Team
management tips and fun team-building activities to boost team performance,
collaboration and morale
Best-Practices Leadership: Team
Management Tips examines key ways
to reinvigorate teams and improve their performance, along with fun
team-building activities to reward and motivate all your team players.
Read how businesses of all sizes are getting
creative with team icebreakers and fun team-building exercises—everything from
scavenger hunts, “cruises to nowhere” and community walk/runs to building
models of team projects out of Legos. And, while you’re learning new ways to
pump up your team’s performance, now might be a good time to undertake our
Leadership Assessment Exercise to gauge your own performance as a team manager.
BEST-PRACTICES LEADERSHIP: TEAM
MANAGEMENT TIP #1
‘HOT’
TACTICS FOR HEATING UP YOUR TEAM
“Hot teams” improvise, do more work with less
supervision and make the extra effort to follow through.
Management consultant Laurence Haughton offers
this advice for turning ordinary groups into hot teams:
1. Don’t become rule-bound. Rules, intended to streamline and safeguard work, can
hamstring your operation when common sense calls for exceptions. Before setting
rules, ask if they’re really needed.
2. Don’t criticize in public. Embarrassing employees in front of the team will only come back
to bite you. Mean bosses think that they’re holding people accountable, but
what they’re really doing is inciting payback.
3. Show you care. If you like your people and show it, they’ll enjoy helping
you when crunch time comes.
4. Listen.
Make it one on one, as well as in groups. Listening helps you correct
misinformation, relax barriers, increase trust and let people feel good about
what they do for a living.
5. Make it their mission. Even when a project is not terribly exciting, you can make the
work more engaging. Creating roles for each person, for example, gives people a
sense of being special.
6. Let them decide. Allowing people to devise their own processes boosts morale.
Just make sure those processes keep improving.
·
Adapted from “Creating
Hot Teams,” Laurence Haughton, Leader to Leader
BEST-PRACTICES LEADERSHIP: TEAM
MANAGEMENT TIP #2
BRING
THE OFF-SITE ENERGY OF TEAM-BUILDING EXERCISES BACK TO THE OFFICE
The typical off-site meeting is chock-full of
PowerPoint presentations, flip charts and team-building exercises. But back at
work months later, what actually changes?
Lead an off-site event that leaves your team
energized and focused:
1.
Know what victory looks like. How will you know if you’ve achieved
it? When Timberland
Co. needed to revamp and add new products, they held an off-site event to
jump-start things. They invited designers, engineers and marketers from the
company to spend one week hashing it out, a process that normally takes years.
Result: They met their goals. “Having that concrete goal allowed us to walk the
line between exploring creative flights of fancy and remaining results driven,”
VP Doug Clark said.
2.
Make sure team-building exercises relate to solving a real
problem. During Ford’s
off-site event, Carolyn Lantz, executive director of brand imaging, gave
executives $50 each and put them on a bus to an Old Navy store. “I told them,
‘You have 20 minutes to find and purchase an outfit that you have to wear
tomorrow. You are busy people looking for great design at a great price. Those
are Ford’s customers.’” The exercise made a point: Ford’s products need to be
well designed, but democratically priced.
—Adapted from “Can This Off-Site Be Saved?”
Cheryl Dahle, Fast Company, www.FastCompany.com
BEST-PRACTICES LEADERSHIP: TEAM
MANAGEMENT TIP #3
FIGHT
OFF TEAM COMPLACENCY: 5 STRATEGIES FOR MAKING TEAM-BUILDING EXERCISES PART OF
YOUR DAILY ROUTINE
Soon after a team forms, the excitement often
peaks. Teammates dream of big accomplishments, set grandiose goals and promise
to collaborate.
But when the initial enthusiasm dies down, the
spirited atmosphere fades and a more solemn routine emerges. Senior executives
who attended the first few team meetings no longer show up. New developments
(or crises!) within the organization redirect management’s focus away from the
group’s activities. Some team members start slacking off or immersing
themselves in other projects, leaving less time to devote to the group.
If this pattern unfolds at your workplace, step
in and breathe new life into your team. Here’s how:
·
Inject new blood. Invite
a few high-energy types to join the team. Don’t put them in charge or they’ll
threaten the team leader and the informal hierarchy that’s already formed.
Instead, just ask them to lend their talents and revitalize the group.
