Team Building Information |
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Teaming - How to Build a Team
Team building takes work but the results are worth it. The essential ingredient is time and patience. If you really want to build a team that will achieve outstanding results you can. The Hype Over the years team work has been the flavor of the day with many businesses spending considerable money in trying to achieve a positive and harmonious team structure. Some have found the results they looked for but many have not. Why is this so? Team building has a number of foundation building blocks that are essential for a team to function. Commitment of the Manager or Owner Some managers and owners get excited about team possibilities only to weary over time where the pressures of business and day to day life grind them down. Your commitment by way of your action and time are critical to your team's success. Time It takes time to build teams. Trust and respect need to be earnt and there are no short cuts. Make a decision to pay the cost and demonstrate your commitment. Patience Life sometimes throws us a curve ball and not all of our plans go according to the script. Make a commitment to be patient and as long as you see incremental progress realize progress is progress. Celebrate Success and do not condemn failures Learn to celebrate your successes as a team as you go along and learn from failure. Failure is a fantastic teacher if you look at it that way. If you own the business or are a manager realize that you are particularly under scrutiny of your team more so when failure occurs. Your reaction to change and failure will ultimately determine the amount of buy in you achieve from your team. Learn to Delegate As business owners we are sometimes afraid to delegate. Start with small things and as your team gets confidence and does the right thing increase the responsibility. Be quick to learn Be quick to learn from each other. The most unlikely team member may be sitting on the very edge you have been looking for in your business. Listen Many managers and employees are terrible listeners. Learn to hear what people are really saying and don't devalue their contributions. Encouragement It has been reported that children need 7 compliments to counteract 1 negative statement. How much more important then is it to encourage your team. Anyone can condemn however a good manager and team member knows how to give genuine encouragement. Show genuine interest. An Example Before starting Biz Momentum I once took over an organisation that was almost beyond repair. By applying these principals by listening and resourcing employees I took the company from a damaging loss to a substantial profit within 1 year. This was a complex business with complex people and serious mistrust issues. The cost to me was emotional commitment to change and to listen - it worked. I was subsequently summoned overseas to report to the main shareholder who wanted to know how this was done so quickly. The answer is easy, the application harder the question is will you pay the price. Visit www.biz-momentum.com for more information. You can do it - apply some of these principles and you will achieve results Philip Lye is the founder of Biz Momentum providing strategic human resource management advice to help your business grow. Philip is a author and educator who trains management and employees to work together to achieve tangible results. Philip has had considerable international experience. Visit http://www.biz-momentum.com for other helpful articles.
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Effective Team Building For Organizational Success "Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results." -Andrew Carnegie Building Teams Young minds are quite easy to shape. International Terrorist recruiters know this and have an abundant source of young men and women to pick from. They use simple brain washing tactics to do this. The United States also has a huge source of young people at its colleges and universities with young open minds, open to both good or evil. The professors use this to help their views and promote their views of the world by imprinting on these minds. Religious groups are also a hot topic on campus and they are quite active recruiting new minds and new souls to their numbers. Creating a Winning Staff Team As a business owner, I've had staff come and go over the years: some have done extremely well, and others not so well. During the time I was involved in running my business, I found some weaknesses in myself that tremendously affected things that were going on, especially from a negative point of view. It was not uncommon for me, whenever something was not going well, to ignore it. Sometimes I would hope it would go away, or maybe ask somebody else to solve it for me, whatever was going on. Intercultural Team Building Internal business structures have been radically transformed over the past few decades. Changes in areas such as communication and transportation technology and shifts towards global interdependency have resulted in companies becoming increasingly international and therefore intercultural. Raising Issues In Your Group or Offline In a recent group coaching session, a client mentioned that he thought his monthly meetings with his peers were dysfunctional. He felt they achieved "false closure" on key decisions - they'd discuss an issue, not make a clear decision, and move on, all acting as if they were clear. He felt one person took too much airtime on a regular basis, that the agendas weren't focused. On top of all this, people would come to him individually after these meetings to complain to him about them - and said they wanted their concerns kept confidential, and that they weren't willing to raise them in the group. They had formal time set aside for discussing how the meetings went and he couldn't remember the last time they had actually done this. No one raised this, either. Business Innovation ? Group Creativity Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation. Team