Can you turn a group of individuals to a TEAM?

Success is a product of teamwork! This is true in all aspects from sports to the corporate world. Even successful athletes that play individual games such as golf and tennis have a team behind them.

The task of turning a group of individual into a cohesive and well integrated team is never an easy one; it takes more than team building. AmanziTel is in the process of integrating several individuals and groups into its team, how can that be done effectively? The task is the same for any company hiring new employees or merging human resources.

In my younger years I played team sports, basketball and volleyball and what I learned is that to build a well functioning team the roles of each individual must be clearly defined, a leader naturally emerges and a coach should provide directions. It does not stop there... to get the team to gel practice is needed, lots of it. Apart from the constant practice, team building activities are incorporated especially encouraging trust and confidence in each team members and most importantly open communications. During a basketball game for example winning or losing is a byproduct of how well the players communicate on the court.

Now, how do we apply that to the corporate world where the numbers of people in teams are larger? There of course several team performance models we can use. The easiest way to build successful teams I think is to assign groups into projects and in each group becomes the foundation of a team. A helpful way in planning projects where a group of individuals are turned into a cohesive team is GRPI – an acronym for goals, roles, process, and interpersonal relationships. The GRPI model suggests that team and their leader functions most effectively if they address the four aspects during team building:

* Goals – What is the team going to accomplish? What is its core mission?
* Roles – Who will do what on the team? Are the roles and responsibilities clear?
* Process – How will the team work together to solve problems and make decisions?
* Interpersonal relationships – How do the team members get along?

This same principle is also applied in sports. There are several models for high performing teams including ones that focus on individual strengths of each team member.

One particular model that is widely used in the corporate world is the Drexler - Sibbit model which is visually represented below. Developed by Allan Drexler, David Sibbet, and Russ Forrester, this model comprises seven stages to help optimize the workflow of a team effort: orientation, trust building, goal clarification, commitment, implementation, high performance, and renewal. Each stage is identified by the primary question of concern for team members when they are in that phase. When in the stages toward the top of the diagram (the beginning and end), teams will often feel a greater sense of freedom – the orientation and renewal stages provide opportunities for limitless potential and possibility. As a team moves into stages toward the bottom of the diagram (the middle stages), there are more constraints. Goals are set, and some things end up being included, while others do not.

There are seven stages to this bouncing ball type of performance model

(1)Orientation: The primary question asked during this first stage of the model is, “Why are we here?”. Identify a task that each individual finds personally beneficial, useful, or important to the team. There's a need for team members to feel more connected where they are more likely to participate in achieving the group’s goals.

(2) Trust Building: This is the stage during which “people want to know who they will work with – their expectations, agendas, and competencies.” Trust can only be established once team members become clear on their individual roles and responsibilities and establish a better understanding of each other’s work styles and experience.

(3) Goal Clarification: Identify a shared vision by discussing possibilities, variations, and the reasons these goals may or may not be the best options. It is important to make sure that everyone is on the same and to address any conflict between individual and team goals.

(4) Commitment: For the team to succeed in reaching its goal each individual must be committed to reaching the goal.

(5) Implementation: Success is 20% planning and 80% implementation where it can make or break the team and dominated by timing and scheduling. The key is to have good plan and adapt to unforeseen obstacles and to impose some shared processes for completing the team’s work such as online project management tools, flowcharts, or work plans.

(6) High Performance: The process outlined in the Drexler/Sibbet model is designed to increase the likelihood of becoming a high-performance team and spending more time in this stage.

(7) Renewal: You can think of renewal as both an ending and a new beginning. Each team member may want to reflect on what worked and didn’t work, what was achieved and can now be left behind, and what issues remain to be solved.