3.3: Build Your Team

Almost all organizing takes place in teams, small groups that work together to accomplish goals. Whether our are starting a team from scratch, or you are looking at an existing team and wanting to improve it, the following advice can be helpful.

Here is some advice on building a team: 

• Have a vision. A team needs a vision to be passionate about. This vision can be developed in a number of ways:
  • It may be the vision of a strong and creative leader. 
  • It may simply be putting flesh on the bones of what the team is already doing. 
  • It may come out of an organization-wide or community-wide strategic planning process. 

Regardless of how the vision is arrived at, the team needs to buy into it if it is going to be successful. That means either the vision has to be consistent with what team members are already committed to, or that they have to be part of its development.

• Build team bonds. At the outset, it's often useful to build cohesiveness through some type of bonding activity appropriate to the nature of the group Some possibilities:
  • A retreat. 
  • Specific bonding activities. 
  • Socializing. 
  • Creating team traditions. 
• Involve the team in jointly planning how it will function and what the team and each of its members will do. The more control team members have over their work, the more likely they are to do it well.
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• Address personal issues. Any personal issues that get in the way of the smooth functioning of the team need to be confronted and resolved. Some of these can be worked out privately with a single person, while others may need the whole group's attention. Some common issues to address:
  • Conflicts or other issues between or among members of the group. 
  • A need for individual recognition. Individuals may put themselves forward constantly (correctly or incorrectly) as the originators of ideas, the solvers of problems, the driving force behind team successes, etc. There are times when this is appropriate, but if it's constant, it can destroy the cohesiveness of the team.
  • An inability to compromise or let go of ideas. 
  • Lack of commitment to the work. 

Problems arising from these kinds of issues can be the hardest to solve, but if they're left to fester, they can destroy a team.

• Establish team norms. Teams should be in agreement about the ways members treat one another and how issues are resolved. The team standards should be generated by the team as a whole, and hashed out so that everyone sees them as fair and reasonable.
  • Areas that might be covered include:
    • Civility. Even in the heat of argument, there should be general agreement that name-calling, personal attacks, threats, and the like are off limits. Discussion can be heated, but shouldn't threaten the glue that holds the team together.
    • Conflict resolution. There should be clear avenues for dealing with conflict that minimize the possibility of leaving it unresolved, or of it resulting in permanent splits between or among team members.
    • Communication. Team members need easy and direct access to one another, and also need to pass information around quickly and efficiently, so that no one is left out of the loop. Establishing systems to maintain this level of communication is an important piece of team formation.
    • Responsibilities. Team members already know their job responsibilities, but they also need to understand their personal responsibilities for maintaining the team. Someone having a problem with another team member's behavior, for instance, should be responsible for bringing it up in the appropriate way, rather than waiting for the other to change, or for someone else to notice and take care of it.Other similar responsibilities might include helping to keep everyone focused on the task, offering help when others are struggling, calling attention to problems in the work or among team members, etc.
    • Importance of the team and the mission. It can't be forced, but it adds greatly to team effectiveness if one of the norms is that the collective goal comes first, and if everyone on the team buys into it. If that can be established, the team is almost sure to be successful.
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• Hash out the logistics of working as a team. How does a team work best? Your team needs to establish how it can do its best work. Who's going to be responsible for what? What kind of meeting, conference, and consultation schedules can you establish to make sure that everyone always knows everything she needs to know? How can you keep team thinking and decision-making dynamic, i.e. able and ready to change a course of action or an idea when needed? All of these and many other questions must be addressed in order for the team to work smoothly and well.
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• Establish a good system of communication. Team members should know what others are doing and how decisions are made. THer should be good communication about when things are supposed to happen and who is doing what. Communication tools should be clear and not cluttered with unnecessary information.  
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• On a regular basis, go back over both successes and failures to understand what happened and learn for the future. It's important to look at errors and failures as chances for learning, not occasions for blame.
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• Provide both individual and team support. Make sure that everyone has what she needs to do her job. Pay attention to team members' personal needs as well. They'll work better if they don't have other things gnawing at them. If they need flexibility because of the needs of small children or elders, make sure they have it. If it will help the team to have food or amusement, or just space available for breaks, see what you can do about accommodating it. If people need resources such as a library, access to particular Internet sites, etc., try to provide it for them. If someone needs an afternoon off, make sure she takes it. In other words, do everything you can to make people happy, comfortable, and functional. It will pay dividends in quality of work life and quality of work for everyone.
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• Reward accomplishments like crazy. Reward the whole team for successes, and reward individuals for particularly good work. You may want to institute a system whereby team members recommend their colleagues for recognition. Use praise unsparingly, and criticism only when it's absolutely necessary, and your team will accomplish wonders.

Activity \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Reading Response Questions: Please reflect on this reading by writing a short response to these questions. Your answer can include personal experience and the writing does not need to be formal or polished. You are welcome to write as little as a sentence and as much as a paragraph. Think of it like journaling. 

1. Use the ideas above to analyze a group you have worked with, it can be your team in this class. Pick a few ways that things are going well and a few where they are not going well. Describe ways that the examples are related to the ideas in the reading.
2. Pick a quote from the reading and analyze why it is meaningful to you.

Adopted from Community Tool Box Chapter 13 Section 4. https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/leadership/leadership-ideas/team-building/main

The Community Tool Box is a service of the Center for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas. 

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