Team building and team skills

In today's environment teams take many forms. Technology and geography lead to 'virtual teams' that might never physically meet. Projects require rapid formation of teams for a short term activity, and increasingly teamworking occurs across departments. This means that team building and team skills training are an important and recurring activity.

The amount of performance improvement that is possible from turned on teams is not small – it is enormous."       Tom Peters

For many organisations, the term "team building" implies a fun activity (possibly involving mud!), in which people get out of the office and do some 'bonding'. But developing team work and team skills, and building high performing teams requires a far more comprehensive approach.

A comprehensive approach to team building

Team building for high performance requires a more comprehensive approach. Depending on where the team is, this could include learning how teams are formed, psychometric profiling of team members, communication skills, anaylsis of team processes, and group work on vision, mission and values.

Here is a selection of some of the skills that support effective teams: -

• Understanding team processes
• Forming, storming, norming and performing
• Communication
• Goal setting
• Developing a team identity
• Developing shared vision, mission and values
• Understanding team roles
• Discovering and interpreting personal profiles
• Setting well formed outcomes
• Negotiation
• Decision making
• Giving and receiving feedback

Outcomes should include well formed teams with shared goals and values, congruent with those of both individual members and the organisation, and individuals with new transferable skills.

Find out about awaydays and corporate retreats

The best place to work on team building is in a different environment. Find out more about team awaydays and residential retreats on dedicated pages elsewhere on this web site.

We don't know whether you are just forming a team or launching a new project, have just recruited a new member, or would like better teamwork to improve the performance of your team.

You could contact us now. Or you could read more about our approach to training or explore more of the site, or our resources or books or learn about facilitated workshops or team challenge.

Or, of course, you could do nothing.

The choice is yours.

Why not contact us now