- For a basic introduction to team building, read this page.
- To select a team building activity for your team, read our guidelines first
- To assess how well your team is working, complete our team building questionnaire
- To learn more about team roles, see our list of MTR-i articles
- For some team building consultancy, contact us (we are UK based)
- For all other topics, view our list of team building articles or search our site.
The foundation of all team building is having shared goals to which all team members are committed. In the absence of such shared goals, time and money spent on team building can often be a waste of time or even counter-productive.
In the Tuckman model of team development, the difference between the first stage (Forming) and the others (Storming, Norming, and Performing) is that each member of a Forming team is focused on his/her own objectives, perhaps guided by the manager, whereas in the later stages there is some commitment to the shared goals. For example, to go through the Storming stage can be an uncomfortable process, so for team members to persist with it they have to be convinced that it is worth engaging with other team members in a 'storming dialogue'. That is, there have to be shared goals that everyone thinks are more important than their own individual goals (or, for a management group, more important than the goals of the their own section).
Establishing shared goals and engendering commitment requires a particular set of skills that are more often associated with a transformational rather than transactional style of leadership. There is a frequent mistake made by transactional leaders think that if they have a group of self-motivated individuals then they do not need to engage in this type of work. However, this often leads to a pseudo-team - one that appears to be Performing but, beneath the veneer, it is only Forming. That is, the members are very effective at delivering their own goals, but they fail to capitalise on the potential of working collectively, they fail to exploit the "whole that is greater than the sum of the parts".
Another frequent mistake is to fail to appreciate the important difference between supporting others in the achievement of their goals with the commitment to a shared goal. Whilst the former can be an important component of teamwork, genuine teamwork involves capitalising on collective potential, rather than just maximising individual performance.
Once the foundation of commitment to shared goals has been established, there are many approaches that can be taken to improving teamwork. More information on these approaches can be found in our article on the choice of teamwork exercises. However, underpinning all these approaches is always the shared goal, and a general methodology that is similar to a force field analysis:
- Establishing ownership of shared goals
- Removing inhibitors/blockages to achievement of those goals
- Introducing enablers (awareness, resources, information, processes, etc.) to help achieve those goals
- Using health checks, performance management, 360 feedback, etc., in the correct sequence, to gradually raise performance, akin to climbing a ladder one rung at a time
The particular approach or technique that is most suitable for each team depends on the size of the team and types of issues it faces. There are four broad categories:
- 1: Individuals.
- 4-8: Intact teams.
- >10: Team Islands.
- >: Organisational Culture.
There is more information on the four types of team building in a supplementary article.