Want to build a great team? Start by building a great group process first, educates Prof. VGT.
“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success”.
– Henry Ford
In spite of great emphasis by organizations on team building activities that groom employees into effective team players, teams often fail to deliver the best results. Many a time success on the “working together’ front is elusive.
Why do teams fail? Lack of proper understanding of team dynamics is the main reason for the failure of teams in the corporate setting. To constitute effective teams, it is important to know the attributes of a real team.
Most often a team is taken to mean a group of workers working under the same boss or on the same project. This is a misconception because to be called a team, the working group must possess certain essential attributes.
The important factors that distinguish a team from a working group are joint efforts and collective accountability. A working group consists of employees who share common goals but are individually accountable for achieving those goals. A team, on the other hand, puts in joint efforts to achieve specific goals, and the team members hold themselves individually as well as jointly responsible for results.
The output of a working group merely equals the sum of individual contributions, while the output of a real team is many times higher than the sum of individual contributions due to the synergy between members.
When a working group is mistaken for a team, its output inevitably falls much below expectations.
A working group lacks the common approach to goals and also explicit knowledge about the group norms to be followed to work together as a cohesive unit. So when a working group is mistaken for a team, its output inevitably falls much below expectations, as the essential team processes are not in place to generate a synergic effect.
Organizations should understand the need to indoctrinate groups of employees into the team culture before they can be expected to work together successfully.
Here are some guidelines to invoke them:
Team development:
Each team should have facilitators or coordinators who guide the team members effectively through different stages of team development.
Initially when a team is formed, a lot of friction exists between the team members. They should be enlightened on the merits of working together.
This will allow them to trust and cooperate with each other.
Interpersonal skills:
To enable the team to be managed as a single unit, good managerial and interpersonal skills must be developed, not just in the team lead, but also in every team member. They should be able to efficiently organize and participate in managerial activities such as conducting meetings, setting goals, working out strategies, reviewing progress and giving feedback.They should also relearn basic group manners so that communication takes place in the backdrop of mutual respect.
Problem solving:
The very purpose of forming teams is to make the best use of the complementary skills of team members in the functional, interpersonal and problem solving areas. Instead of the team lead solving the problems alone, the entire team should be involved in the decision-making process. This not only serves to pep up team morale, but also alternative solutions can be developed using collective wisdom.
Problem solving:
The very purpose of forming teams is to make the best use of the complementary skills of team members in the functional, interpersonal and problem solving areas. Instead of the team lead solving the problems alone, the entire team should be involved in the decision-making process. This not only serves to pep up team morale, but also alternative solutions can be developed using collective wisdom.
Domination by a few members should be politely curtailed.
Every team invariably has a course of shy members. They should be encouraged to express their ideas freely. On the other hand, domination by a few members should be politely curtailed. When things go wrong, personal criticism should be avoided at all costs. Feedback should always relate to the task.
A thorough analysis should be done to learn where things went wrong, how to rectify them and also avoid their possible occurrence in the future. Positive feedback should be given promptly to individuals and linked to progress made on the task by the team.
Thus, a team can succeed at working together only when there is adequate support from the management and the team members are well versed in the group processes. Managers and team leaders in organizations must realize that the only way the worth of a team can be enhanced is by putting the right group processes in place.
