Get things done instead of arguing!
- 19. September 2016
- Posted by: Ralf Juhre
- Category: Expert articles
A good TEAM is unbeatable – this is true and applies everywhere: Whether in sports, politics or in the company – good teams perform and strive for more! So it’s no wonder that the ability to work in a team is advertised, desired and coveted in any job advertisement. But often the desire is the father of the thought. The reality in many companies is quite different: Everyone thinks (only) of himself, a common goal is not pursued or only very insufficiently pursued. What needs to be done together in today’s world?
High-performance teams are good role models because they have special characteristics:
- The team members are aligned to the goals to be achieved together.
- The distribution of roles and tasks is based on skills and strengths
- The relationships of the team members are characterized by respect, esteem, and trust.
- The team members have developed accepted rules of conduct and adhere to them.
The question for any responsible leader is: How do I turn a group into a team with the above characteristics? Team development is one of the greatest challenges for companies because the overall clout is determined by the quality of the cooperation between the people involved. Exaggerated individualism and blind individualism do immense damage. The performance and the will to perform of most employees depend to a large extent on the conditions of the respective working environment and on the nature and quality of the relationships with the immediate colleagues.
Team development is the key to more performance (turnover), higher product and service quality and thus more customer satisfaction. This, in turn, promotes employee satisfaction, which in turn results in performance. A positive cycle that is triggered by good cooperation.
Conventional team development usually follows a more intellectual (cognitive) approach. Team development phases and team characteristics are trained, but not personal team behavior competence. It is a matter of imparting general knowledge: Hardly any other topic is more sensitive to the discrepancy between mere know-how and actual how-do. Theoretically, everyone knows what good cooperation should, should and could look like. To face real challenges means to get involved in a real team experience. This takes place by action and experience-oriented proceeding, with which the usually under open sky taking place, easy to heavy team tasks, team meetings, or -incentives, are accompanied by professional reflection.
The participating teams are challenged to work together sustainably. The gradual increase of the level of difficulty, the direct confrontation with the achieved result and the trainer-moderated reflection make it possible to actually experience the development of the team spirit. The sustainability of the measure increases disproportionately to the time invested, as the pace of team development often increases automatically during the process. The special feature of the approach is the creation of a high degree of authenticity. This involves genuine personal encounters between the participants and sustainable qualitative development – the group becomes a TEAM!