Module 10. Building and reinforcing your team. teams don't immediately come together and experience success overnight. In fact, it takes a good leader to work at turning a group of people into an effective team. This module explores the various aspects of building and improving your team. Identifying team strengths and weaknesses.
One of the most important activities that you will need to engage in as a leader is constantly assessing the state of your team, each individual employee and yourself. Before you can put employees in a position to succeed you have to have a good idea of what their strengths and weaknesses are. Here are some guidelines for how to assess teams and team members strengths and weaknesses include other team members in the assessment Process allow each member of the team a chance to identify both his or her and other team members strengths and weaknesses. Ideally, this can be done privately so that no team member develops resentment towards another for perceived unwarranted criticism. This also allows you to compare your assessment with others. When an employee or an entire team experienced a failure or success, try to identify why this came about and who was most responsible.
In the case of failure, identifying the responsible person is not about casting blame. But it's all about identifying what went wrong so you know, where and how to improve when you are analyzing success. It is good to give credit when someone other than yourself was particularly instrumental in the success determine how consistently Employee performs in a given row. If that employee is consistently unsuccessful, try to find another opportunity in a row for that employee to be successful. Identify the skills necessary for success in certain roles. And when an employee is consistently successful in that role, note the skills as part of that employee skill set.
If an employee fails to perform consistently, you may also identify these skills as weaknesses in that particular employee. Observe employees when they act alone or outside of the team structure in order to determine how their strengths and weaknesses might change in different contexts. Perhaps it is not a lack of particular skill that is the weakness but the inability to apply the skill in a team setting or vice versa. identified Team rose. Dr. Meredith Belbin identifies nine team roles that can help make up a balanced and effective team. The plant the plant is a highly creative and unconventional member of a team.
They tend to be strong and thinking outside the box, but their primary weakness is a tendency to be forgetful. Then there's the monitor evaluator. The me this person is good at providing a logical and dispassionate view of the range of decisions before a team. They tend to have a difficulties when being overly critical and slow moving. The coordinator or the CEO, this employee often will be you. They help the team to focus on goals and delegated worked effectively.
They tend either to over delegate or under delegate and end up micromanaging the resource investigator or the ROI. This employee will tend to understand how your team works can be translated into the rest of the world. They will be good at understanding the competition and developing connections with others outside inside the teamwork framework. But they can have difficulties with following up or getting in depth information. The implementer this role involves someone who is good at taking theory and putting it into practice. They try to find strategies on how to make an idea work in the most efficient manner.
They have difficulty considering an alternative approaches and may be slow to give up on a favorite idea completer finishers. These team members excel at the end of a task, they make sure everything is functioning ideally. And these employees act as a kind of quality control their strength and having high standards can also be their weakness, and that they tend to be perfectionist, team workers, or Tw these employees are really good at smoothing over the tensions and difficulties that come up when people are working hard on creative endeavors. They excel at working and playing with others, but they can be indecisive when it comes time to make team decisions about the best course of action shapers. These employees act as a kind of engine for the team. They can effectively get others going and create momentum.
Typically, shapers are highly driven and enthused As individuals, their weaknesses tend to be strong and overly aggressive, and temperamental in their desire to get team's work done. The specialist, the specialist of the group might only know how to do one thing but he or she is an expert at it. Their focus is narrow and depth, which can both be their strengths and their weaknesses. An ideal team will be balanced with all nine roles being expressed. Some many teams are smaller than nine people and you may find a different team members excel at multiple roles. And when you identify key strengths and one of your employees for an example, an employee who is highly energetic, then you can help them fulfill one or more roles on a team.
An energetic employee for an example might be good at being a shaper as well as being a resource investigator. Someone who is highly skilled Critical can be either a complete finisher or a monitor evaluator or both. Design exercises with specific goals. Often you may want to give team members a break from working on their normal projects to meet as teams and improve their team around are functioning. Sometimes getting a team together for a meeting or a team building activity can actually be an exercise of futility. In order to use meetings team building exercises effectively, it is helpful to have specific goals in mind to identify those goals to your team members and to follow up.
For an example, doing a trust building exercise after a time when team members were at each other's throats is helpful. But you only can do the trust building exercises that one time and after a while team members will forget the point or lose The benefits they gained from engaging in an exercise that one time when planning a meeting, for instance, identify why the meeting is necessary and plan an agenda to keep the meeting organized. Sometimes the necessity is quite simple. For example, scheduling time for a team members to play together can help them to recharge after a particularly grueling project. It can also help them build more of a rapport with each other. Have any Pacific goals for an activity does not preclude having activity to achieve multiple goals.
What to avoid? When planning team building exercises, make sure that you don't undermine your attempt to improve your team. Here are some suggestions of what to avoid in team building. Make sure that your team building goals are relevant to your team needs so that they are worth taking regular time away from your other work to improve. Make sure that your team building activities are not simply one time affairs, but they are consistently worked on to reinforce your goals for exercise. While athletics can be fun for many employees, they can also be destructive towards building team around, especially if they are focused simply on competition and winning.
If you use team building exercises trying to incorporate them more frequently than once or twice a year. incorporating these exercises monthly or weekly helps to reinforce your goals.