TeamBuilder
A Blueprint for Building Excellent Teams
Module 1:
Introduction
What is a team?
A team is a group of people who are mutually dependent upon one another in achieving a common purpose.
When is a team not a team?
There are many times when groups of people come together, but they aren’t all teams. Groups that come together primarily to share information, learn from one another, or encourage each other aren’t necessarily teams. A group becomes a team when they have a common purpose and when the team members are mutually dependent upon one another to achieve that purpose.
What makes for an excellent team?
Teams are measured by one thing: results. An excellent team achieves excellent results. Poor teams simply don’t. Over time, even the most enjoyable group of people that isn’t achieving results will be frustrating to its members.
Ten challenges of working in teams:
10. Time – It often takes more time to accomplish something with a group than it does if one person just made all the decisions and did all the work.
9. Meetings – For people who dislike meetings, working in a team can be very frustrating. How to run effective meetings goes beyond the scope of this seminar, but there are some great resources available on this topic.
8. Conflict – Whenever people have strong beliefs about an issue there is likely to be some conflict.
7. Sacrifice – Team members are mutually dependent on one another. This means, among other things, that each member must sometimes sacrifice their own desires for the good of the team.
6. Decision-making – Teams often struggle with how to make good decisions. There are ways to mitigate this, but team decision-making is never as easy as individual decision-making.
5. Focus – When each team member has their own idea about what should be done and how it should go, focus often suffers.
4. Uneven performance – One danger in working with teams is that 80% of the work will end up being done by 20% of the team.
3. Inertia – When “groupthink” sets in, teams can begin to chase their own tails rather than moving forward.
2. Schedules – It can be difficult to synchronize team members’ schedules, especially when some members are more invested in the team than others.
1. Lack of accomplishment – We’ve all been part of teams that met incessantly and never accomplished anything. This is a real danger in working with teams.
Ten advantages of working in teams:
10. Input – More input leads to more ideas to choose from and ultimately better decisions.
9. Involvement – “Buy in” is much easier to achieve when people have a role to play.
8. Implementation – As ownership is increased among the group, the chances of ideas actually being implemented grows.
7. Learning – When team members interact and share information, the knowledge of the group as a whole tends to rise.
6. Individualized roles – Ironically, it’s in the context of a team that each individual is most likely to be able to play a role that fits their uniqueness.
5. Synergy – As individual members rely on one another, high performing teams are able to accomplish more and better results than the individuals in that team could accomplish separately.
4. Security – A team may provide a sense of security that allows individuals to take risks and make decision that would be more difficult if working alone.
3. Leadership training – The team context is ideal for training new leaders as it allows them to ease into a new role one activity or task at a time.
2. Personal satisfaction – Team members report a higher level of personal satisfaction with their work than people who work independently.
1. Growth – Working with a team causes individuals to grow personally and professionally in ways that individual producers never have the opportunity to experience.
Module 2:
Overview of the necessary materials for building a high performing team
1. A compelling purpose
For a team to have any traction at all they need to come together around a common purpose. And that purpose must be compelling enough that team members are willing to sacrifice some of their own individual desires for the sake of the team.
2. Clear goals
One of the most common reasons teams get stuck or habitually underachieve is that they don’t share clear goals. The team goals need to be explicitly stated as Strategic, Measured, Attainable, Timed (SMAT) and each team member must understand the importance of each goal, how it will be measured, by when it will be accomplished, and the plan to achieve it.
3. Well-defined roles
Once clear goals are agreed upon, each team member must have a well-defined role. It can be very frustrating for multiple team members to try to play the same role or to discover that there is a necessary role that is not being filled by anyone. In addition, it’s important for each team member to understand the roles that the others are playing.
4. High trust
Trust is an essential, but sometimes hard to obtain element of healthy teams. When there is a high level of trust, team members are able to communicate freely, deal with conflict in a healthy manner, and move forward on key objectives faster than when trust is lower. When there is a lack of trust on the team, members will often withhold important information or opinions out of fear. This hurts the team and keeps it from taking advantage of all the strengths represented on the team.
5. Open communication
Once trust is built, open communication is possible. Team members need to know that they can say anything in a team meeting and not worry about how it will be taken by the team or team leader. Without this level of communication, trust suffers, which results in less effective decision making and ultimately, poor performance.
6. Healthy conflict
While many people would rather avoid conflict at all costs, high performing teams know that healthy conflict is a valuable part of what they experience together. The truth is that conflict is inevitable. If it is not dealt with in a healthy way, it will go underground and hamper the team’s effectiveness. Better to accept conflict as inevitable and deal with it in a healthy way that leads to higher levels of trust on the team and open communication.
