Teams and Team Development Putting the Pieces Together . . .

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Teams and Team DevelopmentPutting the Pieces
Together . . .
Source Andersen Consulting
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Teams
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Ingredients for a Successful Team

• Clearly Defined Team Objectives, Scope, Roles
  Responsibilities, Key Activities, Key
  Deliverables, Critical Success Factors, Metrics,
  Risks, and Boundaries
• Clearly Defined Meeting Guidelines
• Cooperative, Committed, and Trusted Climate
• Clear, Effective, Constructive Communication

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Ingredients for a Successful Team

• Understanding of Problem Solving Techniques
• Well-defined Decision-making Processes
• Understanding of Conflict Resolution
• Awareness of Diversity Issues
• Understanding of Proper Coaching Techniques

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What is a team?
A team is a group of people who must collaborate
to achieve common goals, and who assume
responsibility for the functioning and
performance of the group.
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Differences Between Teams and Work Groups
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Characteristics of High Performing Teams
There are seven components which distinguish high
performing teams from teams that experience
problems ...
Definition
Component
Potential Issues If Missing
Component
1. Clarity in Team Goals 2. Clearly Defined
Roles
Groups often assume their goals are clear and
then later experience mistakes due to confusion.
Goals need to be specific, attainable, and well
communicated. To clearly define roles of a
team, you need to design formal roles and
responsibilities, set clear boundaries for each
role, design job team responsibilities that use
each members talents and rotate general
roles.
When team goals are not clear, potential troubles
may include frequent disagreement about next
steps, frustration at the lack of progress and
excessive questioning of group decisions and
actions. When there are no clearly defined roles
the skills of team members will not be fully
utilized. There may be confusion over which team
member has a specific task and some may get more
than their share of tedious chores.
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Characteristics of High Performing Teams
The seven components continued ...
Definition
Component
Potential Issues If Missing
Component
3. Clear Communication 4. Well Defined
Decision Procedures
Clear communication exists when team members
speak with clarity and directness, listen
actively, explore ideas rather than argue over
them, openly share information provide
constructive feedback not criticism. When teams
develop effective decision making procedures
they explore important issues by polling
members, decide important issues by consensus,
use high quality data as a basis for decisions,
agree who will make what decisions.
Teams with poor communication have members who
have a tendency to withhold information, discount
others ideas and opinions and cover up true
feelings. Without well-defined decision making
procedures, teams find it difficult to break out
of the old orientation of being told what to do
as opposed to deciding for themselves.
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Characteristics of High Performing Teams Continued
The seven components continued ...
Definition
Component
Potential Issues If Missing
5. Established Ground Rules 6. Balanced
Participation 7. Improvement Plan
Establishing rules for the team involves the
process of members deciding what are acceptable
and unacceptable behaviors within the team for
both tasks and relationships. This strategy not
only contributes to getting the job done, but it
develops all members expertise in all areas,
which strengthens the teams performance. The
goal of an improvement plan is to ensure high
team performance. The plan needs to cover 5
activities - Maintain communications - Fix
obvious problems - Look upstream to larger
issues - Document progress and problems - Monitor
changes
Without openly stated rules teams
often experience frustration and confusion in
other members behaviors. Potential troubles may
include members who continue behavior that
frustrates other team members. Without balanced
participation, performance can result in certain
members having too much or too little influence
based on their skill set, and cross-job coverage
not supporting productivity goals. Without an
improvement plan, the team may use ineffective
approaches to address problems that result in
little or no improvement of team output.
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Meeting Effectiveness
Problem Solving
Decision Making
Conflict Resolution
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General Meeting Guidelines
Teams should commit to the following guidelines
...

• Create meeting ground rules
• Create guiding principles
• Use agendas with clear definition of expected
  outcomes processes
• Apply effective facilitation methods
• Manage meeting processes to achieve desired
  outcomes
• Document meetings
• Evaluate meetings (to identify address problems
  early to enable continual improvement in team
  effectiveness)

Source Jonier Associates, The Team Handbook,
1988.
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Create Meeting Ground Rules
Ground rules should be specific enough to enable
easy compliance and enforcement. Examples ...

• Start all meetings on time
• Establish an agenda and stick to it
• Use a flip chart to record ideas
• Everyone should participation
• No side discussions
• Test ideas for agreement
• Document distribute all meeting minutes and
  group decisions
• Clarify follow-up responsibilities
• Agenda will be developed for the next meeting

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Typical Meeting Structure
A meeting will typically have the following
format ...

• Review of Agenda and Time Contract
• Assignment of Meeting Roles
• Review of Meeting Purpose
• Brainstorming/Discussion
• Consensus Development
• Development of Path Forward Plans
• Meeting Feedback (e.g. Likes, Changes, and
  Overall Rating)

Source Jonier Associates, The Team Handbook,
1988.