Success as a manager is heavily influenced by how well your team operates and what kind of results they achieve. Is your team able to solve problems? Can they resolve conflict? Are they enthusiastic and motivated to do their best? Do they work well together?

This course is designed for participants who want to develop their team leadership skills and unleash the talent of their individual team members.

Organizations do not remain static. They evolve in response to changing markets, demanding customers, and advancing technology. Whether you see someone who enjoys change or resists it, you’re feeling the effects.

In this session, you’ll get a quick overview of organizations today, and consider the impact of the shifts that have taken place on teams.

What kind of team do you enjoy working on the most? What gives you the most challenge? Sometimes we do not realize how much of what we do is influenced by the people and situations that we find ourselves in.

In this session, you’ll explore the descriptions behind different kinds of team structures, and consider the types of teams you are working on.

Everywhere we go, there are norms that are present. The fact that we stand aside so that people can get off the elevator is a norm. What other kids of norms do you follow?

In this session, you’ll consider what norms, rules, or guidelines are in place with the teams that you work on.

Understanding teams gets a bit deeper when we take what we have learned already, consider the elements of a particular model, and apply it to the work that we are doing.

In this session, we will consider the TORI model of teams, which includes trust, openness, realization, and interdependence.

There are things that teams do which help them to be successful, just as there are things that individuals do. What kinds of things do you do regularly to ensure that you achieve your goals and meet your commitments?

In this session, you’ll explore four activities that a group should undertake in order to grow into a team.

Teams go through a predictable sequence of growth, and your knowledge of the sequence can help you support your team and lead to the best possible outcomes together. Go team go!

In this session, you’ll learn about the five stages of team development that ill influence the way the team functions.

When we study great teams, we can determine the common factors that they share and then learn from them. You’ve probably seen some teams that work really well together, and others that have a way to go.

In this session, you’ll start looking at characteristics of effective teams as gathered by one of the leading thinkers about teams.

We’re human beings with ideas, wants, desires, and opinions! It’s just not possible that we will always agree with one another, but we can do our best to move through life without deliberately hurting anyone.

In this session, you’ll learn how to consider reaching consensus as opposed to having an argument.

If you are working on a team, you are part of a communication exchange. The better you get at communicating, the more effective you can be as a part of that team.

In this session, you’ll learn about how team players can support one another and encourage open communication.

Another of the elements of a successful team is shared leadership. Are you comfortable sharing a leadership role? How do you feel about someone sharing leadership with you? Do you delegate among and across teams?

In this session, you will consider what shared leadership can bring to your role as a leader or member of a team.

It’s pretty easy to go after the things that we need to do if we know what’s expected of us. If you are a leader at work or at home, how would you rate yourself at being clear in your role and explaining expectations to others?

In this session, you’ll consider clarity and how you can apply clear expectations in what you do.

You’ve learned some important aspects of teams so far, and now we want to look at how you see yourself within your teams, as well as what makes others tick.

In this session, you’ll consider your own team player type as well as those of the people that you are interacting with.

Teams with high levels of trust do well and are more productive than teams where trust is low, suspicion is prevalent, or people do not understand what is expected of them.

In this session, you’ll explore a trust/relationship model and how it can influence the results of your teamwork.

We talk about creativity frequently in some circles. However, although most workplaces want to foster creativity, we often do a pretty poor job at it. Creativity requires time to think, which is often in short supply in many hectic workplaces.

In this session, you’ll review the aspects of lateral and logical thinking and how they influence creative thinking.

Sometimes when you have to make a decision it can be hard just to generate a few options, let alone set up a plan. If you apply a process, however, you can make the solutions and action planning much easier.

In this session, you’ll learn about some very tangible creative thinking tools, including brainstorming, brainwriting, and the thinking hats.

The Four Factors

There are four factors that interact to shape a team’s performance and the development of trust. These factors are:

Effective problem solving involves a three-stage process:

Problem Solving Model Overview

Team problem solving needs a three-phase approach, just as individual problem solving does. The process needs to take place in an atmosphere of trust and respect.

Whenever you read a book on problem solving, this model, in some form or other, is sure to be there. It may have six steps rather than seven, or it may have five steps. However, the model doesn’t really change, just the authors’ ways of breaking it down.

As you work your way from problem to solution, you are actually shifting your focus.

Problems and Solutions

Problem One

A team member asks questions or makes comments that are off topic.

How to Prevent It

All meetings should have an agenda so that team members know what is to be discussed. This can include a quick agenda or meeting objectives recorded on a whiteboard or flip chart.

This requires tact and leadership by the chair of the meeting and the team leader (if they are two different people). You want team members to be involved and to get engaged. You also don’t want to shut them down so that they no longer participate.

Suggestions:

Dealing with Difficult People

Someone once said that the easiest way to deal with difficult people is to stay as far away from them as possible. This is great advice, but it's not always an option. In fact, if you avoid dealing with a touchy problem, it's not going to go away. In all probability, avoiding it will just make the problem worse.

Most of us dislike conflict. We want everything to go smoothly at work, and we want everyone to like one another and to like us. But is that a realistic scenario? Most of the time, it isn't.

And indeed, conflict can be a very positive thing for you and your workgroup. Why? If you try to ignore all conflict, and keep the anger and frustration tamped down, it can smolder underground, until all of a sudden, it blazes up out of control. This creates a problem that never needed to happen in the first place. Working through conflict can uncover creative and innovative ideas that you may not have heard about otherwise.

The Meaning of SWOT

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. SWOT analysis is used for understanding your Strengths and Weaknesses and for looking at the Opportunities and Threats you face. In a business sense, it can help you carve out your niche in the market and can help your business grow in the right way. In a team sense, it is used for identifying a team’s strengths and weaknesses, and for areas of growth and potential problems that lie ahead. It can even be used in a personal sense to develop your career.

It is a good idea to perform a SWOT analysis of your team at pre-defined points in time. These points depend on the type of team and how often it meets. For example, a team responsible for publishing a daily company newsletter may want to do a SWOT analysis as often as every two weeks. If the team was responsible for publishing a quarterly newsletter, however, the analysis would probably only be necessary once or twice a year.

As well, a SWOT analysis of the company can also help direct the team and make it more productive. For example, if the newsletter team knows that the company has a great opportunity to extend its market into Canada, it may discuss ways that the team can help the company achieve this goal.

Planning Tools

Outlining the Plan

After working with your team to identify a tentative solution, you must move on to the next phase, and create a realistic and achievable action plan together. When you create the plan together, you get their support. Make sure that the plan is clear and concise (as opposed to ambiguous or vague) so that people know what is coming up. Good action plans include all of the following:

Now that you have completed this course on Team Building: Developing High Performance Teams, how will you use the things you have learned? Creating a personal action plan can help you to stay on track, and on target. When you take responsibility for yourself and your results, you get things done.

In this session, you will be asked questions to help you plan your short-term and long-term goals. This final exercise is a way for you to synthesize the learning that you have done, and to put it into practice.

Congratulations! You have completed the course "Team Building: Developing High Performance Teams."

We started this course with a look at different organizational structures and how they affect the teams that we work in. Then, we learned about different types of teams and team norms.

Next, we moved onto team-building theories, including the TORI team building model, Richard Beckhart’s activities, and Tuckman’s stages of team development.

For the next part of the course, we focused on Glenn Parker’s 12 characteristics of effective teams:

Then, we moved onto team building tools, like creative thinking, problem solving, leader interventions, conflict resolution, and self-analysis. We wrapped everything up with a look at team action plans.

You should now feel ready to lead a team to success and help team members unlock their potential.