Effective Team Building

How to build effective team?

Team building is crucial in improving the collective performance of a group or organization and it is a powerful tools for a leader to use to increase the chances of success for himself or his group.

Although team building is often talked about and believed to be practiced, it can often be ineffective for several reasons: there is a lack of commitment in the group to a shared common goal; the team building activities practiced are too generic to add any lasting value and there is a lack of proper assessment of the team.

The Foundation of Team Building:

The most important factor to successful team building is a commitment to shared common objective or goal with their team. This is the foundation that all good team building is built upon without it; a lot of energy can be expended with very little result.

Remember that, most people are committed to their own objectives over and above everything else therefore, it is important that they see the collective group objective as important as their own, otherwise they will not invest time and energy in team building activities.

Group vs. Team?

Many people make the mistake of assuming that a group of people automatically forms a team. In fact, a group is simply a set of people who happen to share a workplace or be a part of the same organization unit. The people within the group will all have individual objectives which may converge and is the same as the group objective, but may also be distinctly different and even competitive.

By contrast, a team is a group made up of individuals who have committed to working towards a single, common objective. Naturally, they will still have their different, individual objectives but these will contribute towards a higher collective one.

For example: In a marketing team, one person may responsible for direct mail campaign, another person responsible for client liaison and another for sponsorship-but they are all united in the overall objective of improving brand awareness and image and therefore, not judged solely on their individual objectives.

Read more in: Team Building Strategic