Building a Team
Maybe you’ve been assigned a team at work. Maybe you want to put a cycling group together. Or maybe you are in charge of a few volunteers for a one-off single-day task. Whatever the purpose the principles of team building are the same.
A strong team will have gone through the phases of “Form, Storm, Norm” and come out of it successfully together. Form refers to the initial honeymoon phase. Storm refers to an internal conflict in the group. Norm refers to the process of resolving the conflict through shared understanding and norm-making.
A strong team will have a diversity of individuals with different perspectives, strengths, and weaknesses. They will not always agree, and the arguments can get tiresome, but having multiple viewpoints means that fewer things will go missed.
A strong team will make use of everyone’s talents while still realizing that the 80-20 Rule is sure to apply. This rule states that, in an average group of 5 or more people, 20% of them will end up doing 80% of the work, while the other 80% of group members will avoid work and skate by doing only 20% of the work.
A strong team communicates an appropriate amount using appropriate methods.
A strong team knows its mission, vision, values, and measurable goals, like 4 boundary lines on a playing field. A good leader knows not to micromanage folks unless they stray outside the bounds of the playing field. Sometimes the boundaries change, suddenly putting a player or two out of bounds…it’s nobody’s fault, but it needs to be handled all the same.
Victories and losses are both shared within a strong team, and a strong team takes lessons from both.
Here endeth the lesson on building a team.
Bike Newbie 