5 important factors when building a team
Tim Hoiseth
Chairman CNL Group | Business Psychologist | Sociologist | *Capacity building for the future
Team building is successful when your team can accomplish something better and work more effective than a group of the same individuals working on their own. Having a team successfully built rarely happens by itself, it requires effort to create and knowledge how to create it.
If the team building is left by itself to develop, it is just simply too many things that could go wrong and space for problems are created. It is an endless list of examples of what can go wrong in a situation like this. Different personality types might build up conflicts instead of balancing and filling out each other. People with similar personalities might struggle for authority and dominance on certain areas of expertise. The goals can be individual instead of serving a common team goal, and even if the team goals are clear and accepted by everyone there might be no team commitment or common means to achieve the goals. This might move the individuals in direction of a conflict. Lack of openness and trust between the team members, team leader and members or all parts might block critical communication and might lead to loss of coordination in the individual efforts. This is all just a few examples on things that can go wrong in the creation of a successful team structure.
Team building has some critical factors that need to be maintained to be able to get a successful team.
- It is important that the team goals are clear and completely understood and accepted by every single team member. When the agreements and understanding of the team goals are in order, it is important that it is clear who is responsible for what, this to avoid overlapping of authority and to prevent double doing of tasks. If there is a risk that two team members will be competing for control in certain areas, it is better to divide the area into smaller parts and give each of the competing individual’s responsibility after their strengths and personal preferences.
- As a leader it is important to build trust within and towards the team. Spending one on one time in honest, open and friendly environments is important. And loyalty both ways are also important for trust establishment. Trust and openness within the team is also important. Events and social gatherings can be a good solution. At least opportunities for social time with each other in an atmosphere that encourages open communication, like having lunch together.
- Involving the team in important decision-making and openly involve the team members in possible solutions to reach the team goal. The aim for this is to make the team members feel ownership in the final decision, solution and ideas. The more this is the team feeling, the more the team members will feel commitment to reach the team goals.
- Communication is one of the most important parts of the team work, when managing a team it is important to make sure that there is no blocked lines of communication. Both the leader and the other members of the team have to be kept fully informed. Inner conflicts within the team can ruin a lot of the valuable them spirit, as a leader it is important to recognize them early and deal with them fully so it’s not a problem that will develop or stay latent.
- Giving feedback to the team is important as a leader, both positive and negative fair feedback is important. The team should also encourage each other with feedback. Show appreciation to the work done by other team members, and be polite and respectful.
It is a lot of afford, and can offer some challenges to make a successful team building. But in the end the high performance it brings, is well worth it.
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