Business Media Articles (Archived)

The Manager's Art of Teambuilding

Reprinted from 'Niche' magazine

The more time I spend in senior management the more I come to the realisation that effective team building is the key to a successful enterprise. Whatever the management theorists proclaim, it is the ability to design, build, motivate and support your team or teams that mark out the best managers. At Close we have been through a period of significant change over the last year or so and further improvements are inevitable given that change is constant in any dynamic organisation. Whether it is the factoring sector or any other for that matter, those organisations that stand still inevitably find themselves going backwards.

Team management is no straightforward matter. It needs to be thought through carefully and from the outset the manager must decide what type of team best suits the business. This decision will impact directly on the kind of results he or she wishes to achieve.

Various types of team can be created depending on what is required for the task. A formal committee, for example, may be assembled to tackle specific projects or issues within the organisation. It will be tasked by senior management with providing a written report aimed at developing an opportunity or solving a problem. The members of such a group need to be those who are both aware of the issues under scrutiny, but also have the intellectual wherewithal to resolve the perceived problems. Managers will remain in regular close contact and will expect such teams to have come up with specific recommendations by a certain time deadline.

In contrast, self-directed and self-managed teams are another powerful weapon in the management armoury, but the way they are handled is very different. They are usually entrusted with great latitude in how they achieve their overall results. They are only loosely supervised by management, since experience has shown that they deliver best through creativity and flexibility.

One way such teams frequently operate is to select a group leader who only serves for a limited time and purpose before handing the baton over to someone whose talents as leader would be more suitable. I feel that this style of team can be particularly effective when the work is taking place against the backdrop of fast-moving and unpredictable business issues where flexibility and speed of response, rather than formal committee procedures are paramount.

I have learned that it helps for a manager to be very aware of the different phases that teams go through. Many managers make the mistake of expecting the wrong things at the wrong time in the team's lifecycle. The first phase in a team's lifecycle is that of formation. This will determine the future direction of the team. Members need to know what they are there to achieve and how they are supposed to relate to the rest of the group. Senior management may well need to be quite visible at the initial formation stage to ensure clarity and good chemistry between the membership.

As work progresses on the task in hand, individual differences will emerge, alliances will form, together with jockeying for position. The person nominated by their manager as team leader needs to make sure that this energy is directed in a positive rather than negative way. Concerns must be allowed to be expressed and registered by the entire team. Dissenting voices need to be respected, and not merely squashed in an authoritarian way that will only store up resentment for the future. The aim must be for the team to achieve a consensus in order for it then to move forward constructively. Once consensus on goals has been reached, the strategy, processes and means of achieving those goals is put in place. It is at this next, most creative stage, that the manager will begin to sense whether or not the team he has appointed can really "deliver".

In my view, it should never be necessary to be faced with failure, since the manager who is correctly supervising his teams will be alert to problems looming at a much earlier stage of the team's work and will have taken corrective action. I have found time and time again that if clear goals are put in place right from the start, teams will produce positive results.

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