BUILDING TEAM PERFORMANCE
(Part 2 of Team building - Ken Shah & Prof. Param J. Shah)

As such there is no guaranteed recipe for building team performance. Yet there are a variety of common approaches that can help potential teams take the necessary risk to grow in performance. To build up high performance, the following of certain guidelines comes in handy.

1. Establishing urgency and sense of direction
All team members need to believe that the team has urgent and worthwhile purposes. Besides, performance expectations from team members also should be clear. The members of the team need to realize that the task they are performing is important, that they are a part of decisive accomplishment. The direction to be adopted for achievement should be clear.

2. The selection of the members should be on the basis of skills and not personality.
Teams need complementary skills to perform the job. For effective performance, a mix of three different categories is helpful.

-> Technical and functional skills.

-> Problem solving skills

-> Interpersonal skills

A right set of people is needed at the right place and on the right time. Selection of team members is not only an issue for task forces and special project teams, but also ongoing groups, too often there is a presumption that existing job status automatically warrants team membership. Hence, while selection, the job profile of the individual is not the only basis but the necessary skill for job performance.  

3.       More attention needs to be paid to first meetings and actions.
Initial impression goes a long way. When the potential teams gather around for the first time, members alertly monitor the signals given by others to confirm, suspend or dispel going-in assumptions and concerns. First meetings usually are not the first time the people in them have ever met as a group. They are not necessarily limited to a single event. Moreover, for on going groups, first meetings usually are not the first time the people in them have ever met as a group. But too many potential teams fail to understand the importance of “first meetings” and instead allow existing habits and operating styles to dominate, including an overemphasis on individual instead of mutual accountability.

4.       The rules regarding the clarity of behavior sets a code of conduct.         
All real teams develop rules of conduct to help them achieve their purpose and performance goals. Rules are necessary for focus, openness, commitment and trust. The most critical rules may pertain to attendance, confidentiality, contributions, constructive confrontation and end-product orientation.

5.       Few immediate performance-oriented tasks and goals bring team spirit.
Most teams prepare immediate small tasks and performance oriented events that bring them together. Potential teams can set such events in motion by immediately establishing a few challenging yet achievable goals that can be reached early on. Significantly, the events generated by such stretch goals do not have to be successes. The focus is on achieving a spirit of being together.

6.       Establishing fresh facts and information to keep the “challenge motivation”. 
New information causes a potential team to redefine and enrich its understanding of the performance challenge, thereby helping the team shape a common purpose, set clearer goals, and improve on its common approach. Potential teams with more permanent, ongoing assignments, on the other hand, easily develop habits that shut out new information and perspective. New facts often bring such groups into action.

7.       Spending time together.
Teams must spend a lot of time together, especially at the beginning. This time spent together can be scheduled and unscheduled creative insights develop when personal bonding takes place. The more successful teams always find a way to spend extra time together.

• In order to strengthen an organization it might be necessary to weaken a part of it.
• Assign tasks that will allow the subordinates to grow and take on additional responsibilities
• Let your team know you appreciate them
• The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them
• Each member has something to add to the team
• Fix measurable goals to keep the team focused
• Everyone in a team thinks in a different way
• Teams are properly effective only when everyone learns to pull together
• Have an open door policy if you want to be accessible
• Do not bring problems, bring solutions
• Be tough on problems not people
• The vision that holds the team together does not end with the task in hand.