Team Building: Assembling Effective Teams
By Robert O'Halloran
What words come to mind when one thinks about team building? The premise involves a variety of words that include, collaboration, communication, cooperation, control, relationships, trust, problem solving, employee morale and engagement, building a work community culture, engagement and much more.
Additional, terms and phrases related to teams are identified as, co-constructing, teamwork, development, group cohesion, network building, partnering, and more. Also consider sustainability as a team concept. This term typically infers “green” efforts and focus on the environment.
However, sustainable organizations can optimally operate with teamwork within a community and within an organization. The result, sustaining an improved organizational culture though sustainable team building. When people communicate and collaborate well in their respective teams, and when all the workers in a company act like one big team, it is easy to make progress towards business goals.
The concept of teams are all around us, through team sports participation, team and committee work projects and teams in political, social, and religious organizations. Sports teams are regularly on display in baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer and even Formula One auto racing.
In horseracing, teams are inclusive of owners, trainers, jockeys, and other staff all contributing to creation of a winning or successful team. In business, project teams are prominent in diverse sectors providing input, skill sets and social avenues to build organizational culture.
Benchmarking Teams: Learning from Successes or Challenges
A recommendation for developing and maintaining a team culture is to assess notable teams throughout all sectors. For example, assess teams in major sports. For soccer (football), a google search noted Real Madrid , Manchester City , and Bayern Munich as top teams. Other searches for NFL Football note the Kansas City Chiefs (I am a Patriots guy). Or in in MLB , last year’s World Series winners were the LA Dodgers, though I continue to root the Red Sox. The question(s) to review these successful teams include what makes them an effective team?, is it their operating model?, their communities and culture?, their diversity?, or other factors?
Also, one can learn in some cases what not to do by looking at teams that struggle to win and or make the playoffs. As we relate popular sports teams to other lines of business, note that team building plays a crucial role in creating an environment where people feel valued, connected, and fulfilled, which goes a long way toward improving retention. Recommendation: Pick a team (your favorite team) and dig deep to know what makes them successful or why they have struggled.
What are the Best Hotel Teams in the World?
To select Hotel Teams or hospitality companies would be a similar process although there are not recognized champions just successful businesses. A Google search per the question above sometimes responds about size of the companies, and operating statistics. To offer a hypothesis, one can note that successful organizations are likely to have a successful team culture. An action plan to assess hospitality teams, translates to focusing on teams and looking for evidence of successful teams, which could include product innovation, satisfied guests, and profits.
Our colleagues at Les Roches shared a study and offered criteria for identifying the best companies to work for in hospitality. They noted criteria to help evaluate organizations including “Best companies to work for” were company culture, employee satisfaction, salary ranges, employee benefits, growth opportunities, including further training, promotion opportunities and networking and company reputation. The selected companies are listed below.
While this study is not specifically research on “teams,” it reviews selected organizations and their importance and influence on success via productivity which is supported by effective teams. This is their list of top hospitality companies and key attributes per the Les Roche study.
Company Name & Key Attributes
- The Ritz-Carlton: Luxury hotels in 30+ countries, competitive salaries, benefits, advancement in management roles.
- Apple Leisure Group: Resorts and travel in Americas and Europe, fast expansion, staff benefits.
- Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts: Employee focus, generous benefits, health insurance, paid leave, tuition reimbursement.
- Hilton Worldwide: Large chain, diverse roles, positive diversity and inclusion, good salaries.
- Marriott International: Global presence, robust training programs, advancement opportunities.
- InterContinental Hotel Groups (IHG): 5,000+ hotels globally, employee development, competitive pay, and benefits.
- Accor: Largest in Europe, operates in ninety-five countries, advancement, and progression opportunities.
- Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Large global chain, family-friendly culture, competitive salary, and benefits.
- Choice Hotels International: 6,000+ properties, customer service focus, attractive salaries, and benefits.
- Hyatt Hotels Corporation: 700 properties, employee well-being focus, sophisticated.
My recommendation is to benchmark great teams to understand their successes. What makes them tick, is it operating model?, personnel?, communication? Successful businesses, adjust to changing times and remake their companies, by creating great teams to plan and build on their successes and therefore, their business sustainability.
The premise is that team building can enhance productivity, creativity, morale, trust, leader identification, identify strengths and weakness, it is confidence building, and it an provide a catalyst for motivation and collaboration amongst and between team members, and it can also connect remote teams, (covid catalyst reference), relationships and a positive work environment, improve departmental interaction, and problem prevention.
Teams, groups or project committees, whatever they are called, are an attempt to leverage expertise, which are the skills and abilities in multiple areas that offer the team alternatives. The skills gained can be for problem-solving or project management where team recommendations are more viable through collective reflective thought.
