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Team Building 

Increasing your Effectiveness as a Team Player

The following are 3 tips on working with your personal style:
• Affirm your strengths. Acknowledge that you’re O.K. Look for ways to add to your strengths. Be the best Contributor, Collaborator, Communicator, or Challenger.

• Look for teams and organizations where your strengths are appreciated; avoid those situations where they are not valued. For example, Challengers should avoid conservative, risk-adverse environments.

• Extend your repertoire by incorporating more of the strengths of other styles. For example, if your least active style is Communicator, develop a plan to increase your skills as a group facilitator.
• Develop your ability to analyze your team. When you observe the need for a particular strength (i.e. to challenge complacency), provide an appropriate intervention and/or encourage others to do the same.
To review the complete Team Building, Communication Model : Click here .

Why is Trust Important?

Trust is one of those mainstay virtues. It is the bond that allows any kind of significant relationship to exist between people. Once broken, it is not easily, if ever, recovered.

Trust is produced in a climate that includes four elements:
• Honesty: Integrity, no lies, no exaggerations
• Openness: A willingness to share and receptivity to information, perceptions, ideas
• Consistency: Predictable behavior and responses
• Treating people with dignity and fairness

The problem is that trust is so fragile. If anyone of the elements listed above is breached even once a relationship is apt to be severely compromised, even lost. With trust gone between individuals, teams have little hope of functioning well and realizing their true potential.

Building Trust and Collaboration
Four themes emerge to help explain why a climate of trust fosters teamwork, the first is below.

Trust allows team members to stay problem-focused.
The absence of trust diverts the mental concentration and energy of a team away from its performance objective and onto other issues. The team becomes politicized. Communication becomes guarded and distorted. Alliances and personal agendas begin to take precedence over the team goal. The resulting loss of focus on the common goal is a critical factor. It wounds the team and often renders it ineffective.

Conversely, when trust is present, a collaborative climate is more readily fostered, allowing team members to stay focused on their common problem or goal. There is no suspicion or conflict to divert their attention. The clearer the goal, and the more team members are free to concentrate on it, the greater the likelihood they will succeed.

Clearly, team problem-solving relies on the unhampered exchange of information and communication that is born of trust.

To review the complete Team Building, Trust : Click here .

Becoming a good team player 

No matter what you do or where you live, the quality of your attitude determines the quality of your relationships—not to mention just about everything else in your life. The good news is that attitudes are yours to select. And if you are free to choose any one you please, why not choose a Really Useful Attitude.

In face to face situations, your attitude precedes you. It is the central force in your life; it controls the quality and appearance of everything you do.

Really Useful Attitudes	Really Useless Attitudes
Warm Enthusiastic Confident Supportive Relaxed Obliging Curious Resourceful Comfortable Helpful Engaging Laid Back Patient Welcoming Cheery Interested	Angry Sarcastic Impatient Bored Disrespectful Conceited Pessimistic Anxious Rude Suspicious Vengeful Afraid Self-conscious Mocking Embarrassed Dutiful

To review the complete Team Building, Communication Model : Click here .

 

Communications Model

Professor Albert Mehrabian's communications model
Without communication, there is no team!

Professor Albert Mehrabian has pioneered the understanding of communications since the 1960's.
Aside from his many and various other fascinating works, Mehrabian established this classic statistic for the effectiveness of spoken communications:

• 7% of meaning is in the words that are spoken.
• 38% of meaning is paralinguistic (the way that the words are said).
• 55% of meaning is in facial expression.

Mehrabian's model above has become one of the most widely referenced statistics in communications.

The theory is particularly useful in explaining the importance of meaning, as distinct from words.

To review the complete Team Building, Communication Model : Click here .

Team Phases

When teams are formed or there is a change a team, there are phases a team will go through.  The time lapsed in going through the phases will vary from same day to weeks or even months.

Team Phases

Forming
Clear team direction.  Establish objectives.

Storming 
Establish process and structure, and work to smooth conflict and build good relationships between team members.

Norming 
Team take responsibility for team progress.

Performing 
Team working towards goals of the team and the business.

Adjourning or Mourning  
Team breaks up

To review the complete Team Building, Team Phases : Click here .