Good teams, where employees work together, are a valuable asset to any business.

Individuals may shine, but normally one person's brilliance does not singlehandedly decide the outcome of an entire project. Almost always, it's the joint efforts of the whole team that eventually dictates the project's success or failure. 

Team building breaks down barriers. It helps to foster better and more open communication between the employees themselves and with higher management. It improves problem-solving skills, understanding and cooperation, and significantly contributes towards employee motivation and building trust. 

All of these benefits are reflected in the quality of work found in successful teams and together can improve productivity.

How can you build your own dream team? 

It's obvious you can't just pull together a group of employees, call them a team, and expect them to come up with the results. 

You need to consider the dynamics of the specific team required and then choose team members whose skills and experience will work well together and who, individually, can bring something worthwhile to the table.

Teamwork can be made difficult when you have diverse members made up of differing sexes, cultural backgrounds, ages, maturity and experience, and those who don't want to be there. 

If you get the people dynamics wrong, this can impact on the workgroup in terms of how it functions, its productivity, and its success. You may experience competition rather than cooperation, and there may be a clash of personalities, ethics and values.

The ideal dream team

Typically, successful teams will include:

  • doers – they make sure the job gets done and give the team drive

  • thinkers – they have good ideas and reject bad ones 

  • carers – they keep the team together, ease tensions, ensure collaboration and cooperation, promote harmony, and are sensitive about relationships within the team

The team members must:

  • have complementary skills and experience

  • have similar values and attitudes 

  • understand the team is more important than the individual

  • have a strong sense of belonging and commitment 

  • be clear about goals and targets, individual roles and responsibilities

  • feel challenged by their individual tasks and responsibilities

  • feel responsible for the outcome

  • feel free to say what they really think and the authority to develop their own ideas

  • be prepared to follow an agreed course of action, though they may have a differing opinion.

The team leader must:

  • have good people skills

  • have good communication skills

  • establish clear, challenging goals that everyone understands and wants to achieve

  • use consultative processes to plan teamwork and allocate tasks 

  • establish protocols and standards

  • engender a willingness to co-operate and mutual trust to be able to get the best from each team member

  • adapt their leadership style to suit the situation’s needs 

  • ensure each team member feels a strong sense of belonging 

  • encourage idea sharing

  • monitor individual and team’s progress effectively.

The culture

Teamwork may still not be successful unless you implement and foster a motivated, productive ‘team-building culture’ from the top to the bottom of the organisation. This culture must support teamwork and enable team members to work cohesively and innovatively together.

Each team needs to feel that not only do they have the capacity to create new ideas, initiatives and strategies, but they also have the authority to do so. They also must feel they have total support from senior management, be able to voice dissatisfaction when it occurs, and that there is a strong teamwork culture in the business.

Team building at its best

The best ways for a leader to build a dream team is to:

  • encourage collaboration

  • help team members become clear on their purpose and goals

  • help team members to clearly understand guidelines and processes for solving problems and making decisions

  • encourage team members to contribute to identifying goals and feel a sense of ownership of the project they are working on

  • ensure there is support from senior management 

  • use team-building exercises that have a specific purpose and clear objectives – that challenge the dynamics and interactions within a team and provide strong learning experiences.