7. Effective decision making
The best decisions are made when all opinions are accounted for (through open communication and healthy conflict) and when everyone knows in advance how the decision will be made. If the team leader reserves the right to make the final decision after receiving input, this should be made clear. If the decision is going to be made by group consensus, everyone should understand this from the beginning.
8. True accountability
On the best teams, everyone sees accountability as their responsibility. It isn’t just up to the team leader to hold team members accountable for their actions, each team member is accountable to the team to accomplish their role. When accountability is lax, results suffer. High performing teams ensure that each member is held accountable for their role and given the support and resources they need to accomplish it.
9. Results focused
There’s nothing more frustrating than being part of a “team” that doesn’t accomplish anything. Teams exist to produce results. In order to stay focused on results the purpose and goals of the team should be revisited regularly, and periodic updates need to be made by each team member on their role in achieving the results.
10. Competent leadership
As John Maxwell has said, “Everything rises and falls on leadership.” Leadership can make or break a team. The teams that are most effective have leaders who understand the importance of each aspect of building high performance teams, are able to communicate clearly, facilitate open communication, and ensure that team members are held accountable for their roles, staying focused on the results the team seeks to achieve.
Group Activity:
The Human Machine
* The group is broken into several teams of 5-8 people.
* The teams have 5 minutes to design a human machine. The machine must have a purpose, each team member must be a component of the machine, and each component must rely on another for movement.
* When the planning time has ended each team demonstrates their machine to the rest of the group.
* The whole group them selects the team with the best design.
Discussion Points:
* How comfortable did you feel with the exercise?
* What role did you play in the machine?
* What role did you play in planning your machine?
* How did different people gravitate to different roles in the planning process?
* In what ways do you typically gravitate towards that kind of role in other contexts?
∑ What do you wish had been different about the exercise?
Module 3:
Laying the Foundation: Building Blocks One to Five
1. A compelling purpose
Purpose answers the question, “Why do we exist?”
What are some examples of the purpose of different teams?
* Sports
* Business
* School
* Other
Let’s pick one example as our “demonstration team” that we’ll use for the remainder of our time together.
What would it be like to serve on a team that had no purpose?
What should be done if a team lacks purpose? How could that be accomplished?
What is the purpose of our demonstration team?
2. Clear goals
Goals provide direction to the team as a whole.
What are some examples of goals a team might have? What goals should our demonstration team have? Why are these important?
What would it be like to serve on a team that had no goals?
What could be done to help a team that lacks goals?
3. Well-defined roles
A well-defined role provides direction to the individual team member.
High performing teams have members who are ideally suited for their unique, individual role.
“It’s important to get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.” – Jim Collins, Author of Good to Great
What roles do we need for our demonstration team? What would be lacking if each role wasn’t fulfilled? What kind of people are needed to fill each role?
How can a team that lacks well-defined roles go about achieving that?
4. High trust
The higher the level of trust, the higher the performance of a team – high trust teams are more creative, able to come up with better ideas, faster, and reach consensus quicker than lower trust teams.
“It is only when team members are truly comfortable being exposed to one another that they begin to act without concern for protecting themselves. As a result, they can focus their energy and attention completely on the job at hand.” – Patrick Lencioni, Author of Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Small Group Discussion:
Discuss an experience you have had participating in a low-trust team. How did you feel about the team? About team meetings? How successful was the team?
Developing trust requires shared experiences over time, multiple instances of follow-through and credibility, and an in-depth understanding of the unique attributes of team members. Following are some tools to help build trust:
1. Personal Histories Exercise – Team members begin to see each other as individuals rather than just the roles they play
2. Team Effectiveness Exercise – Team members identify the single most important contribution that each of their peers makes to the team, as well as the one area that they must either improve upon or eliminate for the good of the team.
3. Personality Profiles – such as the MBTI or DiSC
4. 360-Degree Feedback – The key to using this tool is to divorce is entirely from compensation and formal performance evaluation. Rather, it should be used as a developmental tool. Otherwise it takes on dangerous political overtones.
5. Experiential Team Exercises – Ropes courses, trips, conferences and other shared experiences.
What are two activities our demonstration team will use to help build trust?
5. Open communication
Open communication is the natural result of a high trust environment. When team members begin to see that they can be fully themselves, they become comfortable being vulnerable with one another and confident that their vulnerabilities will not be used against them. These vulnerabilities include weaknesses, skill deficiencies, interpersonal shortcomings, mistakes, and requests for help.
