Team Building

Team Building

Abstract

"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships." A famous quote embarks on the importance of teamwork over individual contribution. Teamwork is so critical that it is virtually impossible to achieve anything big without it. The power of a team lies within the individual strengths of its individual team member. This paper aims at emphasizing the importance of teamwork, challenges that can arise working in a team, various stages in forming a team and some useful activities to build a good team.

 What is a Team and Team Building?

A Team is a group of people linked together in a work or activity as a group on one side.

TEAM meaning:

T: Together

E: Enabling each other to

A: Accomplish

M: More

Team building is a process of building and nurturing a greater sense of participation and faith among team members.

Challenges to work in teams/Purpose of Team Building:

o   Conflict over varied opinions

o   The different way of working

o   Lack of vision

o   Leadership issues

o   Cultural dissimilarity

o   Low Enthusiasm

Try taking out half of your team for an event leaving behind the other half of the team. What do you think the outcome would be? How would the people leave behind feel? Frustrated, undervalued and demotivated.

Team building has a lot of benefits of its own. Taking out a team on team building activities gives them a chance to know each other’s unfamiliar side, which can be a pleasant thing to know. The individuals behave differently when assigned to new activities as compared to their behavior in day-to-day office life. They gain a lot of benefits at both personal and professional level. As an employer company earns a more united unit to work on their tasks and projects.

Forming a team is driven by an aim to achieve a common goal. It is a process of combining, developing and capitalizing a group of people who can work together to achieve that common goal.

Individuals working together as a team reaps ample benefits. Teamwork practices “less me and more we”. Working together is highly efficient, yields higher productivity and better job satisfaction. A successful company embarks upon a rich culture and team building helps in building the culture of a company. We spend most of our daily time in office so it is essential that we work in an acceptably good culture. So undoubtedly for extraordinary results setting up a team culture is of utmost importance.

Stages in Team Building:

o   Stage 1: Forming

o   Stage 2: Storming

o   Stage 3: Norming

o   Stage 4: Performing

Forming: The very first step is building a team is Forming. Mostly a team is comprised of people who may have varying experience levels, diverse background, multiple skills, different personalities etc. This very initial stage is full of excitement and uncertainty. Experienced team members have the flare of working in a team while the fresher’s or younger members are still finding their way through. The team members are unsure of their roles and responsibilities in the beginning. Also, the personal behavior plays an important role. On the surface, some of the people might be jovial, easy going when interacting with other members but inside they might be skeptical and unsure of many questions.

Storming: This stage comes after a group of individuals with various needs and objectives starts to more closely work together. Their level of interaction rises and they also feel a sense of competitiveness amongst them. In such a scenario where individuals having different mindsets, ambitions, personalities start to work together, the conflicts are inevitable. Individuals would be challenging each other for the position and authority at their level. This might expose the work ethics and the values an individual carry with himself. This stage gives a fair idea of roles and responsibilities an individual may acquire and what would be the duration of that role. Every individual further has his desires and expectation from the company and the teams, which can further raise some conflicts.

Seeing so many conflicts would it be advisable to avoid this stage? The answer is no. We should understand that this stage is necessary and a vital stage in the development of this stage. The goal of the team lead or a coach should not be to avoid conflict but to gracefully handle it and provide a satisfactory solution. The leader needs to understand that conflicts are unavoidable. The leader should effectively address those conflicts and channel it into useful team development. Conflict resolution is an important characteristic of building a team. The team members are not expected to like and agree with each other all the time and this is what they should be made aware of. The team should be made sensitive enough to wither off any conflict in a positive manner, which forms the basis of this stage.

Norming: This stage is normally driven through some process or set of rules as to how things can be or should be done. These processes can be written off or documented at some organization level but practically these standards are evolved in a manner as the team members practice them in real.  This is the way in which the team does their work and other activities. The success of a team largely depends upon its dynamics such as the attitude of team members, work ethics, social habits, personality, team support etc. The leader of a team should take upon the responsibility of creating an environment that fruitfully nurtures the team towards a common goal. The environment should be open-ended and leader should always encourage the team to be vocal about their opinions. The fear and anxiety in a team member should be replaced by harmony and hope.

Performing: This is what is desirable out of a team eventually. All the efforts of team building are paid off once they reach this stage and start performing effectively. This stage occurs when the rules and procedures are set and team members have started following it or implementing it. In this stage, the team members are aware of the expectations from each other, they trust each other and sense of comfort prevails throughout in the team. The output is smooth as desired by the leader. In this stage, a team works like a well-coordinated machine.

Ascending to the performing stage is largely dependent upon the successful implementation of the previous stages. The conflicts that arose during the Storming stage should have been handled tactfully in the Norming stage.

Advantages of Team Building:

o   Better collaboration between team members at all levels

o   Recognition of each other’s disparities and qualities

o   Build confidence among members

o   Anticipated structure within teams

o   Strengths and weaknesses are known to each other.

o   Enhanced leadership skills

o   Increased commitment and value-add to the organization

o   Problem-solving is easy

o   Appreciation is much understood

o   Easy and effective decision making

o   The sense of taking responsibilities is more prevalent.

Importance of team building in the workplace:

1. Career Progression: Team building pursued different and new ideas to accomplish the various things in the workplace. This upsurges the productivity and enables key decision architects in the company to trust and invest in the team. All these things create opportunities to grow within an organization.

2. Originality – Thinking out of the box is what defines a team’s creativity. Taking a team outside of their regular office routine would vigor them to think what they can’t think while being in office. Working together would foster new ideas, which can then be taken up in the regular office work.

