Team Effectiveness – Maximise team performance

The ability to create effective teams is one of the fundamental responsibilities of a manager. This article will discuss the most critical elements to maximise team effectiveness.

The transition to being a manager requires a mindset shift where you will not be only responsible for delivering your work. More importantly, you are responsible. For your team o deliver the team objectives.

Team effectiveness has many studies published in the past years. One of the most referenced is a paper published in 1992 by Rollin and Christine. They identified five elements that most contribute.

The five elements of team effectiveness

Team mission, planning and goal setting

Teams, like any of us individually, will achieve more if we have a clear plan for where we want to get to. Several studies found that the most effective teams have a strong sense of their purpose, and planning a setting goal clarifies that purpose.

Team Roles

Once the team have a mission, plan and goals to achieve, the next step is to define the roles of each team member. That will make it clear the contribution towards those goals for each member. Clarity will create accountability for the members towards their contributions.

Team Operating Processes

A team needs to have processes that will allow them to work together coherently. These processes should be agreed upon in the initial stage of the team start to work amounts the team members. The team should consider these processes to maximise efficiency and simplicity.

Some of the areas that a team need to agree on processes around are:

• Frequency, timing and agenda of meetings
• Problem-solving and decision-making methodologies
• Ground rules
• Conflict resolution procedures
• The rewards for individuals’ contributions to team goals
• Tools to be used and how to be used

Team Interpersonal Relationships

For a team to be successful, it is crucial for clear and effective communication between the team members. To achieve a high level of alignment towards the team goals, the team must work together and agree on goals and roles. Operating processes need to be discussed and agreed upon. An ongoing review of these topics should be an open discussion among the team members.

Conflict resolution is of critical importance to maintain a healthy relationship between members. Studies have found that communication should be assertive and task-focused, as well as giving and receiving feedback.

Inter-Team Relations

In the context of an organization, a team can not expect to archive their organizational objectives without an effective inter-team relations strategy. Organizations do this on a global scale.

Some of the signs of ineffective teams