Team Builds
So much has been said and written – and tried – to achieve an effective team. And then to sustain effective team behaviour. Members of teams are loaded into inflatables and sent down rapids; tied by their ankles and dropped off bridges; lowered on ropes down sheer cliffs; or required to compete, perform, show off or make fools of themselves.
Teams are taken to exotic, expensive destinations to be amused, amazed, entertained, even brainwashed. Liquor bills are as high as the hype.
But often the hype disappears before the bruises and blisters. And there is no new real effectiveness – just tiredness, perhaps a hangover, a disenchanted family and the expectation that next year’s will be bigger and more exotic.
Why no exciting new levels of effectiveness? Because we aren’t addressing what a team really is and what truly drives team effectiveness.
What is a team?
A team is a strategy to achieve an objective – a group of people brought together because the leader/leaders cannot achieve the objective on their own. If we could do it alone it’s much less trouble!
While that is why we form them, it isn’t necessarily why we join them as individuals.
We join teams because we believe that belonging to the team gives us our best chance of achieving our own objectives. If we could achieve them on our own, we wouldn’t join a team. So we are mutually interdependent and there are as many objectives to be achieved as there are members of the team - PLUS ONE - which is the original objective for which the team was formed. Never just the team objective – yet when we observe team building excursions and efforts, there is always only one focus – ‘our team vision, our team mission, our team strategies’. No time or opportunity to debate my personal mission or vision or my personal strategy.
PowerPoint presentations, industrial theatre, speeches, SWOT scenarios about themes, scenes and corporate dreams! But all about that single focus – THE TEAM!
I may have joined the team because I see in it the opportunity to meet my family objectives too – in addition to my own. That adds to the complexity of the team and what it needs to do to become truly effective.
If there is nothing in the ‘team build’ that benefits me and my family directly, and I did not have to go, I might prefer to have spent the time at home with my family – I don’t spend enough time with them anyway.
What drives team effectiveness?
Power, sheer coercive power, doesn’t. If we believed in power, we would be tempted to go back to the slave galley and the cat o’ nine tails (Though some participants in the moments just before they leave the safety of the bridge and trust themselves to a piece of elastic, might prefer a mild lashing!)
An expensive adventure away from the office is more subtle and more fun for the leaders – but no more effective.
Expensive hype doesn’t drive team effectiveness for long either.
Team effectiveness is driven, achieved and sustained by willing positive human energy. The combined energy of all the members. The net positive willing energy after the deduction of the negative energy of some - for not every member of the team brings positive willing energy. There is always the ‘BMW’ – the bitch, moan and whine.
Team effectiveness requires a deep understanding and respect for positive willing human energy – at the level of the individual, in relationships and in teams.
That is what we teach – it is sustainable, fascinating and fun!
Colin Hall
2004
