The individuals in each of your teams are the most valuable assets your company has. To realize the greatest value from each team member, you must invest into, converting the existing individuals into passionate and productive contributors, who add value to your team’s business synergy.
If however, any members are unwilling or unable to change, then it is imperative that you have the foresight to assess this as soon as possible and the courage to make the changes you know are necessary. This will allow you to make room to attract the people that do meet your team’s needs and performance criterion.
This team building intervention will highlight the important concepts around building dream teams. When you are working with passionate, productive, driven people that are working toward a common objective and vision, you have the makings of a “DREAM TEAM”. Each member of the “DREAM TEAM” does not only become a powerful contributor to the overall success of the team, but also gets to really enjoy what they do, thereby gaining richer and deeper career satisfaction along the way.
To leverage the maximum benefit from everyone in your team, when you are involved in any team building activities, you need to become “QUALIIED” to lead them. This means that each team leader needs to be an example of the productivity, passion and results they want their teams to realize.
Carry out an audit of each team leader and assess if there are any leadership or other skills that need to be improved. Ensure that these issues are urgently addressed and corrective action taken immediately to remedy these shortcomings. You cannot ever have a “DREAM TEAM” without great leadership and example from each team leader.
Each leader must focus on leadership basics and strive to lead by example and their teams will become magnets for top talent and teamwork. The team’s processes will become organic and effortless, allowing the team to realize all their objectives.
The strength of your Dream Team is only as strong as the weakest link
Authentic leaders acknowledge their responsibility toward encouraging real enthusiasm within their teams. They help each team member develop a real, sense of pride and self-motivation and inspire their teams with the example they set.
The results that you will enjoy from your teams, is limited by the weakest link in each team, so understand the strengths and weaknesses of each team member. Invest sufficient resources into developing everyone in your teams, so that you can ensure that every one is operating at the required standard necessary to succeed.
Empower Dream Team members by completely delegating tasks to them
Delegate tasks to your team members and have the confidence to give them enough latitude to assume a leadership role and to shoulder full responsibility. Offering greater levels of autonomy to your team members, this will motivate them and allow them to feel valued and an integral part of the team.
When you are trying to achieve any great team building results, this added autonomy allows people to feel more challenged and keeps them focused on the opportunities offered within your teams. This will help you to retain the most valuable members of your teams. This will allow them to feel valued and that they are working toward a common and necessary purpose.
Commit to be an authentic leader, one that has a crystal clear understanding, why the team exists and one that has a vivid picture of the purpose and vision the team must fulfil. Ensure that this is regularly communicated and understood by all team members and that everyone is working toward a common goal. This allows for the formation of better teams and will always result in a superior team effort.
The first step when creating a “DREAM TEAM” is to acknowledge that you as the leader are accountable for every team member. When you accept that you are fully responsible for ensuring that you have the right people to fill your teams, you have created a perfect foundation for building a “DREAM TEAM” that matches the plan and model necessary to achieve the desired results.
The acronym T.E.A.M means Together Everyone Achieves More. It is seldom necessary to completely reboot your teams and start everything from scratch. In most cases it is merely a small shift in the way teams are structured or led that result in massive positive changes. This team building intervention will help you to highlight the difference between mediocre team performance and stellar team performance. The difference is very often in merely refining and defining certain small details. The building blocks for creating your “DREAM TEAM” are in essence, merely creating a core business model that is communicated to and understood by all team members.
Poor team performance is very often a symptom and expression of the lack of a clear vision. This can be rectified by reworking, refining and updating the overall vision and ensuring that each team’s vision is aligned with the overall vision.
We can only perform at the level of our knowledge and understanding of our real vision and purpose. If this is unclear or ambiguous, the results that will flow will be less than satisfactory.
We need to look at the heart of the challenges that are limiting the performance of our teams. There must be a total commitment to rejuvenate our teams, with the drive coming from the front. This entire process is driven by great leadership and a clear set of common goals and objectives that are clearly communicated and understood by everyone. This will allow the team to flourish grow and thrive and each team will become completely focused and driven by a common purpose and clearly defined set of goals.
To encourage real transformation you must commit to apply a new recipe for teamwork to all your teams. If you continue to use the same tired patterns, systems, habits, motions or even staff you will continue to get the same results. When you are creating a real “DREAM TEAM” you must ensure that you are not merely rearranging your old ineffective team, but that you are altering the basic components of the team and ensuring that a common vision exists for each team. This vision must be understood and constantly communicated to each team member.
The very people that were born in the 1980’s and 1990’s (Millennial Generation) are the biggest group to enter the workforce, since the baby boomer generation. These people have grown up in a different era; their value systems are completely different. As they enter into the workforce and become the decision makers of the future they will most certainly change the way things are done. The key role they will play in changing workplace dynamics will be driven by the ever increasing expectation around instant gratification and their need for constant reinforcement and praise.
This team building intervention will show you that, leadership in most business organisations has been based on the premise that these organisations are purely there for economic reasons and to generate a profit for all stakeholders. Business was all about developing structures that could leverage the best control over resources so that capital could be managed and leveraged for maximum return. These structures were best served by pyramids of hierarchies that performed rigid and narrow tasks, within very narrow guidelines. These structures have become archaic and will no longer be effective in the new millennium.
Today it is no longer about managing people and processes. Effective leadership is all about building and supporting everyone in the organisation, to become leaders in their own right. Success is no longer about having leaders that create structure and systems that people blindly follow. It is about developing a leadership style, where everyone in the organisation builds their own self-confidence, self-awareness and becomes responsible for their own self-management.
This mind-set is best developed by encouraging everyone in the organisation to build their emotional intelligence, by improving their communication skills, encouraging the development of effective time management skills, building real connection through effective networking and a focus on building a culture of team participation and recognising the importance of each individual to the whole. These rapidly changing times have highlighted the need to do things differently and to commit to a lifetime of learning and growth. The need to be flexible and adaptable, has never been more necessary than it now is, open your mind and allow yourself to not only expect change, but to plan for change and to change the one thing you have control over, namely yourself, sooner rather than later. This shift will allow you to see new trends and changed circumstances early. This will give you a huge advantage going forward.
Author: Andrew Horton Team Building Activities
