Team Building Skills and Training
Team building is the process of bringing a business team together to solve particular problems and achieve stated business goals. Many teams are gathered to deal with a specific issue or make a particular idea work. Teams are designed to bridge department differences in large companies and streamline important projects. Team leaders work to train their team members to be effective.
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Team Basics
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Teams bring together a number of different people who may not know each other and tend to have different skill sets. A team leader must find ways to help these people work together. This involves much more than simply assigning tasks to those who must accomplish them: effective teams create their own ideas and eagerly embrace alternatives. Team builders work to encourage new solutions and receive input from the entire group.
Personality Tests
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Personality tests are often used as team building activities. They allow team members to examine themselves for particular skills and personality traits, and pinpoint other traits in the team members around them. The goal of these exercises is to show people how they can work together to offer different kinds of input best fitting their personality. The Herrman Brain Dominance Instrument is one popular test--the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is another. The results of the test are more important than the test itself.
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Problem Identification
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When a team is built to solve a particular problem, they must usually begin by identifying that problem. For instance, a team made to bring up falling sales must begin by finding out why sales are falling. Many team leaders use available data and show the basic facts to the team members in the form of financial reports and graphs, then allow them to draw conclusions until basic problems are identified. Each problem is then dealt with in turn.
Idea Creation
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Idea creation is one of the most important processes used in a team. In order to find a problem and create a workable solution, the team must develop its idea creation and brainstorming skills. In this process, input from all team members is vital. Some personalities tend to speak out more easily than others, and can dominate the conversation, while others with valuable insight do not speak up at all. There are many different brainstorming skills that can be used to teach teams to work together and listen to all viewpoints. Ballot suggestions, timed comments, and splitting teams into smaller groups are all common practices.
Positive Reinforcement
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The key to an efficient team is positive reinforcement. Team members, especially quiet ones, will not give their input or work productively in a negative atmosphere. The team leader must often curtail negative comments and require team members to respond positively in order to create a positive atmosphere where ideas are encouraged. Once a team learns how to positively critique ideas with critiquing the person who made them, solutions can be developed much more efficiently.
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References
- Photo Credit conference table image by Salem Alforaih from Fotolia.com
