When building and maintaining teams, there are several things one must consider:
1. Creating the right environment for a team
2. Providing the proper support for the team
3. Bringing the right people together for the team
Environment:
Environment is vitally important for many reasons. First of all, think about the damage that the wrong environment can do. Have you ever worked in a “blame” environment where you can’t make mistakes, people are afraid of everyone around them and no one is willing to take a risk. This is acidic to the development of an effective team. Some of the most damaging variables are things like blame, shame, guilt, jealousy, envy, and extreme levels of individual competitiveness.
So what can you do? Start by creating a feeling of trust, honesty, respect and a willingness to collaborate and share ideas. This requires strong relationships amongst internal and external stakeholders of your work community. In addition to that you need to facilitate ongoing, open communication at all levels of the organization. This will set the stage for effective team development.
Support for the Team:
Teams don’t develop by accident. They need help starting, building and maintaining. What support can you provide for a team? The key roles you will need to provide are that of a coach, facilitator, and mentor. Ultimately, these roles need to combine in such a way that enables the team.
Simple next steps:
Bringing the Right People Together:
When it comes to bringing the right people together, no one can say it better than the international guru on team development, Dr. Belbin. Belbin suggests that personality type can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of a team and that you need to balance a team with different types. For Belbin’s insights go to http://www.belbin.com
If you can get all of these things right, you will be miles ahead of the competition in creating and maintaining the best teams!