* Role Play:
Select two volunteers to perform a role play. The first volunteer sits at a desk in front of a laptop. He/she reads aloud to him/herself the following script as he/she pretends to type an email to a long lost love.
Dear ______________________,
I was so happy when I saw your profile come up on Classmates.com. I’ve missed you ‘lo these many years since high school. The time that we spent together was the most memorable of my life.
I remember so much about you: the way you looked, the way you walked, the way you said my name in the moonlight.
That’s why I’m emailing you now. I don’t know what you’ve been up to since we lost touch in college, but my life has never been the same without you. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a “you-shaped” hole in my soul.
So, my dear, it is with a heart filled with love that I ask, “Will you marry me?” Please respond to this email with your answer.
Love Always (Your name here)
The second volunteer pretends to come home after a long day at work. Upon entering the kitchen he sees a note attached to the refrigerator. He reads aloud:
Dear Hunny Bunny, Sweety Weety,
I’m sorry I won’t be home when you get home from work. I’ve been wanting to tell you something for months, but just have never found quite the right way to do it. So, now it’s too late to say it the way I wanted, but you’ll have found out anyway.
If you would, I’d really appreciate you meeting me at General Hospital after dinner. You see, as you read this note, I’m having our first child.
Look forward to seeing you soon,
(Your name here)
Discussion Questions:
* Obviously these are intended to be goofy and over the top.
* What made them each so ridiculous?
* What does this tell us about the form our communication takes?
* If there are appropriate forms of communication for different messages, how should that affect the way we communicate with our teammates?
* What kinds of communication should be expressed though what kinds of forms?
What factors might hinder a team from engaging in open communication?
What can be done to help our demonstration team communicate more openly?
Module 4:
Erecting the Walls: Building Blocks Six to Ten
6. Healthy conflict
Small Group Discussion:
* Describe a time when you experienced healthy conflict. What about the situation made it healthy?
* Discuss a time when conflict was buried. What was the result?
Conflict is inevitable on a team. In fact, the more passionately team members believe in the purpose and goals of the team, the more likely there is to be conflict. The important issue is how we deal with that conflict.
Positive ideological conflict is focused on concepts and ideas, and avoids personality-focused, mean-spirited attacks. The purpose of conflict is to produce the best possible solution in the shortest period of time. Ironically, teams that avoid conflict often do so in order to avoid hurting team members’ feelings, and then end up encouraging dangerous tension. The conflict will find a way to squirt out in unhealthy ways if not addressed in the open. Teams that avoid conflict are doomed to revisit issues again and again without resolution.
Teams that engage in conflict:
* Have lively, interesting meetings
* Extract and exploit the ideas of all team members
* Solve real problems quickly
* Minimize politics
* Put critical topics on the table for discussion
Suggestions for engaging in healthy conflict:
1. Acknowledge that conflict is productive and that many teams have a tendency to avoid it.
2. Mining – Someone must take on the role of “miner of conflict” – someone who intentionally calls out sensitive issues and forces team members to work through them, staying with the conflict until it is resolved. Ideally this would be the team leader.
3. Real Time Permission – By recognizing when people engaged in conflict are becoming uncomfortable with the level of discord, interrupt to remind them that that what they are doing is necessary. This is also called meta-communication.
4. Know when to ask for help – Sometimes a mediator (someone who listens to both sides and can help encourage communication) or an arbitrator (someone who listens to both sides and then makes a binding decision) is necessary. Knowing when to get outside, objective help is important.
7. Effective decision making
The quality of a decision is greatly affected by the manner in which it is made. Here is where teamwork can truly shine, however, there is also a potential for danger as well.
Good decisions are the result of good information and data, quality options, and wisdom on the part of the decision maker(s). If any of these three items is missing, the quality of the decision will suffer.
It’s important to communicate clearly about how decisions will be made right from the formation of a team. Misunderstandings in this area can cause unnecessary conflict and heartache.
Group Activity:
Break into groups of 4-5 and follow the decision making roadmap based on the following scenario.
Widgets-R-Us has had a difficult year, missing budget projections in 3 out of 4 quarters. Having started the year with only a small cash surplus, WRU’s senior management team is faced with the need to make real changes in order to maintain financial viability. One member of the team has recommended immediate lay-offs. Another favors obtaining a small loan to get them through what she sees as a temporary lull in sales. A third leader prefers investing in additional marketing activities to boost sales.
As a group discuss the following:
* What information or data is still missing to make a quality decision on this issue? Where would you go about getting that information?
* In addition to the options already mentioned, brainstorm 6 additional possible actions to take.
* Choose what you feel is the best option available to Widgets-R-Us and present it to the main group.
