{"id":618,"date":"2013-01-15T18:22:10","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T18:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/?p=618"},"modified":"2013-01-15T18:22:10","modified_gmt":"2013-01-15T18:22:10","slug":"team-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/team-building\/","title":{"rendered":"Team Building"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201dComing together is a beginning.\u00a0Keeping together is progress.\u00a0Working together is success.\u201d\u00a0<strong>Henry Ford<\/strong> (American Industrialist 1863-1947)<\/p>\n<p>It is really a wonderful feeling <strong>being part of a winning team,<\/strong> <strong>however every good thing comes to an\u00a0end.<\/strong> Teams change over time, the task or project comes to an end, people leave the team or other\u00a0teams become stronger.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever the situation, <strong>team building should be a continuing process and not a one-off event.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It may involve specific training in a start-up period, before a specific event or if performance is\u00a0deteriorating, <strong>but<\/strong> <strong>ongoing effort is needed to ensure team members work together in the best\u00a0possible way.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Generally people go about their day-to-day tasks without thinking they are members of the team.<br \/>\nThis is left up to the team leader, usually for periods when a new challenge occurs or goals\u00a0aren&#8217;t\u00a0being achieved.<\/p>\n<p><strong>There are two ways to look at the same situation:<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>1)<\/strong> \u201cit ain&#8217;t broken so don&#8217;t try fixing it\u201d (don&#8217;t change a winning team);<br \/>\n<strong>2)<\/strong> \u201cthere is always room for improvement\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Even a winning team can have problems,<\/strong> egos get inflated, a member who sees himself as the star of\u00a0the team or that thinks that the others aren&#8217;t pulling their weight and either success isn&#8217;t as sweet as\u00a0it was all we cease to perform well.<\/p>\n<p>I follow soccer and last year the team I support sold their top goal scorer, a player\u00a0who was described as \u2018being able to start an argument in an empty room\u2019.<br \/>\nAfter he left the team rose to the occasion and scored more goals as a whole. Basic team building focuses on improving communication and getting to know and trust the other team members so that work is more efficient. <strong>It also focuses on each member\u2019s values and goals and how they are aligned with those of the team.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Any coaching on interpersonal skills, leadership and motivation that a team member gets will benefit\u00a0that person and then filter through into the rest of the team. This shows the impact it can have and\u00a0that <strong>a team is much more than the \u2018sum\u2019 of its members.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Team coaching is also important &#8211; sports is a great example \u2013 <strong>but\u00a0wouldn&#8217;t\u00a0it be great if we had more\u00a0top performers and winning teams in business and in family lives?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A periodic review of both how the team and individuals are performing can identify existing and\u00a0potential difficulties that can be resolved before they become serious problems.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Multiple teams can be a tricky problem especially where there are goals that don&#8217;t fit together well\u00a0all (or are even conflicting).\u00a0<\/strong>Take the situation of the CFO (financial director) of a company, who should be the team leader of the\u00a0finance department. His team may have deadlines for reporting and for accounts receivable. Logistics\u00a0have goals for inventory that require shipment to customers as soon as possible, so they tend to\u00a0rush goods out on the last day of the months hence adding \u2018one month to the results of their fellow\u00a0workers in collections. On the other hand the salesmen have goals on sales volume so a credit hold complicates their achieving their objectives.<\/p>\n<p>The key here, as for all things, is to <strong>keep in mind the big picture and the best interest of the company\u00a0as a whole instead of just their department.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Good team leaders are goal-oriented, promote a safe environment where members can openly\u00a0discuss issues and build trust among them, set manageable goals and priorities, provide feedback\u00a0and recognize and reward excellent performance.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Team building focuses in bringing out the best in a team to ensure self-development, positive\u00a0communication, and excellent results.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/team-building\/colored_puzzle_connection_800_clr_9893\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-622\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-622\" alt=\"colored_puzzle_connection_800_clr_9893\" src=\"http:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/colored_puzzle_connection_800_clr_9893-300x262.png\" width=\"108\" height=\"94\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/colored_puzzle_connection_800_clr_9893-300x262.png 300w, https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/colored_puzzle_connection_800_clr_9893.png 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 108px) 100vw, 108px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201dComing together is a beginning.\u00a0Keeping together is progress.\u00a0Working together is success.\u201d\u00a0Henry Ford (American Industrialist 1863-1947) It is really a wonderful feeling being part of a winning team, however every good thing comes to an\u00a0end. Teams change over time, the task or project comes to an end, people leave the team or other\u00a0teams become stronger. Whatever [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":624,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions\/624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}