Building Effective Teams

1
Building Effective Teams

• Prepared by
• Dr. Shahid Ansari
• and
• Dr. Jan Bell
• We wish to acknowledge the help of Shell Oil
  Company for sharing materials from their
  leadership and team building courses and to the
  many works of Chris Argyris in the area of
  engagement and defensive reasoning in
  organizations.

2
Steps In Creating Winning Teams
Organize for Task
Practice
Build Trust
Provide Constructive Feedback
Practice
Correct
Agree on Rules of Behavior
Agree on Team Process
Reflect
Practice Dialog Skills
3
Build Trust

• Objective
• Make personal connection to other team members
• Understand how personal experiences shape
  individual responses and behaviors
• Appreciate the diversity in personality and
  decision styles
• Learn about the personal goals and values that
  others bring to the team
• Identify areas that will cause conflicts in team
• Tools
• Icebreakers
• Team Building Exercises
• Share formative experiences
• Share goals
• Share values

4
Agree on Rules of Behavior

• Sources of conflict and how do we resolve them
• Work Preferences
• Communication Preferences
• Scheduling difficulties
• Other norms of behavior
• Punctuality (How do we handle being late?)
• Attendance (What happens when people miss
  meetings?)
• Problem solving (How do we do this?)
• Voting
• Consensus
• Majority
• Two stage
• Communication
• How (Phone, email . . .)
• When (Mornings, evenings . . .)

5
Practice Dialog Skills

• Employ a positive tone
• Listen and don't interrupt
• Be open-minded and respect each other's opinions
• Challenge ideas not people
• Make certain that all team members have a chance
  to be heard
• Inquire before you advocate
• Understand what the other person is saying before
  arguing your position
• Check for understanding (repeat other persons
  position) before responding
• Recognize defensive reasoning
• People hold assumptions that are not justified by
  data but they think are valid
• People reach conclusions that do not follow from
  their assumptions or data
• People draw conclusions that they have not tested
• People behave in a manner that contradicts what
  they espouse
• People read a situation based on their feelings
  rather than on data
• Find a way to air undiscussables positively
• Encourage people to share doubts and misgivings
  publicly
• Recognize when people are being polite when they
  are uncomfortable with a decision

6
Agree on Team Process

• Start Meeting with a Check in
• Allows people to share state of mind they are
  bringing to the meeting
• Agree on Goals
• Assign time to each goal
• Make sure that time reflects groups priority
• If out of time, capture goals on a parking lot
• Assign Roles
• Facilitator person who will run the meeting and
  enforce rules
• Note-taker person who will take notes and
  distribute to team
• Time keeper person who call time
• Set Rules
• Is this a divergent conversation? (exploratory
  and open)
• Is this a convergent conversation? (decisions to
  be made)
• Will we go around and have everyone take turns?
• Will we have someone report out and others
  question?
• End Meetings with a Check out
• Did we accomplish our goals? Are their
  undiscussables that need airing?
• What went well? What did not go well?

7
Organize for Task

• Determine tasks
• Read and understand assignment?
• Collect data?
• Do additional research on . . . ?
• Perform data analysis?
• Write up assignment?
• Edit final product for quality?
• Define the output of each task
• Written summary of facts
• Draft of straw solution
• Spreadsheet output for numerical analysis
• Final written answer in word processing file
• Assign task responsibility (individual or all
  team members)
• Create To Do list
• Task ? Person ? Output ? Due Date ? Status
• Review and Update To Do list at each meeting

8
Provide Constructive Feedback and Advice (Four
Types)

• Constructive Feedback
• Balance strengths and weaknesses
• Tell them what they do that you like
• Recognize accomplishment and praise successes
• Advice
• Tell them what they are doing to hurt the team
• Cite specific data (Example team rule
  (behavioral or interpersonal) violated
• Be interested, helpful and use a positive tone
• Destructive
• Points out how the persons actions are wrong
• Finds fault, nit picks and is never satisfied
• Uses a negative tone of voice
• Punishment
• Designed to hurt the person and put them down
• Destroy their self-confidence