Team Building Leadership

Leading teams into team building conquers the challenge of change. Change is the one constant of life, and change undoes the way things are. A team, for instance, is either building or falling apart. An essential aptitude for true leadership, then, is leading the team into building on a continuous basis. Team building leads a group into a higher levels of team spirit, cooperation and interpersonal communication. Even if you only one other person that you have responsibility for leading, that person needs to perceive you on his side to give his best. Team building is the process of building upon the team-dimension of any relationship. Team spirit either grows, or it dies.

Make Enhancing Teamwork An Essential
Part of Your Team's Goal

As you attempt to lead, keep in mind your quintessential intention to enhance, deepen and strengthen the spirit of "we are on the same team, committed to achieving the same outcome for one another." Integrate the improvement of the quality of teamwork into your objective, strategy and tactics. Include it in the vision of the outcome you share with your team, and express your value of teamwork and team spirit by providing regular trainings in team building to your department or employee(s). If you overlook team building by focused exclusively or excessively on the outcome you want teamwork to accomplish, you neglect the means to your end. This would be like a musician neglecting to adequately care for his instrument.

How you think about each person or group that you are responsible for leading is the real "head" of your organization. By leading your own thoughts, you begin leading in the most significant way. So discipline yourself to think about those you are responsible for leading as members of your team, and not as your problems, adversaries or competitors. You have to "mentally embrace" them as for you, and not against you, particularly when they demonstrate difficult conduct.

Here is an example. Let's say that your department is currently experiencing a disturbing and potentially costly spike in interpersonal conflict. People are misunderstanding one another, forming into cliques with adversarial stances toward one another, there seems to be more blame than problem-solving going on. Let's say further you know the individuals responsible for this growing air of contention. You might be tempted to think of them as being against you, rather than for you. But try this leadership-for-team-building approach instead.

Deliberately think of the problems they demonstrate as symptomatic of the real, invisible cause of the team's breakdown. Regard these individuals as being helpful, like the warning lights on the dashboard of your car. They have too much integrity to conceal and repress the underlying problem in the organization. They are not bringing the team "darkness", but rather bringing light in which you can lead the team to a solution. Interpret their behavior, however dissonant, as a sign of a core-problem that you need to address for team building. This turns feelings of resentment into gratitude.

Also regard any team problems that arise as an inevitable aspect of life's law of change. The songwriter Bob Dylan wrote, "He not busy being born is busy dying." We can apply this to teams. The team that is not busy being born is busy dying. Regard every challenge to team cooperation as sort of birth pang, leading you to lead the team to the next level of cooperation.

How To Lead Your Team To The Next Level

Then, meet with those who are displaying contentiousness and begin by thanking them for bringing to light the fact that there is obviously an underlying problem in the department. Instead of focusing on changing their behavior initially, build their team spirit and teamwork by asking them to help you to identify the real problem. They may, for instance, raise the issue that they are being given too much too do in too little time, which is making them feel overloaded by the lack of clarity in the communication they are receiving.

This gives you important pieces of information for leading the department to higher productivity. You now know that you need to reevaluate the amount of responsibility these individuals have and how much time they have to fulfill those responsibilities. This may lead you to alter the demands you place on them, to train them in better time management, to refresh their technical skills in a training, or to bring the whole department together for team building training.

Next, the contentiousness reveals that they need a more constructive means of communicating their issues, and that those they communicate their issues to need to be receptive. Reevaluate the established communication procedures in place, and consider providing who have been contentious some interpersonal relationships and communication training.

Maintain A Team Building Attitude

To lead most effectively, the leader's attitude needs to be strongly and deeply rooted in team spirit, particularly when relating with individuals who have been displaying misconduct. Regard that misconduct as indicative of that individual's integrity by caring too much to act as if everything is going smoothly when it is not. The misconduct serves you as visible expression of an invisible problem that you need to lead your team into solving together to keep the team building.

Rather than relating to a problematic behavior as a hindrance or as a threat to your objective, relate to it as a blessing revealing how you need to build teamwork and team spirit to meet the inevitable challenge of change.

Bob Lancer is a team building and leadership expert. He presents motivational team building trainings and keynotes to businesses and other organizations. For more information see http://www.teambuildingtrainings.com

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