Master Your Game
This Issue: High Performance Teams
Dear Reader,
Summary
Many organizations talk about teams and teamwork
but few really know how nor take the time to build
teams. This article is the first in a series about
teamwork. It explains the difference between a group
and a team and outlines how dynamic teams lead to
future success and growth.
Groups Are a Collection of Individuals
"There is a simplistic concept that
if you select and put 6 to 12 people in a room, you
have a team; what you really have is just a 'group' of
individuals."G.
Gibson and C. Smith in
Dynamic
Coaching to Build Dynamic Teams
How many times have you decided not to
contribute to meeting discussions because:
- you did not know if you had the right answer
- you did not understand what others were
talking about
- you were tired of listening to others and
have tuned out
- you believed no one listens to you anyway
- you feel it is not worth getting into an argument?
If you do not feel like participating in meeting
discussions for any number of reasons, chances are
that you belong to a group, not a team. If you are
worried about "you" rather than the collective, you
are not a team member. If you do not feel motivated
to participate in discussions, you don't belong to a
compelling environment that encourages open,
honest communication -- in other words, you do not
belong to a team.
Groups, like teams, are a collection of individuals that
have come together to meet on a regular basis.
Often when individuals come into these meetings,
each has her or his own priorities and agendas.
Regardless of the specific purpose that brings
them together, it is how individuals behave that sets
apart groups from teams.
Team Members Leave Their Egos at the Door
To be a highly effective team member, you will have
to leave your ego at the door when you enter the
meeting. A team meeting is about accomplishing the
common goal and working together - not competing -
to achieve the desired outcome.
R. Maddux, author of Team Building: An Exercise
in Leadership describes the qualities of groups
and teams as follows:
|
Groups
|
Teams
|
- Individuals work independently
- Distrust and disagreement
- Unclear communication
- Conflict avoided or escalated
- Conformity
- Self focused, hidden agendas,
ownership
|
- Members are interdependent
- Openness, trust; disagreements seen as
positive
- Open honest communication
- Recognize value of conflict
- Free expression
- Mutual goals, purpose, mission, sense of
unity
|
If focusing on mutual goals, purpose and mission is
the objective, teams clearly have an advantage over
groups.
Dynamic Teams Lead to Success
With each member contributing, the collective team
energy is laser-focused on achieving the shared goal.
Each one works harder to have open and honest
communication, resulting in cumulative knowledge
that leads to better decisions, a synergy that
generates creative outcomes
or "extraordinary results".
Dynamic teams bring out the differences of opinion
and encourage the respectful exploration of these
differences to determine what would work best for
the team. The brilliance of teams is demonstrated by
the creative and innovative generation of ideas and
outcomes.
Here's another argument for fostering high
performance teams: The future success of our
organizations and our economy will depend upon our
ability to be creative and harness the intellectual
capital of people's ingenuity. Perhaps Dr. Martha
Piper, the University of British Columbia president
best explains:
". . . knowledge on its own has
very
little use - that indeed we need people - people who
can use the information and knowledge in an
innovative way - people who can create the new
knowledge and the products and services that flow
from it - people, who, for want of a better term, are
creative."
Teams with effective communication can
operationalize this creativity, and in turn, contribute
to our future economic success.
Building Dynamic Teams,
Jacque Small
Catalyst
Business
Coaching is a corporate development organization. It
works with people who want to achieve a greater
sense of success for both themselves and others in
the organization. It supports people to define and
achieve both personal and business targets. Jacque
Small, principal and owner of Catalyst, founded the
company in 2000.
