Analysing Team Effectiveness

Teamwork doesn’t happen by accident. It requires commitment and effort, a willingness to accept the uniqueness of others and an appreciation of diversity. We need to build teams in our companies the same way we build relationships with our friends and co-workers. With team building, we establish ourselves and our companies as reliable, both internally and externally. We then project the same image to our customers, our vendors, competitors, and communities.

The beauty of teamwork is we get better results when we work as a team. We do it by respecting others, showing appreciation, and remembering that by working together we will be “genius”. Patricia Fripp (Digilearn)

Here are the key elements of building an effective team:

A Sense of Purpose

• Common and shared vision, goals, and objectives.
• Strong focus on results, sense of priorities, and clarity about decisions.
• All team members share and support a common vision that the team is working to achieve.
• Team members are highly focused on objectives.
• Plan and set directions.
• Action steps to reach goals.
• Clarity on what is expected of everyone.

Continuous Learning

• Team members encourage difficult and penetrating questions.
• Learn from their experiences and mistakes.
• Encourage the growth and development of other team members.
• Group participation.
• Opportunity for input.
• See mistakes as learning opportunities.

Open Communication

• People express their thoughts and feelings.
• People listen attentively.
• Team makes extraordinary efforts to ensure everyone understands the plan and progress toward the plan.
• Open and honest.
• Pertinent information from top to bottom.
• Effective.
• Accept conflicts and work through them.

Trust and Mutual Respect

• People value and support others.
• They tell each other the truth and provide honest and caring feedback.
• High-performance teams take the time to celebrate small victories toward goal achievement.
• Team members work to build each other up and avoid criticising one another.
• High performance teams care deeply about each other’s development and personal growth.
• Personal needs and human relationships are cared for.
• Free expression of feelings.
• Feelings are understood and supported.
• Share perception on each other’s behaviour and performance.

Effective Working Procedures

• The team knows how to gather, organize, and evaluate information.
• People encourage creativity.
• Innovation and risk-taking.
• People plan appropriately.
• The team operates under specific deadlines for achieving results.
• The team stops at appropriate times to check the quality of its recent work for determining how the process could be improved and what learning can be shared with other members.
• The team is well structured.
• Tasks are organized effectively.
• Processes are effective.

Building on Differences

• The team optimizes the skills, knowledge, and personal strengths of its members.
• People seek out different points of view and make use of outsiders.
• Team members work to ensure that every member of the team is involved.
• Watchers and wonderers are employed in progress toward the vision.

Flexibility and Adaptability

• People see changes as opportunities.
• People share responsibilities and look for continuous improvement.
• The work of the team is beyond the team’s zone of comfort.
• It does not know how it is going to achieve the desired result.
• High spirit in the team.
• Excitement.
• Pleased and happy with the job/team.
• Morale is high.

Shared Leadership

• Different team members assume leadership depending on the task at hand and the need of the group.
• The formal leader serves as coach and mentor to the team.
• Team leadership changes according to expertise required.
• Individual members jump into the breach as weaknesses or gaps are discovered.