For example, project teams for students in my class are required to complete a significant project involving, creating viable new concepts, conducting research on multiple topics, analyzing the data collected and ultimately coming to some consensus or consent (majority) as to what will the team or group recommendations will be. To manage a team the team members will need to allocate areas of responsibility, personal resources (time and effort) set deadlines and more. In a classroom setting, team formation is part of the learning.
Creating a project team is a learning goal unto itself. What the students need to do up front, (my perspective) is to set up an effective and efficient communication systems. Therefore, functional tasks, such as organizing, planning, coordinating efforts and controlling results will lead to optimal teams for students.
Planning for teams should involve assessing your business needs to be addressed. When creating teams, plan for how the teams a will benefit the organization. Consider that team building can result in:
- Good communications with participants as team members and individuals.
- Increased department productivity and creativity.
- Team members motivated to achieve goals.
- A climate of cooperation and collaborative problem-solving.
- Higher levels of job satisfaction and commitment.
- Higher levels of trust and support.
- Diverse co-workers working well together.
- Clear work objectives.
- Better operating policies and procedures.
What is Team Building?
Team building is a collective term for the activities your business conducts, training you provide, and other efforts you make to help your teams build collaboration and communication skills needed to work together and meet common goals. Team building is the process of enhancing the bonds between members of a group to help them accomplish their goals more efficiently. This management technique often involves activities or events that occur outside of the typical workday. Team-building events help employees learn about their teammates, develop skills to help them interact effectively and foster critical thinking skills.
Team building is also essential to many critical functions of a team, including communication, collaboration, morale, and productivity. Most importantly, team building contributes to establishing and maintaining team trust, which is directly tied to innovation, effective decision making and employee retention. It can also generate trust which in turn promotes innovation, effective decision making and employee retention.
Team Building Importance?
There are several advantages of having close-knit teams in your company, regardless of whether those teams are remote, hybrid, or office-based. Team building builds trust, it builds bridges between departments, improves communication, improves employee engagement and morale, boosts productivity, it can bring workers together, it can help foster creativity and learning, and building make people more accepting and resolve conflicts. Looking to the future, team building can also help identify and develop talent.
Teamwork is essential to your organization’s success . The checklist below can set the stage for effective team building and enhance organizational culture.
- Team’s purpose: Get to the point! What is the timeline?
- Clear goals and expectations.
- Open communication.
- Collaboration: open to all perspectives.
- Creativity, Creating an innovative environment.
- Empower team members: recommendations and participations in decisions.
- Facilitate problem-solving: No judgments.
- Encourage risk-taking: Identify decision-making models and benchmark success.
- Offer continued team learning: classrooms, online, training.
- Celebrate team successes.
Team Building Activities
Team building activities can and should be part of an educational and training effort that benefits individuals and organizations. Assess what are the goals being pursued and plan the activities that will be optimal for the team. What resources are necessary, how much time, and is there a budget? These factors should all be part of the support and enhancement of a team, regardless of the project or issue being considered.
Brainstorm for your business, the goals you are hoping to achieve. Consider the possible games, simulations and activities that can focus on meeting kickoff, communication, problem solving, creative thinking, employee bonding, and company culture to name a few. Team building activities foster collaboration, trust, and morale within your workforce. Plan both virtual and in-person activities that challenge employees to work together creatively.
Use icebreakers, problem-solving games, and communication exercises to strengthen bonds. Consistently integrate team-building activities to maintain a positive work culture. Depending on your goals , team building activities can take a variety of forms. Some events develop professional relationships, while others focus on learning and growth. Likewise, good team building exercises support employee morale and company workplace culture.
Team activities can also be in-person or online. Consider physical space, time, and resources and team member access. Similarly online activities can and should be more than sharing and reading slides. If COVID and the pandemic taught us anything positive, it showed us that we need to be able to “pivot” swiftly and to have a plan for continuity of work and learning. Teamwork and planning will allow for tasks to be completed whether online or face to face.
For example, coursework can be a collection of project teams that need to quickly get to know and trust each other. Online team environments need to have many of the characteristics of their in-person counterparts, for example, effective communication, mutual respect, and goals focused actions plans. It is noted that online meetings, whether via Teams , Zoom or WEBEX can provide options and alternatives for breakout sessions, discussions and more.
Team building activities should also be a central part of your onboarding process. Engage new hires and make them feel part of the team. For example, as a restaurant general manager many years ago, I enjoyed creating and hosting activities for our work teams. One example, in our restaurant, 150 seats, a service teams for opening shifts needed to set up the dining room for 11am. Note, at close the tables were cleared and wiped clean and chairs were flipped on top. The next morning the opening service team members (two) set up the dining room, take down the chairs, set silverware and napkins and condiments.