3. Positive energy - Create positive thoughts among the team members, assign a challenging and interesting role to every individual, where they can bring out best in them, yield feedback regularly. There is nothing erroneous in listening to other person viewpoints, even if it's not logical, as long we explain why it's not logical. We are sure he/she will do more homework and bring brilliant idea next time. Always search for positive.

4. Communications: Open channel communication enablement is achieved by working in a team.  Various discussions are held between team and management, which in turn develop good relationship throughout. High Productivity is achieved with a minimal number of faults with great communication happening between a team.

5. Breaks the ice – Team building increases the trust factor with your employees. Every so often in corporate settings, there is a disconnect between the leadership team and employees because the employees sense too large of a gap between the two. Team building exercises give leadership the opportunity to be seen as a colleague/associate rather than a chief (person in charge), which can do wonders for employee morale. Teams with such traits are very good at maintaining good relations.

6. Motivation – Motivation is routinely built into the team when they are freely able to express their feelings. Team leadership and building are two verges of a coin that drive hand in hand. Always remember, a motivated team is very much capable of taking up more challenges.

Overall, team building in the workplace enables better relationships, a better career, positive environment, better communication, and ultimately enhances productivity many times.

Few Secrets of Successful Team Building:

Constructing a creative and efficient team is not a child’s play, as it may seem to those who haven't tried it yet. Team building process involves a lot of energy and dedication from leaders and people responsible for making a great team. When you try to handle many different individuals with varied backgrounds, education, and character, you will see that it is a very demanding task. This job involves:

o   A proper allocation of work, so that no one in the team would be overloaded or feel left out.

o   Maintenance of info stream to make sure that everyone is on the same page.

o   Discovering the right individual with essential skills, which will fit the team’s needs.

The real question is where to begin? And what you should do to build a positive team that will create something new & exciting together?

We had the same question, and we're trying to resolve it for quite some time. We have reckoned out a few valuable tips along the way that today we want to share it with everyone. Here are few secrets of successful team building that we believe every company should consider:

1. Hire Smartly-

When picking your team members, keep in mind that High Qualification is not the only thing that matters. Rather than evaluating only how polished are their technical skills, check what kind of a person they are and whether they fit into your team? If you want your team members to be open and friendly but also ready to support and praise each other, you should look up for this kind of persons.

2. Visibly, define team goals-

If you wish your team to work actively towards achieving goals, you must first identify the goals well. You can't expect them to know where they are heading to if you don't explain to them what is the destination they should reach at the end. So, make sure that you always enlighten the goals and write them down in a place/area where the entire team can see them on daily basis.

This is important for teams to be able to do when they are allocated to complex tasks or decisions.

3. Provide your team with required resources-

Your team members might be passionate, hard-working group of folks, but if they don’t have enough funds or time to achieve the goals you have set for them, they will be dispirited. To avert this, make sure that you provide them with all required resources. When you're developing a plan for team activities and set goals for your corporation you should also plan resources and allocate them properly.

The most significant thing is to be truthful when setting the time framework for your goals. Provide your team enough time to do the tasks meticulously, but at the same time don't allow them to get too comfortable because it may backfire. Also, prepare enough funds to support their ideas and make them come true.

4. Job Satisfaction-

Your team members can be passionate about a business or a new task, but still, they like an opportunity of creating something for themselves through their work. So, talk to them and inform them clearly how they may well benefit from the project/task professionally like it could be their opportunity to learn new skills or travel to an exciting place or meet influential people. In this way, your teams will be highly engaged in team projects/tasks, as they will see that as an opportunity to grow themselves.

Anyway, personal gain is not a wicked thing for any team. If every individual can see that they are making more than just money while working on your staff, they will be much more hardworking. Desire will boost enthusiasm and keep positive energy flow in your team in no time.

Nonetheless, never ever miss an opportunity to award and recognize an unexpected commitment of some members, as it will certainly boost their motivation.

5. Avoid displaying preference-

A decent leader endeavors to build a belief with his/her team members, and thus he/she should have a solid integrity. Always keep in mind that people see if you favor one individual over others – they see it, and they hate it. Any such behavior can cut their loyalty and promise to the goals.

So, make sure you provide an equal chance for everyone and include them all in a specific task, enable all of them to contribute in exchanging ideas for a new project/task and allow them to be a part of making important decisions. This will give your team members feeling that they are all important and that there is no favoritism.

6. Organize an admirable team-building event (if possible far away from the regular working place)

There is a thing that can boost and motivate your team when they are feeling low or after they have touched on an important goal. It is a team-building activity at an interesting place. Book a resort, gaming parlor or some other interesting place away from the office where any sentiment from the office won't be so intense and organize a team-building event.

It helps to break down these barriers by creating a forced interaction between the established groups & creates opportunities for networks & friendships to develop.

Organize some activities where your team can have fun and connect with each other. This could be camping or just a simple competition or team bonding games. And when you do that, make sure majority (if not all) are comfortable with such activities. Acts like that will show your team that you care for them, appreciate them and you are keen to spend extra resources on them. Feeling worthwhile, worthy & having a sense of achievement within the working environment are essential elements to happiness.

 Conclusion:

Within the Organization, almost everybody is likely to be a part of one or more teams. These can be official or non-official teams. Well-organized teamwork can alter the workplace, which can help improve productivity, help keep morale high of team members and provide individuals with a sense of individuality and drive to perform better. This encourages the improvement of Interpersonal Skills such as negotiation, communication, leadership, & motivation. Having a great company culture can really aid in founding these principles.