Building requires one great dynamic for true Success - Mateship A Successful Team is built around mateship, around respect for your team mates and for yourself. I am not saying that everyone will get on like best buddies, what I noticed is that in all our 'differences' everyone was accepted as they were, got on within the boundaries of the club and got the job done. I have seen teams that have been full of stars, as I am sure you have too, and those teams have not succeeded. They have not achieved their full potentials as individuals or as a team. Team Development and Learning A tight knit team is a group of competent individuals who care deeply about each other and are fiercely committed to their mission. The members are highly motivated to combing their energy and expertise to achieve a common objective. From our observation and studies on team development, we have found three primary conditions that have to be met in order to attain higher levels of team performance and member satisfaction. Resources and Commitment Ownership and Heart Learning Team Building Celebration Plan -- Perfect For Any Time of Year When was your last team celebration? Have you been way too busy to bother? Sometimes we get so caught up in day-to-day work that we don't take the time to step back and celebrate success. Some teams may even consider team celebrations as "silly." Team Communication Critical To Success I'm often asked, "Why is my team always fighting fires instead of preparing for changes?" Finding the answer may take some digging. Here are a few possibilities. Team members: Team Member Feedback: A Priceless Communication Tool Feedback is such an important communication tool. Openness, honesty, candor, trust -- all of these are hallmarks of high performance teams and organizations. Good feedback skills are essential to any relationship. What College Taught Me About Teamwork Training I declared a Communications Major two years into school, after discovering that it was a subject in which I had sincere interest. Now that I have graduated from college, I look back at the myriad of group projects and interactions that I had with the fellow students. I can remember many stressful periods of working together, but also many rewarding times of working together and accomplishing our tasks as a group. In hindsight those tasks would have been much easier to complete had we received some basic teamwork training at the beginning of our program. Creating Unity In Your Company The other day I got a call from a friend of mine about an earlier conversation we'd had. Here's what we talked about: Years before he had started a company which has now grown to the point where it has many offices across the USA. On the surface it doesn't sound like there would be much to be unhappy about does it? Beyond Brainstorming ? Large Groups When leaders, consultants and managers require ideas, they automatically tend to herd people into a room and conduct a (usually ineffective) brainstorming session. One reason for their ineffectiveness is a failure to consider the impact of group size. Finding The Leader Within (Keys To Zen Leadership) Most believe that leadership is an innate quality that some have, not others. They believe that leaders are born not made. Nothing can be further from the truth. Each one of us has the potential to stand tall, be a light to others, clearly define a vision and mission and take charge. Within every individual an "Inner Leader" is waiting to be born. Brainstorm Ever lost for ideas while working in a group? One of the most often-used technique for generating many ideas is Brainstorming. Alex Osborn, a partner in an advertising agency, developed brainstorming techniques years ago in 1941 to help his employees to come up with many, many ideas for their advertising business. WIIFM - Making the Whats In It for Me? Question Work for You In the constantly changing world of Call Centers, asking agents to adapt to ever increasing demands, responsibilities and performance can be a challenge to even the most involved of managers. Being able to create buy in is always challenging, but if you can answer the WIIFM question you will be ahead of the game. Collaboration Software - Building an Office Without Walls The rise of the internet has given businesses a new way to think and function on both the individual level and as a whole. Today if you are in a business that doesn't have or use the internet, then you are giving up valuable advertising and productivity. Whether or not your company uses the internet we are all aware, to some degree, the effect the internet has on advertising and promoting businesses on a global scale. However, we may not fully understand what else the internet can do. We may not realize that using the internet to our advantage can also include increased productivity by building a virtual office; one without walls. Okay, so how do we build an office without walls then? In this article I will be discussing how to basically build this kind of office and how it can help you be more productive and organized. Resolving Workplace Conflict: 4 Ways to a Win-Win Solution The effects of conflict in the workplace are widespread and costly. Its prevalence, as indicated by three serious studies, shows that 24-60% of management time and energy is spent dealing with anger. This leads to decreased productivity, increased stress among employees, hampered performance, high turnover rate, absenteeism and at its worst, violence and death. Teamwork in the Workplace: A Definition A tight knit team is a group of competent individuals who care deeply about each other. They are fiercely committed to their mission, and are highly motivated to combing their energy and expertise to achieve a common objective. From our observation and studies on teamwork in the workplace, we have found three primary conditions that have to be met in order to attain higher levels of team performance and member satisfaction. Resources and Commitment Ownership and Heart Learning |
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