If you want something done right, do it yourself!
Not anymore! Change is all around us. More than ever, we know ho much we need each other and how much doing it yourself doesn’t always work. The future definitely belongs to organizations where people come together with a shared mission, common values, an exciting vision and clear goals.
How do You, the Leader, Develop High-Performance Teams?
For some strange reason, we have expectations of people coming together for a project or a new work team, saying hello, and then working together happily ever after. Not quite! A natural progression occurs when people come together. When we understand it, we can take steps to consciously bond the team and get the project or task done more efficiently and with more personal fulfilment.
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 team work 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 ‘ingredients to building an effective team:
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A sense of purpose
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- Common and shared vision, goals and objectives
- Strong focus on results, sense of priorities, 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 step to reach goals
- Clarity what is expected of everyone
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Continuous learning
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- 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
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Open communication
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- People express their thoughts and feelings
- Conflict is surfaced and resolved
- People listen attentively
- Team makes extra-ordinary efforts to make certain everyone understands the plan and progress toward the plan
- Open and honest
- Pertinent information from top to bottom
- Effective
- Accept conflicts and work the through
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Trust and mutual respect
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- People value and support others
- They tell each other the truth and provide honest an 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 zinging 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
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Effective working procedures
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- The team knows how to gather, organize and evaluate information
- People encourage creativity
- Innovation and risk taking
- People plan appropriately
- Team operates under specific deadlines for achieving results
- The team stops at appropriate times to check the quality of its recent work for the purpose of determining how the process could be improved and what learning can be shared with other members
- Team is well structured
- Tasks are organized effectively
- Processes are effective
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Building on differences
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- 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 make certain that every member of the team is involved
- Watchers and wonderers are employed in progress toward the vision
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Flexibility and adaptability
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- 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 result desired
- High spirit in team
- Excitement
- Pleased and happy with the job/team
- Morale is high
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Shared leadership
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- 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
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