Refresher on Building a Winning Team
What is team building
A team is a group of people working towards a common goal.
'Team Building' is the process of enabling that group of people to reach their
goal.
It is therefore a management issue, and the most effective form of team building
is that undertaken as a form of management consultancy, rather than as pure
training (though there is a role for training within a programme of team
building).
In its simplest terms, the stages involved in team building
are:
- To
clarify the team goals
- To
identify those issues which inhibit the team from reaching their goals
- To
address those issues, remove the inhibitors and enable the goals to be achieved
Creating teamwork is a challenging process. Merely referring
to a collection of employees as a team doesn't make them one. The first question
to ask is, is this a team or a group? Each has a purpose. Typically, a team
shares leadership and is interdependent, meaning they depend on each other for
information, services or products to achieve a team goal.
A leader (manager, supervisor) spearheads a group; members
work on their own most of the time with little or no dependence on other members
to do their job. There may be a group effort but it is not a team. You can't
have the same expectations of a group as you do a team. Determine what you are
working with, team or group, and proceed from there.
