great team dynamics. Team Building & Ledership

Team dynamics defined as the motivating and driving forces that propel a team toward its goal and mission

1. Identify a leader – a common mistake teams make is the failure to recognize that any team endeavor a leader must either be identified or emerge. Teams must have leadership. Two key leader roles are required for a project team. One is the strategic leader and the other is the team leader.

2. Establish roles & responsibilities + discuss what each person ‘brings to the table’ – Understanding the various roles and responsibilities of the team is critical to success. Additionally taking time to know expertise and special interests of team members will all people to me matched to their capacity to complete the project tasks, as they are assigned.

3. Establish a set of goals & objectives – in any team recognition and understanding of the goal is paramount. All organizations have long term goals, project teams must set technical and process goals as part of their work.

4. Establish an agenda for managing time to complete the task/meeting – Teams that do better at managing their time achieve better results. The concept of agendas is critical to better time management, whether the application of the concept is focused on project team work or meetings in general.

5. Establish a method to determine how they will reach agreement – Everyday people make decisions quickly from what to wear to what to have for breakfast, individuals use rational (and sometimes irrational) methods to make a decision. However when two or more people (any team, committee) attempt to make the simplest decision, chaos results.

6. Establish ground rules for their meetings – “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” As it relates to teams, no truer words apply. When teams meet, there should be a set of standards that establish how team members will behave toward one another. This is not just a way to ensure courtesy to one another, but also that the team’s time together ends up being used effectively and efficiently.

7. Proper & timely use of quality tools – Teams must all have knowledge and accessibility to utilize and comprehend the quality tools that teams’ need for project success.

8. Maladaptive behaviors are properly dealt with immediately and have consequences – No matter how well a team prepares for maladaptive behavior and attempts to prevent it, such behavior will occur. This is especially true to teams! When these maladaptive behaviors are ignored and left to fester, they are like a dead body left to rot in the living room. It looks gross, it stinks, and no one wants to deal with it.

9. Ability to get started on task/project quickly – Teams waste a lot of time before the actual work gets done. Higher results in project teams can come in the initial phase when the project teams have expertise in project management skills.

 

michael cardus is create-learning

 

photo by jaja_1985

Referenced:

  • Six Sigma Team Dynamics; The Elusive Key to Project Success; Eckes, George; Wiley: 2003