Team Building is no Longer Linear, It's a Spiral

Team Building and Management Series – Part 3

“Can any group be converted in to a Team?” This is one of the interesting questions I ask myself for a long time. When I progress in my life with exposure, I believe my answer was evolved. Now I think I’ve come to a serious conclusion, so I thought of writing about it.

But let me explain the progression of my thoughts and why each time I gave up the last idea.

Initially, I though it’s possible to convert any group in to a team. This was mainly fueled by the optimistic outlook young minds have on the world without the exposure to realities of management.

Then I noticed many so called teams I have come across are not even close to perform as a team. It means there is a hole in my thinking. This led me to further analyze the teams I have seen and I discovered two factors causing the teams to be dysfunctional.

• Lack of organizational support in building the teams. I have discussed this in detail in the second article of this series.
• Team leaders don’t always get the opportunity to pick their teams causing them to deal with people whom they find difficult to handle. Most of the time team leaders will be appointed by an outsider than letting a leader to be emerged organically within the teams. This in many occasions leads to situation where team leader is not adequately equipped to handle the teams.

Does that mean in situations where leaders get the opportunity to select the teams and organizations adequately support the teams, groups successfully transfer into teams? Unfortunately, this is not the case also. Yes, above situation provides higher probability of groups becoming a team but not always. So how can we explain the instances where this do not work?

As usual, this led me to search harder, and I think I have identified the problem. I believe it was overlooked so long simply because it is one of the fundamental nature of human behavior.

The missing piece of the puzzle is our inability to fully understand the human behavior, thus predict how people will behave in situations might occur in the future.

So assume a leader gets to choose his or her team in a very team friendly business environment, leader may still misjudge the characteristics of few team members. This is further fueled by peoples inherent need to portray a stereotypical picture of a good subordinate or a team player.

So how we can get rid of this problem. Can we create super Team Leaders who can judge people’s behavior so effectively? Or should we develop a well-articulated and elaborated set of Tests or Assessments to understand the real behavior of people?

I believe both will be impossible. Then is there a solution? Answer to this question is yes and that’s my serious solution. The answer lies in the Team building process. You have to treat it as an iterative cycle than a linear waterfall type approach. Here’s how it works.

You start with an initial group and you try developing them into a team. If you identify any team members who are not fitting in, you let them go as soon as possible and start the team building process again. Of course you have to give them a reasonable opportunity to prove themselves before letting them go but have to follow this until your group complete the "NORMING" stage. Now you will have your team.

Conclusion

So let me be clear. In your efforts to build a team you may need to let go your team members if they don’t fit and seems not getting the message. It’s important to do this as early in the team building cycle as possible so team is ready when they are closing in on the performing deadlines. But make sure it will not be your first option. Given them a chance to improve, create consequences for not changing adequate enough or fast enough before finally putting your foot down.

But don't Forget

If you were asked to leave a team, or you have decided to leave a team, it doesn't make you a bad team player. It doesn't mean your life as a team player is doomed. Absolutely not. You are not fitting in to one team doesn’t mean you will not fit in to any team.

A shark does not belong into a running team though everyone would like to have one in a swimming team.