Teams

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Michael Egan Associates Team Building
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A New Model Successful modern organizations are increasingly team-based because the old military model --"You're not paid to think but to obey!"-- no longer gets the job done. As we advance into the Information Age, knowledge, creativity and intelligent initiatives mark the difference between profit and loss, growth and decay. Like love, the development and imaginative application of ideas cannot be commanded. It must be fostered, allowed to grow, and even won.

The hallmarks of 21st Century enterprise will be cooperative work groups with high levels of autonomy, trust, energy and clean relationships.

	Cooperative Work Groups A cooperative work group or team is an interaction between people who agree to act collaboratively so as to realize a common goal. To achieve this, the group must develop its own processes (for example, how to take and enact decisions), have a hand in forging its own objectives (both short
and long range), and help establish the means to operationalize its processes (day-to-day conduct, materiel, etc).

A team also needs a set of mutually acceptable agreements between its members, e.g., ground rules for arriving at and implementing decisions, clear and effective communication skills (both written and oral), a mechanism for dealing with conflict, and a program for on-going learning.

Team-Building Steps

The team-building process depends on variables. Among them:

Whether the team is newly formed or well established.
Whether it is a task force with one objective or a department with a series of goals.
Its history.
How well the members know, trust and like one another.
Whether its leaders are new or not, and how the rest of the team perceives them.

For these and other reasons, it is often useful to have a skilled professional conduct the initial team-building process, or help restore win-win behaviors in long-standing groups. The final step in both processes is to leave in place mechanisms that enable the team to renew itself in an on-going way.

The process might include the following steps:

Evaluating Current Reality.
Defining Desired Futures.
Effective Meeting Management.
Compassionate Feedback.
Ground Rules.
Win-Win Behaviors
Benchmarking and Mid-Range Goals.
Establishing Sub-Teams.
Enhancing Writing and Speaking Skills.
Self-Defined Training/Education.

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Michael Egan Associates professionals have successfully helped companies great and small develop productive teams with healthy relationships, imaginatively realistic goals, effective decision-making processes, win-win-ethics and self-sustaining behaviors. Read what clients say.

We can do the same for your company. Give us a call and tell us what you want to achieve. We'll suggest a process, and at your request help you implement it.

For more information about our ideas, please review the team-building articles and archives in Modern Management, and in Vroom! Turbo- Charged Team Building, by Michael Shandler & Michael Egan.

Imagination....Customization....Experience

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