TEAM = Together Everyone Achieves More

Team is less me and more we. I read a lot on teamwork and always wondered what is so special about it and I stopped here

‘Synergy is the highest activity of life; it creates new untapped alternatives; it values and exploits the mental, emotional, and psychological differences between people.- Stephen Covey’

It is true. Individually all of us have high and low nodes. But if we are all strung together We make symphony heard .A team is a group of individuals sharing same destiny and obviously sharing values, ideas and information become DNA of team building. Team is important to complete any task. Having the same vision but efficient division of work any team can achieve miracles. Team building is an art of programming individuals to get the right output.

Teamwork is essential for competing in today's global arena, where individual perfection is not as desirable as a high level of collective performance. In knowledge based enterprise teams are the norm rather than the exception. A critical feature of these team is that they have a significant degree of empowerment or decision-making authority. There are many different kinds of teams: top management teams, focused task forces, self-directed teams, concurrent engineering teams, product/service development and/or launch teams, quality improvement teams, and so on.

Common vision

• Make sure that the team goals are totally clear and completely understood and accepted by each team member.

Clarity on responsibilities

• Make sure there is complete clarity in who is responsible for what and avoid overlapping authority. For example, if there is a risk that two team members will be competing for control in certain area, try to divide that area into two distinct parts and give each more complete control in one of those parts, according to those individual's strengths and personal inclinations.

Build trust and openess

• Build trust with your team members by spending one-on-one time in an atmosphere of honesty and openness. Be loyal to your employees, if you expect the same.
• Allow your office team members build trust and openness between each other in team building activities and events. Give them some opportunities of extra social time with each other in an atmosphere that encourages open communication. For example in a group lunch on Friday. Though be careful with those corporate team building activities or events in which socializing competes too much with someone's family time.

Group Involvement

• For issues that rely heavily on the team consensus and commitment, try to involve the whole team in the decision making process. For example, via group goal setting or group sessions with collective discussions of possible decision options or solution ideas. What you want to achieve here is that each team member feels his or her ownership in the final decision, solution, or idea. And the more he or she feels this way, the more likely he or she is to agree with and commit to the decided line of action, the more you build team commitment to the goals and decisions.

No Communication blocks

• When managing teams, make sure there are no blocked lines of communications and you and your people are kept fully informed.
• Be careful with interpersonal issues. Recognize them early and deal with them in full.

Empower Team members

• Don't miss opportunities to empower your employees. Say thank you or show appreciation of an individual team player's work.

Attitude of the team

• In all these aspects, attitude of the team plays the key role in making it a grand success. Positive energy flows through the team when attitude is to look for what really works than what didn’t work. Catching the people doing the right is the trick. Encouraging them to proceed in the correct direction is the most critical job of the team leader.

Finally, though team work and team building can offer many challenges, the pay off from a high performance team is well worth it.