Building New Teams: Establishing, building, and managing creative and technical teams

Building new teams is an often required activity in today’s organization. A lot of research points to teams being the most basic building block of companies. There are several reasons for this: teams are more productive, they make better decisions, and they create better products providing better services. Ultimately, team membership leads to more engaged and productive staff. But none of the positive aspects that teams can bring to an organization can be realized if the conditions are not right. So how do we build new teams? More importantly – how do we create the right conditions for teams to thrive and perform at their best?

Latest research (Morgeson et al., 2010) suggests that there are two phases to team building and management:

• Transition phase
• Action phase

Transition phase occurs when new teams are established or old teams are re-established, in the case that they never were properly formed. Action phase comes about during team performance, after all the setup and formation tasks have been completed.

Transition phase

It is important to initiate teams correctly using a complete set of steps, to make sure that the basic requirements are covered. For example, if a team does not have a shared mission, it is likely that individual members will define their own mission for their team based on their observations. At the same time, each team member needs to understand what exactly is expected of them and their team. With that in mind, the following leadership functions are defined for the Transition phase:

• Compose team – get the best people on board
• Define mission – determine and communicate what is the purpose of the team, in a broader organizational context
• Establish expectations and goals – performance expectations and goals are created as targets, with the mission directing this effort
• Structure and plan – develop processes for optimal team performance
• Train and develop team – make sure that everyone can perform their task with sufficient competence
• Sensemaking – help the team understand and cope with changes and events that affect its performance (e.g. change in team leadership, changes in team size, etc.)
• Provide feedback – essential to keeping the team aligned and on track

Action phase

During the Action phase, the leadership role is to ensure that the team is performing at their optimum, solve any internal or external issues, get involved with the work of the team, help team members grow and improve, get resources for the team, and foster a positive social climate. The functions that are carried out in this phase are:

• Monitor team – ensure team is performing and following established processes
• Manage team boundaries – manage the relationship between the team and the organization
• Challenge the team – forcing the team to rethink the established ways of doing the work
• Perform team tasks – take a more active role in the work of the team
• Solve problems – help the team overcome obstacles
• Provide resources – get the resources needed to carry out the work. Also indicates that the team is supported.
• Encourage team self-management – help the team manage itself
• Support social climate – it’s not all about the work. Although helping the team members become good friends will improve team performance and collaboration.

Leadership functions are important to ensure that the team is operating under the right conditions which would help the team, and by extension the organization, achieve its goals. There are always many different approaches to establishing and managing teams. These functions provide a good list of steps and functions needed to establish and manage a creative and / or technical team. It would be the team leader’s role to establish and maintain these functions; and all research points to teams and team leaders as the optimal basic structure for a successful operation.

What’s your view?

Do you have a different experience in team building and management? Leave a comment.

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