·
Tape the team. When a
lethargic public speaker needs to liven up, a smart speech coach will videotape
the individual’s presentation and play it back. By raising the speaker’s
self-awareness, the tape serves as a training tool. The same goes when you want
to jolt a team to rise to a higher level. Lecturing a team to improve might
fall upon deaf ears, but a videotape of their meetings can show them just how
listless they’ve become.
·
Turn your team into
trainers. Form a new team, and ask your current group to serve as an “advisory
board” to it. Arrange for the veterans to coach the rookies. Encourage them to
share their experiences about teamwork and isolate the kind of behaviors that
facilitate more effective collaboration. You may want to create a buddy system,
whereby each seasoned team member mentors someone in the new group.
·
Strip away routine.
Study how a tired team got that way. Disrupt predictable patterns by having the
group meet in new places (a nearby park, a client’s facility, your home) and
work together in new ways. Instead of having them break into the same small
cliques, for instance, juggle the mix so that team members who normally don’t
work closely together will get a chance to know each other better. Or, instead
of having them sit in the same places, rearrange the seating configuration so
that everyone’s in a circle.
·
Host an outing. Invite
the team to join you on a weekend hike or family picnic. Schedule fun
activities so that participants get to know each other with their guard down.
Even if you already tried this early on, do it again now that the team has been
together for a while. When the group returns to work, they’ll have a newfound
camaraderie, which will translate into more trust and teamwork.
BEST-PRACTICES LEADERSHIP: TEAM
MANAGEMENT TIP #4
IS
YOUR TEAM STUCK? GET THEM UNSTUCK
The Wisdom of Teams: Creating
the High-Performance Organization by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, one of the first
books to define the team phenomenon, still offers some of the best advice for
managing them. Here’s how to get a stalled team unstuck:
·
Revisit the basics. Ask
the team to rethink its purpose, approach and goals.
·
Achieve some small wins.
Even noncritical short-term wins can get a team moving forward again.
·
Introduce fresh new
approaches, ideas and information. Simply providing new customer case studies
or front-line work measures can end the stalemate.
·
Set up fresh training
for the team. It could center on key skills, teamwork or goal-setting.
·
Juggle the team’s
membership or change its leadership. Leaders who were appointed by upper
management can seem irreplaceable to other team members. Don’t be afraid to
intervene and mandate a change.
It’s great when the team applies some of these
energizing tactics from within, without being asked. But if that doesn’t
happen, your job as a leader is to intervene and shake things up.
·
Adapted from the classic
1993 book, The Wisdom of Teams, Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, HarperCollins
BEST-PRACTICES LEADERSHIP: TEAM
MANAGEMENT TIP #5
JOE
TORRE’S RULES FOR LEADING A TEAM
Baseball manager Joe Torre has led far more
diverse and ego-driven teams than most of us ever will. Yet, Torre’s teams have
won repeatedly, thanks to these four “rules of straight communication” he has
developed over the years:
1.
Remember that every
player has a special need for one of these things: motivation, reassurance or
technical help. Determine what that need is and meet it.
2.
Deliver tightly focused,
positive messages, such as a quick word of praise for a good play. Simple words
of appreciation are more powerful motivators than many leaders expect.
3.
Work hard to establish
rapport with team members from backgrounds that are different from your own. It
does take extra work, but the results can be extraordinary.
4.
Let team members know
that you accept the full range of their emotions, including fear and
uncertainty. Unless people admit their fear, they will never be able to
confront obstacles and grow.
·
Adapted from Joe Torre’s Ground Rules for
Winners, Joe Torre and Henry
Dreher, Hyperion
BEST-PRACTICES LEADERSHIP: TEAM MANAGEMENT TIP #6
HIGH-PERFORMING TEAMS EXHIBIT 5 TRAITS
An effective team displays five baseline
criteria, according to management consultant Patrick
Lencioni:
1.
Team members trust each
other.
2.
They deal constructively
with conflict.
3.
They are committed to
doing well.
4.
They feel personally
accountable for the team’s success.
5.
They focus on achieving results
as a team, not just as individuals who happen to work together.
—Adapted from The Five Dysfunctions of a
Team: A Leadership Fable,
Patrick Lencioni, Jossey-Bass
BEST-PRACTICES LEADERSHIP: TEAM MANAGEMENT TIP #7
TAP INTO CREATIVE, FUN TEAM-BUILDING ACTIVITIES
You’ve been put in charge of planning
team-building exercises for your eight person team? To get you started, here
are a few ideas from some administrative professionals:
·
Find the perfect
activity in The Big Book of Team Building Games: TrustBuilding Activities,
Team Spirit Exercises, and Other Fun Things to Do (McGraw-Hill) or Quick Teambuilding Activities
for Busy Managers: 50 Exercises That Get Results in Just 15 Minutes (AMACOM).
