Building Effective Teams
Effective teams have high productivity rates, increased job satisfaction, and improved individual health but building effective teams can be challenging. Consider for a moment the best team you have been on; this could be one while you were college, previous job or a current situation. What are the characteristics that make that team effective?
One of the most critical criteria in relation to building effective teams is support. Teams whose member support one another are able to make decisions that are effective, quality and accepted by others. When the team itself buys off on the decision it is easier to sell to others. There are several characteristics of building effective teams:
Characteristics of Effective Teams
- Listening – Each team member needs to be able to listen to one another.
- Constructively Disagreeing – Not everyone is going to agree with all ideas but by differing constructively the team can come up with the best solution.
- Participation – Everyone needs to participate equally, there are no “free-rides” in an effective team environment.
- Analyze the Situation – The team needs to be able to analyze the situation, identify objectives, risks and solutions.
What Does an Effective Team Look Like?
Building effective teams requires competent, committed and results driven individuals with strong leadership. Teams should have significant levels of responsibility, consequences for poor performance, and rewards for superior performance. Below is a list of characteristics that show what an effective team looks like.
- The environment of an effective work team is comfortable, informal, and relaxed. Team members are involved and occupied with meeting tasks and goals.
- During discussion all team members participate and the discussion is relevant to current tasks and goals. If the topic does get off track someone brings it back on subject. Members listen to one another and there is little or no fear about sharing different or creative ideas.
- All team members understand the goal and the objective is frequently reached by consensus. Formal voting is minimal.
- Feedback is frequent, honest, comfortable, with few personal attacks. Feedback is constructive.
- The team is comfortable with disagreements and doesn’t avoid conflict. Differences are resolved or taken into consideration, the team finds a way to live with them.
- The team leader doesn’t dominate the group. The issue isn’t who is in control but how the goal is met.
References:
US Department of Justice Strategies for Building Effective Work Teams
