Building a Team

Building a team in an organization requires a focused and concerted effort by the leader in the organization. A team is not formed by simply nominating people to a team, holding meetings and promoting teamwork.

Best Practices

1. Hire people that understand, believe in the need for and know how to work with or build a team
2. Coach people; which requires coaching skills and techniques beyond simply being someone’s “boss”
3. Limit direct reports to six people, as generally most people can only effectively manage six direct reports
4. Define the team clearly, and realistically
5. Relate the team to the important functions of the company or division
6. Conduct effective communications with and amongst the team based on a principle of “what will help them do their job better basis” not on a “need to know basis”
7. Develop and utilize personal relationships with team members
8. Clearly define expectations; duties; and measure objectively whether these are getting done
9. Fairness to all team members is needed:

• no favoritism
• equal access
• hold each person accountable equally

1. Shared mission for the team

Resources

• See the additional BP Wiki article Building a High Performance Team
• White Paper on "Virtual Teams" best practices by Projects at Work

Author

The author of this article is John Sund.