·
Bowl your way to tighter
bonds. Affordable, low-stress team sports are a good bet for smaller budgets.
Another sporty idea for teams: bocce ball.
·
Spring for a big-budget
adventure, such as the “BG U.S. Challenge” (www.ChallengerWorld.com), a two-day
adventure race. One administrative professional says it was “the best
experience of my life! We have to train throughout the year (hiking, running,
mountain biking and paddling), and that is also a great team builder.”
·
Another option for
bigger budgets: facilitated team building. For example, Adventure Associates
(www.AdventureAssoc.com) offers a range of exercises, from navigating a ropes
course to assembling a tent while blindfolded.
·
Give back to the
community as a team. Ideas: Organize a clothing
drive, work at a food bank, clean up a neighborhood or volunteer for Habitat
for Humanity. You can also call your local United Way for suggestions. “A
contribution of time, energy and knowledge to the community will strengthen a
team of individuals who share the experience,” writes one administrative
professional.
BEST-PRACTICES LEADERSHIP: TEAM MANAGEMENT TIP #8
IS YOUR TEAM THE IDEAL SIZE?
Is your team the ideal size? When it comes to
the ideal team, more is definitely not merrier. That’s according to researchers
who study well-functioning teams. If you’re finding it tough to accomplish much
with a team project you’re working on, consider whether you have too many heads
on the task.
Psychologist Ivan Steiner found that each time
you add a person to a team, productivity goes up, but so do inefficiencies. For
example, coordinating the group becomes trickier.
In 1970, two professors from Harvard University
asked large and small teams to do several tasks, and then asked them whether
they felt their group was too small or too large for the task. Using feedback
from the groups, the professors calculated the ideal team size: 4.6.
Bottom line: If you try to include everyone on a team,
you might find that the group subdivides itself into cliques. Look for ways to
logically subdivide the group or trim the overall head count.
—Adapted from “Team-O-Nomics,” Jia Lynn
Yang, Fortune
BEST-PRACTICES LEADERSHIP: TEAM MANAGEMENT TIP #9
HOW TO REFUEL A SPUTTERING TEAM
You’re thinking your team needs to push itself
harder, but how do you determine that? Look for hard evidence. Ask: What has it
accomplished so far?
Here’s a good exercise to measure your team’s
progress to date:
At your next meeting, ask each team member to
list “what you see as the team’s top five achievements so far.” Give them no
more than five minutes to write down their responses, and then collect them.
Explain that they don’t need to include their names—you’re not grading their
answers as much as using them as a learning tool.
Share the results with the group. Rank the
“consensus achievements,” the ones that appear in the most responses. Write
these items on a flip chart. Then ask the group whether they’re satisfied with
their work thus far. Encourage them to discuss the significance of their
achievements. Prod them to explore whether they’re capable of making a more
substantive, lasting contribution to the bottom line.
Another way to tell whether you’re managing a
sputtering team: Sit in on a few meetings and observe the group’s interaction.
Then, for each meeting, complete the exercise “Take a Team Diagnostic Exam.”
(See box on page 10.)
To refuel a sputtering team, redirect the
group’s focus away from easy, safe tasks to more ambitious stretch goals.
Motivate them to “think big” by dangling fresh, meaningful rewards for stellar
effort. Offer to give each team member a choice of three prizes if the group
attains specific, measurable objectives.
Here’s an example:
Three months after you formed a team to study high
employee turnover, the group hasn’t come up with any useful research or solid
recommendations. It started out strong but has since stalled. You present the
group with this challenge: “If you were the head of human resources, what steps
would you take to reduce turnover?” Tell them they have two weeks to devise a
practical, doable, cost-effective answer. Promise to give team members a paid
day off, a gift certificate to the local mall or a chance to spend a day
shadowing a senior executive of their choice—as long as they come up with an
action plan that cuts turnover by 10% over the next six months.
BEST-PRACTICES LEADERSHIP: TEAM MANAGEMENT TIP #10
A CASE STUDY: BOOST OFFICE MORALE WITH
TEAM-BUILDING GAMES
Morale was plummeting at D’Ambrosio Eye Care,
and Jocelyn Rodgers knew it. The administrative assistant realized she needed
to do something at her Lancaster, Mass., office before the problem grew even
worse.
