Team Building Ideas: Two Essential Steps

Many organizations face performance needs today that includes developing effective teamwork. We have develop some simple and yet easy to apply team building ideas to engage your teams in a more productive approach. In this article, we will offer four essential steps to building an effective team.

The first thing to consider it that most of us are not launching a new team, but have a team already in place, that we may hope will improve. Let us start with the first team building idea, which we feel is essential.Assess your team’s development level Knowing where your team’s strengths and limitation lie starts with pinpointing their development. The time-tested Tuckman model of team development states that teams pass through four predictable stages: Forming, storming, norming and performing. The idea is that by knowing the stages, leaders can help speed up the development of a team to move toward the performing stage.

Teams who are coming together are at a disadvantage. They are at an early stage of getting to know each other and their common expectations. Team building idea: A leader can help by allowing team member’s get to know each other better, develop ground rules and learn about each other’s work style, preferences, and needs. Often, there is disagreement that occurs as this sorting out process occurs. There may be disagreements about the team goals, roles, or procedures. When this happens, the team is in the storming stage. Team building idea: Leaders can help by holding meetings to clarify assumptions, misunderstandings and to ask the team to clarify the common goals, clarify roles, and develop clear operating practices and procedures.

As the team emerges from storming, they over-correct and may develop a form of groupthink in a phase called norming. Team building idea: The leader’s challenge at this phase is to ensure that the team surfaces repressed concerns and that flexibility and tolerance for differences is allowed to be heard and supported. If this occurs, the team progresses to the performing stage of development. In this phase, the team combines healthy disagreement with high performance standards and mutual support. Team building idea: A leader in this phase should delegate to the group, remove roadblocks, and ensure that adequate resources are available to the group. The second essential step to building an effective team is to consider the resources and skills that they may need to flourish.