Questions for the large group:
* How did you go about making your decision?
* Who led the discussion in your group? Why them?
* Did you make a consensus decision or did one person decide on behalf of the group? Why? Had you previously agreed to operate that way?
* What was difficult about this exercise?
* If this were a true scenario, what would need to be changed in order to make a quality decision?
8. True accountability
True accountability occurs when team members are responsible to one another and the team leader for their actions and results. The “peer pressure” involved in mutual accountability both raises the stakes for each team member, but also helps prevent the silo effect in which team members cease to rely on one another.
What is it about accountability that frightens us?
When have you seen mutual accountability work?
What are some reasons teams may shy away from mutual accountability?
How can we ensure that our demonstration team engages in this area?
9. Results focused
Teams exist to achieve results. If there is not a result towards which the team is working, then it is some other kind of group, not a team.
What are some reasons why teams sometimes lose their focus on results?
What can be done to help a team struggling in this area?
Using our demonstration team as an example, how would you (assuming you were the team leader) maintain a focus on results throughout the time the team was together? Share with the group.
10. Competent leadership
Volumes upon volumes have been written on the issues of leadership, and competent leadership is really a subject for another seminar, but it’s important to note that without it no team can succeed.
Competent team leadership revolves around four areas: vision, priorities, management, and multiplication. Using the self-assessment below, rate yourself in the critical four areas.
Leadership Self-Assessment
Read each statement. Then circle the number which best reflects the experience of you and your team using the scale below.
1 – Strongly disagree 2 –Disagree 3 – Somewhat agree 4 – Agree 5 – Strongly agree
Vision:
1. I have a clear picture of the vision we are to achieve over the next 5-7 years.
1 2 3 4 5
2. I can put into words our purpose (why we do what we do, not just our tasks) in a clear and compelling way.
1 2 3 4 5
Priorities:
3. I am able to set clear objectives so we know that we are making progress towards our vision.
1 2 3 4 5
4. I am able to recognize when change is needed and make “mid-course” corrections to our team as needed.
1 2 3 4 5
5. I am able to set priorities for our team in line with our vision and objectives.
1 2 3 4 5
6. I am able to recognize problems and bring the team through a problem-solving experience before they turn into crises.
1 2 3 4 5
Team Management:
7. My team members have clearly delineated roles.
1 2 3 4 5
8. Each team member understands what they will be held accountable for on the team.
1 2 3 4 5
9. I regularly help my team members set priorities and objectives for their roles on the team.
1 2 3 4 5
10. I hold my team members accountable for their work in a kind, life-giving manner.
1 2 3 4 5
11. I know what’s going on in the lives of my team members and regularly demonstrate my concern for them.
1 2 3 4 5
Multiplication:
12. I have at least one other person who is building into me as a leader.
1 2 3 4 5
13. I have at least one other person who I am building into as a leader.
1 2 3 4 5
Reality Check:
14. The daily tasks, meetings, and interactions I and my team engage in are clearly leading us toward fulfilling our objectives and reaching the vision and purpose of our team.
1 2 3 4 5
15. We have identified critical “success markers” indicating that we are on the right track in our work.
1 2 3 4 5
Discussion Questions:
* In which areas were you particularly high?
* Which areas did you score low on?
* What other areas do you see as being important for a competent team leader? Why?
* What is one action that you can take to grow in your own leadership?
* When will you take that action?
* Who will hold you accountable for doing it?
* How will they know that you’ve achieved it?
Module Four:
Raising the Roof: The Most Critical Point
The Critical List
* Separate into teams of 4-5 people each.
* Each team creates a list of what they believe are the five most important points that have been covered in the seminar.
* As a large group, create a common list of all the points mentioned by each team.
* After discussing the pros and cons of each item being the most important, vote as a group to determine the single most important point.
Here are the questions - be as brief or as lengthy as you want...
Name
Ministry Position you want identified
Contact info (web?)
Can I post your Team Building Seminar notes (or an edited version of them) along with the interview?
*John, what is the path God led you on that has brought you to the point of being a coach?
*How does a coach think differently than, say, a teacher or trainer?
*Teams are "in" because they can be so much more effective ... But what many do not know is that they are much more difficult to lead. Why?
*What are some of the benefits a coach brings to a team?
*Give us some one-sentence wisdom for building excellent teams:
∑ Leadership –
∑ Conflict -
∑ Meetings -
∑ Communication -
∑ Roles -
∑ Goals –
*What is the most critical factor you first look for when working with a team?
*John, write a prayer that teams can prayer together that propels them forward, together, into God’s destiny . . .
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