Building Your Team

What do you want to achieve ?

Most businesses start on the team building when something is not quite working well. This is not surprising! You don’t take your car to the garage when it is working well. But also like cars all teams need some fine tuning from time to time or occasionally a major overall.

But teams are much more complex than cars.

So where do we start?

We first have to sort out what the aim is. If you are the manger of say a sales team, this might be blindingly obvious. The problem is that the members of the team might see it slightly differently. Then if they will work towards one aim and you  work to another, bingo we have a problem!

So right at the start we need to agree:

  • Who is in the the team
  • Aims of the team. Ideally these should be:
    • Specific
    • Measurable
    • Achievable
    • Realistic
    • Time specific
    • When will we achieve the aim

Whether you are using our consultancy services or our team building course agreeing these aims is very important. If the team does not agree on the aims, you’ll never really achieve anything great!

Building the team plan

In order to agree the team’s aims we usually incorporate a brain storming session. This gives people a chance to put forward ambitious ideas, identify the vision and generally get things “off their chest”. With increased focus and a fresh perspective the group can then go onto develop more specific plans.

This will usually involve working closely with team members to see how individuals can offer different skills to a team.

Most teams need people who :

  • Motivate others
  • Organise plans
  • Get things started
  • Get things finished
  • Seek consensus

We use the Belbin work role methods to identify who is best at different tasks and where there are overlaps or gaps.

The result

We then use a range of methods to put flesh on the bones of the plan. This ultimately leads to a specific measurable plan for each individual and the team itself.

All of this has a positive effect on the morale of the team that the team can transfer immediately to the workplace.

Adelphi Associates
© 2006