Techniques for making Teams effective

1. Set Guidelines:
   
   • Identification of what drives the team.
   • Clearly defined goals. Members should have clear understanding of the goals.
   • Clearly defined authority, responsibility and accountability.
   • Optimal size of team members.
   • Leader who leads the team.
   • Issues to be focused
   • Plans to set targets.
2.  Focus Teams on Performance:
• Skills of team members should be appropriate and relevant. Members should be provided with training.
• Cordial interpersonal relations should be developed.
• Motivation of members should be high.
• Commitment of team members should be total.
• Communication should be open and flow in all directions.
• Top management should create environment of commitment and trust.
• Performance evaluation should be a continuous process.
3. Revisit Work Design
• Autonomy: It is responsibility for what one does. It provides freedom in decision making.
• Skill variety: It is variety in the use of abilities and skills. Lack of variety leads to boredom.
• Task identity: It is doing the whole piece of work. It provides a sense of accomplishment.
• Task significance: It is the feeling that the work has meaning to people inside and outside the organization.
4. Manage Conflicts within Team
• Creating mutual trust among members.
• Unified commitment to team goals.
• Open communication with active listening. Removing barriers to communication.
• Effective leadership.

Barriers to Project Team Development

1. Divergent Outlooks, Priorities and Interests: The professional outlooks and priorities of team members may differ from project objectives and priorities. The interest of support organizations may differ from the interest of project team.
2. Unclear Project Objectives: Lack of clarity about project objectives and outcomes  produces:
1. Power struggles and conflict between team members.
2. Role ambiguities and role conflicts about who does what within the team.
3. Team Leadership Structure:
• Project leadership may suffer from poor credibility. There may be competition for leadership between formal and informal leaders. This hampers commitment of team members.
• The team structure may lack an effective reporting system. Task responsibilities may not be clearly defined.
• The project manager may be changed frequently.
4.  Poor Selection of Team Members:
• The project manager may have little say in the selection of team members. This may result in assignment of "available" persons to the project by functional managers.
• Poor selection of team members results in low motivation, discontent, conflict, lack of commitment, and poor performance.
5. Lack of Commitment: Team members may lack commitment. The sources of poor commitment by team members can be:
• Feelings of job insecurity in the project.
• Interpersonal conflicts within the team.
• Lack of clarity about the nature of rewards.
• Professional interests of team members may be elsewhere.
• Undue attention to certain individuals by the project manager.
• Failure to maintain commitment over project's life.
6. Communication Problems: Poor communication is the enemy of team building. Poor communication can result from low motivation, poor team morale and lack of attention to detail. The result is poor project control, coordination and work flow.
7. Lack of Top Management Support: Top management support may was or wane over the project life cycle. Timely feedback may be missing about project performance. Insufficient attention may be given to create the right project environment.

Project Team Characteristics

Project team is a formal team created to achieve the objectives and outcomes of the project. The characteristics of project team are as follow:

1. Performance: High performance and task efficiency of the team.
2. Innovative: Innovative and creative behavior on the part of team members. They seek better ways of doing things.
3. Commitment: High level of commitment of members to project objectives.
4. Member goals: The professional goals of team members are in harmony with project goals and requirements.
5. Interdependence: The project team members are highly interdependent and interface effectively.
6. Conflict Management: Functional conflict is encouraged and managed effectively for beneficial results.
7. Communication: Effective and open communication within the project team is present.
8. Trust: High level of trust and cooperative spirit among the team members.
9. Results - orientation: The project team is focused on achieving project results as the key priority.
10. Enthusiasm: The project team has high energy levels and enthusiasm. The level of morale is high. There is interest in team membership.
11. Change - orientation: The project team is concerned with managing change.

Team Building Factors

1. Clear Direction: Every member of the team should know why he is in the team. The project objective and outcomes should be clear. There should be no confusion about any aspect of the project. There should be congruence in the objectives of the project and the team members.
2. Project Culture: Culture refers to shared norms and values that guide behavior. The project manager should set team norms and behaviors to build project team. He should create conducive conditions in the project for effective teamwork. There should be no room for suspicion.
3. Relationships: The authority-responsibility relationships of team members should be clearly stated. The reporting relationships should also be clarified.
4. Targets: Individual and group targets should be set to improve performance. The workload distribution should not be uneven. Task assignments should be specific and clear.
5. Control: The team performance should be controlled. Actual performance should be compared with the targets to find out deviations. Corrective actions should be taken for deviations. Good performance should be rewarded. Feedback should be made available to the team.
6. Development: Personal growth and development of team members should be encouraged. Coaching should be provided in new skills. Training and development opportunities should be made available to the team.
7. Communication: Open sharing of information, opinions and feelings should be encouraged among team members. Information flow should be in all directions - vertical, horizontal, diagonal.
8. Leadership: The project manager should guide and influence team members to create team spirit to achieve project targets willingly and enthusiastically. He should build trust and respect in the team. Team identity should be created through participation, commitment, and loyalty. The creative  skills of the team should be utilized. There should be stability in project leadership for team building.
9. Conflict Management: Behavioral interactions result in conflicts. They arise out of mutual incompatibility in goals, roles, values, attitudes and interests. Project conflicts should be effectively managed for team building.
10. Team Stability: The project manager should strive for a relatively stable hand picked team till the life of the project. Stability facilitates team building. Team members should be properly selected.

Project Team Building

Projects involve more than one person. Team work is crucial to achieve project success. Team building is an ongoing process in projects.

A work group is a group that interacts primarily to share information and make decisions to help each member perform. It s performance is summation of what its members perform as individuals.

Related Topic: Concept of Teams and Types of Teams

A team is a group of people performing tasks together. Their individual efforts result in positive synergy through coordinated efforts. Its performance is greater than the summation of what its members perform as individuals. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Work Group                  Work Team

2+2=5

Synergistic efforts are always more than the individuals efforts. If all individuals work separately then the overall efforts will be 2 + 2 = 4. If same work is performed by the efforts of group or team then it produce 2+2=5 output.

A team has the following characteristics:

• Its goal is collective performance. It is guided by specific team objectives. 
• The outcome is positive synergy through collective outputs. It measures performance directly in terms of collective team effectiveness.
• The leadership role share shared. Team members interact and are interdependent on each other.
• The accountability is individual and mutual.
• The member skills are multiple and complementary.
• It discusses and decides through active problem solving meetings. It does real work.
• Teams build esprit de crops, build synergy, permit faster decision making, facilitate workforce diversity, increase performance, promote creativity and manage change.

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You may also like this:

• Team Building Factors
• Concept of Teams and Types of Teams
• Process of Team Development
• Barriers to Project Team Development
• Conceptual Skill and Team Building Skill
• Benefits of Project Management
• Construction Project

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