Team Building Resources » Team exercises

Team building exercises to optimise the key characteristics of successful teams

Lynn — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:25:58 +0000

Understanding the characteristics of successful teams allows you to evaluate your own team to determine where the team is doing well and where the opportunity areas may be. There are 5 key characteristics that you find in successful teams:

1. Trust – openness and commitment
2. Effective communication – clear, unguarded and effective listening
3. Effective processes – decision making, conflict management and problem solving
4. Value diversity – diversity of capabilities, clarity of roles and interdependencies
5. Results focused – clear goals and plans

Each of these 5 key areas build on each other, if there is no trust in the team then the other factors don’t really get a chance to come into play, if there isn’t effective communication then working through processes become extremely difficult and so on.

Building on understanding these key characteristics when you are embarking on either a 3rd party team building exercise or an in house activity, keep the following key tension points in mind and design your team building exercise to bring these different perspectives to the forefront. Different personalities have different viewpoints on how to approach tasks, understanding the value that each personality can bring and the tension points that can arise will allow team members to work out differences during a “simulation” so they can work together better when real results are required. Some key tension points are:

• Approach and value of planning versus doing
• Risk taking
• Structure versus flexibility
• Focus on nurturing the task versus the individuals

Try to follow the team building activity with a good discussion around how team members felt about their performance in each of these key areas, to solidify the team learning and translate it back to their everyday work environment.

Lynn
Team Enthusiast

Survivor Tocantins – Team Training – Learning From Spencer – Episode 5

Lynn — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:52:01 +0000

During episode 5 it appeared that Spencer would be around for quite a while, he was connecting nicely with team mates, no angry outburst, working around camp… until the immunity challenge.

A key characteristic of successful teams is the attitude and actions of team members to be fully committed. Capability is important but it’s when team members underperform to their team expectations it has the greatest impact within the team.

Spencer’s underperformance was very visible and during a crucial activity. So what can you learn from Spencer when you are working on a team? Being 100% committed to all team goals and objectives is a great aspiration but unfortunately impractical. As human beings we have our good and bad days, luckily our work environments don’t work exactly like survivor where we risk being voted off the team every 3 days. That said being very conscious of when your team is counting on your to deliver and coming through with 100% commitment. The capability part most team mates will be reasonable about, it’s the perceived commitment that strikes an emotional reaction from team members.

Survivor Tocantins – Team Exercises – Learning From Sandy – Episode 4

Lynn — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:10:24 +0000

From the very first episode Sandy had a target on her back as being someone that was going to get voted off early. Initially unfortunately it was probably simply a matter of age and gender prejudice, but Sandy did have time to change things. But she didn’t seize the opportunity to work well with the team. Although she didn’t get the opportunity to bond with the team on their long haul to camp she did have a choice to make about how she spent her time. Unfortunately her commitment was to herself and not the team taking the opportunity to search for the immunity idol versus starting the task of building a camp for the team. This was the first flaw in team dynamics for Sandy, she started from behind and threw away the opportunity to pull herself forward. During the team exercises she did prove herself to be capable but it just wasn’t enough to offset the negative effects of her basic personality on the team chemistry. Good team chemistry is a key factor in successful teams. So what do you do if you find yourself on a team with another team member that just doesn’t fit in but you know they do have capabilities that could contribute to the team?

Start with yourself, recognize that as human beings we prefer to spend time around people we like, that said, work should not be about a popularity contest, we should be and should respect others for their capabilities and contributions to the success of the common goal of the team. So clearly define for yourself what trait it is that is causing the team chemistry problem.
Develop your feedback skills by determining how you could communicate to the individual to tone down a certain element of their personality without being a person attack.
Actively communicate to other team members the skills and capabilities you see in the team member with the chemistry issue raising their awareness of those skills that will hopefully offset the focus on the personality trait that is causing the team chemistry problem.

What do you do if you suspect you are the person on the team that is causing a team chemistry issue? Don’t worry if you are self reflective enough to ask the question you are probably well dialled in to team dynamics and managing your team chemistry just fine.
Lynn
Team Building Enthusiast