Builds cohesive teams of people within the organization; shares wins and success such that each team member feels valuable and appreciated; guides teams to establish and achieve goals.
Assembling and maintaining productive teams is important. Describe the situation that demonstrates your ability to build a cohesive, productive team(s).
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Part of effective team building is sharing wins and successes, as well as valuing each member of the group. Describe a situation that highlights your skill in this area.
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Effective team building involves establishing and achieving the goals important to the team while ensuring successful cooperation amongst and within the team. Share a situation that describes your ability to achieve this.
Learning on your own: These self-development remedies will help you build your skill(s).
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Establish a common cause and a shared mindset: Get each team member involved in setting a common vision. Establish stretching goals and measures.
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Create a plan: Once mission, outcomes, and goals are established, map a strategy to achieve them.
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Follow the basic rules of inspiring team members: Communicate to people that what they do is important. Delegate a variety of enriching, challenging assignments, and celebrate successes. Show interest in them and approach mistakes as learning opportunities. Be generous with your thanks.
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Create a climate of innovation and experimentation: Generate a sense of choice and ownership, and encourage short-cycle experiments. Communicate that mistakes are opportunities for learning.
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Work on understanding people without judging them: Invest in your team’s learning, education, and time to think things through. Understanding them is paramount to agreeing with them.
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Focus on common goals, priorities, and problems: Sell the logic of everyone pulling together. Listen patiently to concerns, but reinforce the perspective that the team is needed. Entertain suggestions.
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Build a sense of joy and fun for the team: Incorporate social activities, stress busters, gag awards, and outings to build team cohesiveness. Use and encourage humor, and celebrate successes.
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Take advantage of each person’s unique strengths: Avoid unreasonable exposure to individual weaknesses; guide the team to adapt.
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Allow roles within the team to evolve naturally: Each member of the team needs to play his or her role for the whole team to be effective. One member can play more than one role.
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Learn how to operate effectively and efficiently: Research the common problems that plague teams and the strategies and tactics to overcome them.
Learning from develop-in-place assignments: These part-time develop-in-place assignments will help you build your skill(s).
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Create teams involving your coworkers.
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Manage, teach, or coach a temporary group of inexperienced people.
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Manage a temporary group of resisting people through an unpopular change or project.
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Assemble a team of diverse people to accomplish a difficult task.
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Manage a project team of people who are older and more experienced than you.
Learning more from your plan: These additional remedies will help make this development plan more effective for you.
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Learning to learn better:
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Form a learning network with others working on the same problem. Look for a variety of people, both inside and outside your organization. Give feedback to each other; try new things together; share successes and failures, lessons and learnings.
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Use a tutor to learn something new. Listen, learn, and try new things.
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Examine why you judge people the way you do. List the people you like or dislike and why. Discern what you have in common with them.
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Form an advisory group to help. Assemble a one-time group of people to help solve a significant issue or lay out a plan.
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Envision doing something well in a group. Do envisioning and creativity exercises to come up with ideas.
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Preview a plan with a test audience. Enlist someone in a discussion about the issue or problem you face. Develop a plan as you go.
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Learning from experience, feedback, and other people:
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Use multiple models. Select role models of towering strengths (or glaring weaknesses). Learn from characteristics rather than from the whole person.
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Learn by observing others. Objectively study what these people do.
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Learn from limited staff. Look for ways to bring out the best in others who may lack skills or experience. Motivate by being a positive force, even in negative situations, and by giving feedback. Recognize when to stop trying something and start over.
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Learning from courses:
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Take a supervisory course. Review the common practices of effective supervision.
Avery, Christopher M., Meri Aaron Walker and Erin O’Toole. Teamwork Is an Individual Skill: Getting Your Work Done When Sharing Responsibility. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2001.
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Barner, Robert W. Team Trouble-Shooter. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black Publishing, 2000.
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Deeprose, Donna. Making Teams Work: How to Form, Measure, and Transition Today’s Teams. New York: AMACOM, 2001.
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Fisher, Kimball and Mareen Duncan Fisher. The Distance Manager: A Hands-On Guide to Managing Off-Site Employees and Virtual Teams. New York: McGraw-Hill Trade, 2000.
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Gundry, Lisa and Laurie La Mantia. Breakthrough Teams for Breakneck Times: Unlocking the Genius of Creative Collaboration. Chicago, IL: Dearborn Trade Publishing, 2001.
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Hackman, J. Richard. Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002.
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Harvard Business Essentials. Creating Teams with an Edge. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, 2004.
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Jones, Steven D. and Don J. Schilling. Measuring Team Performance: A Step-by-Step, Customizable Approach for Managers, Facilitators, and Team Leaders. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 2000.
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Katzenback, Jon R. and Douglas K. Smith. The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization. New York: HarperBusiness, 2003.
Leigh, Andrew and Michael Maynard. Leading Your Team: How to Involve and Inspire Teams. Yarmouth, ME: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2002.
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Lencioni, Patrick M. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 2002.
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Lipnack, Jessica and Jeffrey Stamps. Virtual Teams—Reaching Across Space, Time, and Organizations with Technology. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
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Parker, Glenn M. Cross-Functional Teams: Working With Allies, Enemies, and Other Strangers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 2002.
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Parker, Glenn M., Jerry McAdams and David Zielinski. Rewarding Teams: Lessons from the Trenches. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 2000.
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Raymond, Cara Capretta, Robert W. Eichinger and Michael M. Lombardo. FYI for Teams. Minneapolis, MN: Lominger Limited, Inc., 2004.
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Robbins, Harvey and Michael Finley. The New Why Teams Don’t Work—What Goes Wrong and How to Make It Right. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2000.
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Schwarz, Roger. The Skilled Facilitator. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 2002.
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Straus, David. How to Make Collaboration Work: Powerful Ways to Build Consensus, Solve Problems, and Make Decisions. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2002.
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Team Management Briefings [monthly publication]. P.O. Box 25755, Alexandria VA 22313. 1-800-722-9221 http://www.briefings.com/tm
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Van Ness, George and Keith Van Ness. Being There Without Going There: Managing Teams Across Time Zones, Locations and Corporate Boundaries. Boston: Aspator Books, 2003.
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Wellins, Richard, William C. Byham and George R. Dixon. Inside Teams. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 1994.
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Wysocki, Robert K. Building Effective Project Teams. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2001.
