5 Points that will build great teams

Great teams I have been a part of before we have always arrived at the point of greatness without conscious effort to achieve this. I have recently turned my thoughts in trying to quantify what makes a great team, in the points below I refer to a team, and these can be many things so please think about teams you are a part of:

• A work group or sprint team (software) – focused on a tasks
• A set of peers or management group
• An informal group of like-minded individuals

1. Communication

Having a team that can communicate freely without fear of judgement or confrontation makes collaboration on the project better and also helps the sharing of ideas and skills, by including all of the team members in coming to decisions – make sure that all points are objectively heard and considered. Any members having issues with committing work to the team should have talks with team leaders as it is the team’s responsibility to find out these obstacles and help by removing them.

2. Diversity

Teams should be diverse and well-rounded in terms of skills, personalities and experience some examples of these could be:

• Extrovert - Introvert
• Senior       - Junior
• Analytical - Feeling
• Optimistic - Pessimistic

Having the well-rounded team understanding their strengths as individuals, when problems need to be solved the mixture of team members may almost form to produce a Six Hats effect

3. Motivation

With diversity will come motivation to demonstrate and share their abilities to the team creating momentum with a common vision, this gives the team ownership and accountability of an area or a task. Each Team should have a team leader that is highly motivated to the team goals, shares the mission of the business and follows best practices.

4. Vision / Goals

Having a team vision that binds the team with a common goal and constantly re-assess against what that vision is and evaluating where you are against that.  

5. Celebration

It’s critical for the team to feel the value of what they have created, even if it may have resulted in a partial or full failure. Celebrating success with praise and recapping all the right choices and efforts that have got the team to the point of success. In the case of failures, it’s great to use this as a learning experience, ensure that process improvements are put in place so that failures of that nature won’t happen again.

I would love to hear any feedback based on the article or questions feel free to ask, we are one big LinkedIn team.

Chris