Eight Easy Suggestions for Building a Better Team

by

Rob Adams McKean
and Patricia A. Sordill

1. Involve. Involve your team members in decision-making as early as possible; setting strategy, refining team goals and objectives, picking new members, defining roles, etc.
   
   
2. Clarify. Clearly define roles, expectations, standards, norms, reward and punishment systems, review processes, authority, responsibilities, time tables, and anything else pertinent to the team. The more this is done in collaboration with team members, the better.
   
   
3. Value. Help members to feel valued and to recognize the value of others. Give them room in early stages to get to know each other and to learn how they fit into the scheme of things.
   
   
4. Support. Once team members define their roles and understand their objectives, send them in the right direction and support them as needed. Give team members a chance to learn through experience. Redirect them as necessary, but most often act as coach and mentor. Model the way, listen, encourage, and let members take responsibility for themselves and for team success.
   
   
5. Mediate. Recognize that teams start out in a sort of limbo and that friction may develop as team members begin working together and jockeying for position. Depersonalize conflicts and help members clarify their roles and set new, neutral goals.
   
   
6. Empower. It is essential to accept that leadership can come from within the team. In fact, the more mature the team, the less it may need an outside leader, or even a single internal leader. Help your team members learn to self-monitor and self-manage—and permit them to do it.
   
   
7. Bend. Understand that flexibility, adaptability, and willingness to change are critical to team leadership.
   
   
8. Conclude. Some teams have endless lives, while others are short-lived and exist only for the duration of individual projects. Help your team gracefully disband when appropriate.
   

Copyright 2000 R.A. McKean and P.A. Sordill