals.
- The objective is to make them all work together like a fist, like a team
Support Team Members
- Bhuvan backs his team members to the hilt, even when they make mistakes.It is indeed important in any team that the captain backs the right person, at the right time, for the right job.
Lead From The Front
- Never Give Up that was Bhuvan's winning mantra.This attitude of his also enabled him to give his best shot even at the last ball and thus win the match.
- There is only one mantra:To be well trained and have good enough practice . which is HARD WORK!
Parable of Transformation
- No matter how well Bhuvan played in the match, nothing would have been possible if all the team members did not put in their efforts in transforming themselves by re-skilling and changing their mindsets
- Bhuvan showed how an average team filled with team spirit can overcome a group of talented, experienced but complacent individuals.
Activity
- Mine field- This is a great exercise if you have a large room or outdoor field. Set up a 'mine fieldusing chairs, balls, cones, boxes, or any other object that could potentially be an obstacle and trip someone up. Leave enough space between the objects for someone to walk through.
- Next, divide your group into pairs. Pay attention to who you match with whom. This is a perfect opportunity to work on relationships, so you might want to put together people who have trust issues with each other.
- Blindfold one person, the 'mine walker- this person is not allowed to talk. Ask his or her partner to stay outside the mine field, and give verbal directions, helping the mine walker avoid the obstacles, and reach the other side of the area.
- 3 chances will be given to complete the walking field.
