Team Building, Team Leadership and Motivation

Teamwork and team working involves a challenge to many of your management skills and is often considered to be something that "just happens". However if you can get your teams working effectively then you make your own job easier and more productive.

But it won't work unless people see the benefit of team building and teamwork. It is not enough to get your group together off site and have a few icebreaker games. If you want your team building efforts to work, you have to show the members of the team that it benefits each of them personally. There is very little "team" in teamwork without a lot of motivation. In many situations today, individual accomplishment has become more highly valued than team efforts. That is the environment you have to overcome in order to build your group at work into a team.

How to Get Started Team Building

Do you think of your people as a team? They won't think of themselves as a team if you don't. Are you able to reward team performance, or only individual achievements? If you are to succeed at team building you must be able to reward team performance. That isn't to say it's only about money. Let your group know that they are a team, that you expect them to perform as a team, and that you will reward their successes as a team. That's the first step toward team building. Remember that team building must be something you do every day. It is not something you can just do twice a year at some off-site location.

Motivate Team Building

If you want team building to work, it's not enough just to tell them that they are a team and must perform as one. You also have to show the members of the team that it benefits them personally. Most of us are selfish individuals. We look out for ourselves and do what benefits us most. We have to be motivated to include anyone else. Fortunately, in lots of situations it is pretty easy for us to see the benefits of including others, so we do that readily. Parents, for instance, watch out for their children. Money is a strong motivator and its one you can use as a manager. However, by far the strongest motivator available to a manager is self esteem. The more the individual sees a benefit to his or her self esteem from supporting the team, the more successful your team building efforts will be.

First of all, your people have to acknowledge that they are part of a team. You can reinforce this by holding team meetings, posting team news on the notice board or your intranet, and tracking team performance against team goals. Secondly, they have to believe that the team is capable of producing more than the sum of its members. You may have a great customer service representative on your team, but without the cooperation of the other members of the team he or she would not be able to handle as many calls. You have to make this readily apparent to them and clearly define the increased rewards they can achieve through teamwork.

Reinforce Team Building Efforts

Challenge your team with higher and higher goals. Acknowledge and celebrate their successes in meeting and exceeding those team goals, but celebrate them as individuals within the team. Make sure they have fun at work. They will enjoy beating the goals you set for the team because they get a significant boost in self esteem from belonging to a winning team.

You should know your team well enough to know whether or not something like team badges or tee-shirts would be a positive reinforcement for them.

If you go for something like that, involve the team in selecting either the motto or the object on which it is printed.

Top Issues you need to influence and develop within your team