Experience had taught me that two servers could have the dining room set for opening in 30 minutes. One of our servers presented the management team with a challenge. This was an impromptu activity. He said he could set up the dining room by himself in thirty minutes. The wager was that if he could do that, the restaurant would buy he and his spouse dinner. I took the bet! He worked hard and diligently for 30 minutes prior to opening and finished the set up in a total of 34 minutes, he lost the bet. However, the dynamics of this challenge were such that the activity attracted an audience of team members, some not scheduled for that day, to watch and cheer him on. The activity was fun, created team bonding and solid relationships and I bought he and his spouse dinner. It was well worth the price.
Going Forward with Teams
It is noted by many that teams have shared commitments to a common purpose, mission and goals and work in an environment of mutual accountability. Successful teams develop effective group process, using ground rules and norms to promote effective interpersonal communication. Teams also go through stages of development . Researchers note that the most used framework for a team’s stages of development was in the mid-1960s by Bruce W. Tuckman. His descriptions of Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing provide a useful framework for looking at your own team.
Each stage of team development has its own recognizable feelings and behaviors; understanding why things are happening in certain ways on your team can be an important part of the self-evaluation process. The four stages are a helpful framework for recognizing a team’s behavioral patterns; Team development is not always a linear process.
Teams go through recognizable stages of development , with distinct characteristics in each phase. Having a way to identify and understand causes for changes in the team behaviors can help the team maximize its process and its productivity. Experts note that feelings differ in and for a team. To review one stage, Forming, team members are usually excited to be part of the team and eager about the work ahead. Other Team members may also feel some anxiety, wondering how they will fit into the team. Behaviors observed during the Forming stage may include lots of questions from team members.
Finally, the work for the team during the Forming stage is to create a team with clear structure, goals, direction, and roles so that members begin to build trust. During the Forming stage, much of the team’s energy is focused on defining the team so task accomplishment may be low. Other researchers of team building note that team building occurring in stages could include:
- Forming teams that will focus on a problem or issue. The questions could be who is on the team, what skills and expertise are needed?
- Clarify team member roles and responsibilities and encourage communication. Is there a designated leader or senior person on the team?
- Building trust can be an important stage and strengthening relationships. Do team members know each other and trust each other?
- Teams should be cooperative and team members need to understand and embrace that. The old saying “there is no I in team.”
- Teams should also foster accountability and acknowledgement. Teams are not a competition. They should be judged on their collective efforts and therefore each member is responsible for the outcome and will be assessed on team efforts.
- As a project concludes, or an issue is resolved, note successes and improve on shortcomings. A team could begin again on a different issue or project or be finished as a team.
Teams also share certain characteristics , including a clearly defined purpose (mission) and goals. Teamwork is defined by a shared commitment both to the team’s process (how the team works together) and to its product (what work the team accomplishes). This commitment to team process is demonstrated through the development and use of team norms and ground rules, a willingness to pay attention to group process, and a sense of mutual accountability both to the members of the team as individuals and the team. Deliberately formed teams meet work needs that an individual or a group of individuals cannot meet as effectively. A team’s performance is measured primarily by the products produced collectively by the team. Characteristics of effective teams are shared below.
Characteristics of Effective Teams
- Dynamic Teaming: One way to boost performance is through dynamic teaming , working in groups with fluid membership to navigate shifting circumstances and tasks.
- Psychologically Safe: According to Edmondson in Dynamic Teaming , psychological safety is “a shared belief that it’s okay to offer opinions, suggest ideas, ask questions, raise concerns, speak up, and admit mistakes without fear of negative consequences.
- Diversity: Recruiting employees with different backgrounds, experiences, and ways of thinking is crucial to team performance . Diverse teams are better equipped to understand and bridge different perspectives, which can help drive business growth and innovation.
- Inclusivity: To build a more effective team you must also consider the work environment itself and how it facilitates or hinders inclusion.
Additionally, strong teams also possess specific characteristics and can be easily spotted from afar. Characteristics of a strong team, and in particular teamwork, according to WeWork , include a positive attitude, feedback, a focus on solutions rather than problems, strong leadership with a clear structure, individual talent, strong communication, and a sense of belonging to the team. These attributes, when encouraged, can help build strong teams repeatedly.
Working on a successful team (sometimes called a high-performing team ) can be an exciting and empowering experience. Everyone wants to be part of a winning team whether it is team sports, a great project team or other team efforts. For yourself, conduct a self-evaluation of teams in your operation and assess the multiple factors that are team positive or team challenges.
When a team is working well, each member knows that they are part of something bigger than the individuals involved and that the team is greater than the sum of its parts. Teams also create opportunities that help organizations retain employees and talent .
Finally, remember that team building should be framed from my perspective, as a sustainability task and that retaining your employees is vital to creating optimal and productive teams.
Prof. O'Halloran
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