Team Building Finale
This is the fourth and final article in a series regarding Team Building and in this segment, I bring all the concepts together into a summary. If you missed the other articles, please feel free to follow these links:
The Secret Behind Team Building
The Second Secret Behind Team Building
Two More Team Building Secrets.
Let’s go back to Wikipedia.org, and review their description of Team Building:
Team building is the use of different types of team interventions that are aimed at enhancing social relations and clarifying team members’ roles, as well as solving task and interpersonal problems that affect team functioning.
Its four components are: 1) Goal setting: aligning around goals, 2) Interpersonal-relationship management: building effective working relationships, 3) Role clarification: reducing team members’ role ambiguity, and 4) Problem solving: finding solutions to team problems.
Reference: Wikipedia – Team Building
I’ve combined these concepts into a single infographic that may be useful:
The value of this graphic description is that instead of simply a list of components, it puts pieces together in a sequence that provide a basic recipe for building a team from scratch. And this recipe is useful in building youth soccer teams as well as improving team building in a business or organizational setting.
Read the graphic this way:
First, ensure that everyone gets put into the same game – explain the rules and set goals.
Second, assign positions (jobs) to everyone – clarify roles across the entire team.
Third, show the team how to work together – manage the relationships between the various roles.
Fourth, find where things aren’t working (hot spots) and fix them – solving teamwork problems is a key activity in team building; teams just don’t fall together.
And finally, along the way, be creating unique and shared experiences that make YOUR TEAM a most enjoyable and memorable part of the teammates lives.
ONE PRACTICAL NOTE:
Team building as described above may appear to be a single cycle process, i.e. execute the steps once and then you have a great team. Although this is true for basic team function, to really excel at anything, it will take more than one pass and it becomes a continuous process. Think of this example in the context of a brand new youth soccer team. The first pass through and you can go from no knowledge to basically being able to field a team. The second pass then can focus on details like offense and defense. Set goals for the offense and the defense. Describe how center positions differ from outside positions. Tell the players how to back each other up and practice play making. Find areas where the team struggles to execute well and define activities to make these areas work better. This specialization and detailing continues into a third pass where you may focus on specific positions (goal keepers, strikers) and/or specific skills (shooting, throw-ins). I think you catch the theme about cycling though the team building process.
In a business sense, the first pass will basically achieve an organization that can mostly meet customer needs. The second pass may be at a department focus to improve various aspects of the business that are important to customers and owners. The following passes my focus on specific roles (invention, sales approach) that can help drive the business into greater success.
If you find yourself wanting to improve team or business performance, consider adopting this methodology as a discipline. It should point you to changes to your approach that will yield better results. And if you want some help or support in sorting through a difficult spot, then don’t hesitate to contact me. That’s what I’m here for…
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Learn More about the Overall TEAM BUILDING PROCESS