She’d recently been inspired by the book Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results, which taught her that, to create an
energetic and creative workplace, each person needs to play, make each other’s
day, be “present” and choose to have a positive attitude.
With the book in mind, she proposed a game.
Everyone on the office staff would play the
game, which meant about 55 people split among three office locations. Part of
her goal: to help these far-flung groups get to know each other better and to
“feel like family again.”
“They were allowed to create their own team
name,” says Rodgers, and everyone “came up with fun, silly names for
themselves.”
The teams worked with a preapproved list of
ideas¾such as being a new employee’s buddy or
celebrating a teammate’s birthday¾for which they’d win points. They won more points for “inviting”
another team to help them.
The teams also came up with their own ideas for
earning points. Examples: One team proposed giving every female patient a red
carnation on Valentine’s Day and every child a Valentine. Another team
participated in a local fundraiser.
“I created this game to help everyone have some
fun during the day,” says Rodgers, but it also helped employees win perks.
Management agreed to award movie tickets and VISA gift cards to each team that
earned 300 points and $250 and two hours for a team lunch for those who scored
600 points.
If all three teams scored 1,000 points, they’d
receive all of the above, plus management would close the office for an
employee Fun Day.
Result: All three teams hit 1,000 points and will
spend a full day together in Boston next April.
“Our team morale is up from last year,” says
Rodgers, “and it’s a goal of mine to keep it that way"
BEST-PRACTICES LEADERSHIP: TEAM MANAGEMENT TIP #11
WHY CLOSE-KNIT TEAMS DON’T ALWAYS WIN
You’ve spent lots of time building team
closeness and cohesiveness. You might have spent a lot of money on it, too.
Maybe that was a bad idea. New findings suggest that close-knit teams are often
less competitive than teams in which camaraderie is weak.
Sociologists at the University of California and
elsewhere, who have been studying effective teams, see some compelling reasons
why friendly teams finish last:
·
Individual accountability is stronger in a “loner” team. When a player’s performance sags, he or she
is more likely to say, “It’s my problem and I’ll fix it.”
That happens more quickly than on teams in which
everybody has to talk about problems before fixing them.
·
Arguments are less likely to divide a “loner” team into rival
camps. The battle plays
out purely between the combatants. Sometimes, other teammates don’t even care
who wins.
·
Leadership resides more in each player and less in the coach. That may be one reason individual leaders
are more likely to emerge in a “loner” team.
—Adapted from “Close Doesn’t Always Count in
Winning Games,” Benedict Carey, New York Times
BEST-PRACTICES LEADERSHIP: TEAM MANAGEMENT TIP #12
DEALING WITH TEAM ‘NEGATIVES’
Negative team members are like poison. Left
unchecked, they corrode morale
through the ranks. They can take many forms, including:
·
Cynics, whose superior
attitude infects other cynics in the ranks.
·
Political players, who attract other power-seekers to their
sides.
·
Laziness addicts, who attract others who want an easy way to the
top.
If you’re dealing with negatives like those,
keep the situation under control by taking these steps:
·
Take strong action against them, no matter how popular they are. Giving preferential
treatment to someone who’s not delivering results sends a signal that you’re afraid
of him—hardly the message you want to send through the ranks.
·
Avoid politicking against negatives. It’s tempting to try to build consensus
against them or express your frustrations to other members of your team. Be
careful, since doing so can degenerate into a power skirmish that will erode
your integrity as a true team leader.
BEST-PRACTICES LEADERSHIP: TEAM MANAGEMENT TIP #13
CAUTION: ‘FUN’ TEAM-BUILDING ACTIVITIES
COULD LAND YOU IN COURT
In the summertime, corporate thoughts turn to
company picnics and outdoor morale-boosting events. But a word of caution: If
your team-building exercises go beyond three-legged sack races and into the
realm of reality TV, you could be headed for a lawsuit.
Engaging employees in fun and games is fine, but
make sure the joke’s not at one employee’s expense. Stay away from activities
that could embarrass, humiliate or injure employees.
Recent case: A California security company staged
employee team competitions to boost its sales team’s unity. Part of the
exercise involved spanking members of the losing teams with yard signs. Other
“fun” punishments: Employees were forced to eat baby food and wear diapers.
At least one employee’s morale wasn’t boosted.
