Team Building
by Ken Valenzuela, BeALeader.Net's Chief Editor
Team building is a must in today's world. Is clear that no one can be an expert in all the areas of a Business, in fact, business life is more complex than ever before. So team building it's a necessity and one of the areas every organization needs to master in order to get the most out of their labor force.
Team Definition
To better understand team building, we'll define what's a team. As stated in Team Leadership.
"A Team is a group of people who are interdependent, who share common goals, and who must coordinate their activities to achieve those goals". (Northouse, 2004)
With this definition on mind, the next question that arises is What kind of team do I want to build? There are several types of teams and each of them has a different purpose, let's take a look and see which one fits best our particular interests
Team Types
The team types you can consider for team building are:
- Problem Solving Teams(PST):These teams are the most common. They are typically formed
to bring in different backgrounds and experiences to face a given situation.
Basically they give recommendations and the management staff makes decisions based on those
recommendations.
- Self Directed Work Teams(SDWT):Most of the time these teams are groups of employees
brought together to deliver products or services. They have the right to make decisions within the
boundaries set by management.
- Leadership Teams(LT):The main reason to form a Leadership Team is to use the "collective
wisdom" of different managers in the organisation to shape strategies that represent the integration
of all the functions in the company. The main output of team like this are strategic plans and
organizational decisions.
- Dispersed Teams(DT):this kind of team has members who are not located in the same place. And most of the time their members are in different countries, have different cultures and of course live in different time zones. These teams are much like PST's but they also face "differences" challenges, which in the long term is what makes them unique.
Now that we have a glimpse of the team types, is important to look at the stages the teams must go through their lifecycle.
