10 Tips to Building Successful Teams
Teams not only need to function well as a group, but also bring a wide range of skills into a cohesive and productive entity. It is critical that the intellectual capital of the group translates into cooperation in tackling tasks and solving problems.
University of Central Florida’s Eduardo Salas included these ten key characteristics of effective teams in his recent presentation to The Society for Human Resource Management:
- Clear roles and responsibilities. Members understand one another’s roles and how they fit together.
- Compelling purposes. These teams share goals and visions and have clear common purposes. Members are energized by shared missions and can evaluate the team’s status in terms of progress.
- Coaches. Leaders promote, develop and reinforce positive behavior. They directly intervene to implement teamwork processes, provide situation updates and set expectations.
- Mutual trust and familiarity. Team members manage conflict well, have strong team orientation, trust other members’ intentions and strongly believe in the team’s collective capability.
- Team norms. These should be clear, known, appropriate and define “what is acceptable around here.”
- Shared understanding. Team members often share mental models, anticipate one another’s thoughts and can coordinate without overt communication.
- Self-correcting. Teams should “huddle” and “debrief” regularly to provide feedback.
- Settled expectations. Team members know “who does what and why.”
- Shared information. Their knowledge often includes “unique” information.
- Supportive conditions. “You can have the best team in the world, but if the organization isn’t aligned to support teamwork, it doesn’t make any difference.”
HSG features a wide range of fun team building activities, including corporate cooking classes in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and around Australia. We can tailor any size program to address your specific objectives. For example, our Laughter Workshops break down barriers, encourage communication, find common values and provide a forum for team and leadership skills to shine.
