Track 16

Unit 7

business

teambuilding

pages 66 and 67

Listen for main ideas and listen for details.

You’ll remember in the last class we got started on styles of management. That’s a very broad topic so today I want to zero in on teambuilding.

It’s an essential part of good management practices so it’s important that we spend some time on this.

To begin, what’s the difference between our team and a group? think of a group as just some people together, they may know each other, they may not.

How is a team different? Here are three characteristics:

1) The people share a common goal

2) They depend on each other to reach that goal.

3) Together, they are responsible for what the team accomplishes.

Anyone who’s been on a sports team knows that a new team can feel more like a group of strangers you don’t know each other, you don’t know how to work together. A skillful coach though, can make that group into a strong team.

Teambuilding in business is similar, a skillful manager knows what to do.

Let’s use an example, there is a company called ours the design and advertising company.

Ours the design has just won a big contract to do an ad campaign for a cosmetics company.

The work needs to be completed within six months. This is the team’s common goal. Tina is the project manager. She’s hired some new employees. She needs to pull together a strong team of both old and new employees as quickly as possible.

They have to do their best work to get the campaign done on time.

Let’s look at the specific steps that Tina takes to build her team.

Step 1: She goes over all the work that needs to be done to complete the campaign.

Step 2: She makes an assessment of the skills of the employees, both old and new. She recognizes that they have different abilities and strengths. She asks herself, who is best suited for each task on the campaign.

Step 3: She holds meetings with the whole team. They discuss the project. She assigns roles and makes it clear what each person is responsible for.

Step 4: Tina identifies one main challenge. Building trust on the team quickly. She considers trust vital to the team success, trust develops as team members learn who they can rely on to do their part, who they can depend on. Trust takes time to develop and remember she has only six months to complete the campaign.

Step 5: to help build trust Tina addresses two areas.

1) communication within the team. Tina explains to team members how she wants them to communicate with each other.

she specifies in which situations they should use email, voicemail, videoconferencing, IMing, and so on.

The second area of trust building, Tina addresses is the team chemistry and by this I mean how the personalities of the team fit together, a basic consideration here is what is each person on the team like.

whose efficient, fun-loving, quiet, talkative and independent thinker and how do they each approach work, if team members are very different. This can cause conflicts and make it difficult to build a team feeling.

This takes us to Step 6: Tina decides to use face-to-face meetings to resolve conflicts as they arise.

Some people feel that email and voicemail are sufficient but sometimes you need to have people talking in the same room.

So, Tina sends out an email announcing the WT meeting every Wednesday at 9 o’clock. She keeps the meeting short so that members don’t see them as a waste of their time or an interference with their work.

The meetings need to enhance the team effort at these meetings. She gives team members an opportunity to discuss and resolve problems.

So, another way to build trust is for the members to get to know each other better. Which leads us to Step 7: Tina plans to activities for the whole team. A team picnic and a dinner so they can relax together outside of work.

Some of you may be asking yourselves is it important for Tina to plan these activities if they have a big contract isn’t it better to spend their time getting their work done.

It’s really hard to say it depends on who’s on the team in some South American or Asian countries like Brazil or Japan people do things to build the relationships first with the idea that the work will be better if they do, if you’re from these countries than you know what I’m talking about. But in the US, for example, the idea is more jump in and get the work going first and then the relationships will build within the team as the work gets done.

It brings us back to how to build trust.

If there are team members from different cultural backgrounds. They may disagree about how important the fun stuff is an effective manager needs to consider this.

So, in summary, I said that building trust is vital to teambuilding and good communication is an important part of the trust building step, in your study sessions. Please review the steps Tina takes and discuss why they’re important. That’s all for today.