Janet Orlando quit over the incidents and sued, alleging sexual harassment. A
jury awarded Orlando $500,000 in damages for emotional distress and lost wages,
plus it slapped an extra $1.2 million onto the company’s tab for punitive
damages. Two supervisors who helped concoct the exercise were found personally
liable for $50,000 each. (Orlando v. Alarm One, Fresno County Superior Court)
BEST-PRACTICES LEADERSHIP: TEAM MANAGEMENT TIP #14
FUN TEAM-BUILDING ACTIVITIES: BRING OUT
THE LEGOS!
Here’s a quick team-building exercise that’s fun
and inexpensive … and it won’t take all day:
1. Bring out a set of Legos at your next team meeting or at the first meeting of a new
team. Look for a set that includes different shapes.
2. Build a structure that represents your team’s project or goal, the work of
your group or organization, and the mission and vision that you have
established. It could be where you do your work, a piece of art or piece of
equipment needed for your job.
3. Allow five minutes to decide your team’s goal or vision and to plan how you’re
going to build your structure. Allow 10 minutes to implement your plan and
complete your structure.
4. Discuss the following at the end of the exercise: As your group worked to identify
its goal, what are some things that helped you be successful, and what are some
things that hindered the group? How can you use what you learned?
Note: If your organization is interested in more
formal team training exercises, Lego Group offers an entire series of training programs
called Serious Play. For more information, visit www.SeriousPlay.com.
BEST-PRACTICES LEADERSHIP: TEAM MANAGEMENT TIP #15
LEADERSHIP ASSESSMENT: IMPROVE YOUR TEAM
MANAGEMENT SKILLS
To strengthen your team’s performance, you
probably embrace the notion of continuous improvement. By always looking for
ways to teach your team new skills and holding it accountable for steadily
better results, you send a message that you won’t accept complacency or a
halfhearted effort.
That’s a good start, but how about your own performance?
Leading a team wisely requires a high degree of
self-awareness. You should know how the group perceives you and what strengths
or weaknesses influence your ability to lead. Use the exercise below to help
you elicit feedback from the team about your own performance.
LEADERSHIP ASSESSMENT: IMPROVE YOUR TEAM
MANAGEMENT SKILLS
Distribute this exercise to all your team
members, and ask them to complete it. Promise anonymity: Insist that they not
write their names on the form. That way, they won’t be discouraged from
providing honest feedback.
Read each statement below. Rate
the team leader on a scale of 1 to 5 as follows:
1 = Never 2 = Occasionally
3 = Sometimes 4 = Somewhat often 5 = Frequently
Our team leader:
____ acts arrogant when talking with the team.
____ treats team members rudely.
____ micromanages the team.
____ gives us too much negative feedback.
____ lies to the team.
____ enjoys making people sweat.
____ treats team members disrespectfully.
____ plays favorites on the team.
____ uses inappropriate humor.
____ loses her temper.
____ doesn’t recognize the team’s efforts.
____ keeps changing deadlines or shifting team goals.
____ can’t keep a secret.
Comments:
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
Note: After collecting the forms, add up the score.
Any total below 20 means that you’re an enlightened leader. Once you pass 25,
however, you’re entering the danger zone. Take their input to heart, and try to
improve your communication and leadership skills.
BEST-PRACTICES LEADERSHIP: TEAM MANAGEMENT TIP #16
RE-ENERGIZE YOUR TEAM: 6 QUICK TIPS
·
Pump up creativity by scheduling a group innovation strategy session, even it
if means coming in on a weekend or setting aside a few hours a week, recommends
Rowan Gibson, co-author of Innovation to the Core. Let discussions play out and
reward effort with, say, extra vacation time, a prized parking space or a spot
on the development team
·
Want teams to work together most effectively? Keep some distance between one member and
the rest of the team, says an article in Organization Science. When one member
is at a different location, it forces the group to be more conscious about
including that person. The result: better and more productive communication.
When forming a team, think beyond individuals to consider configuration.
·
Encourage your team to ask you the hardest questions they can think of, not the easiest. That’s
what the Dalai Lama asks journalists to do when they interview him. It’s a
leadership practice that’s worth copying.
·
Poll your team members to find out where they’d like to see your organization next
year, in the next five years and on into the next decade. Post responses on a
whiteboard, and use them to brainstorm for a new, shared sense of mission.
·
Keep your team motivated during demanding periods by stressing the personal side. Try
a simple statement such as, “Is there anything I can do for you?” It shows you
haven’t forgotten the “give” side of “give and take.”
·
Resist the temptation to keep people who hate each other from working together.
Once you begin to cherry-pick the people you put on teams to avoid conflict,
you lose the ability to use your best people to your best advantage.
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