Team Working - Our Viewpoint

PSA believe that for a team to be effective its members need to be:

• Accountable

• Committed

• Appropriately skilled

• Able to build effective relationships.

Accountable - Each team member needs to take personal responsibility for achieving the team’s goals. Team members need to “sign up” to the task.

Committed - The team needs a clear direction and associated shared goals and value system. Teams need clear reasons to work together.

Skilled - Includes interpersonal, problem solving and creative skills, the ability to understand and respond positively to change, as well as the technical skills to do the job. Sadly, all too often, the focus is on technical skills first and teamworking skills second (if at all); resulting in highly talented individuals who struggle to work well together.

Relationships - Is about reconciling differences between individuals to create the most effective working relationships possible. This rarely happens amongst strangers – team members need to know each other well enough to be able to address differences constructively.

Having had the privilege of working with numerous high performing teams several clear needs stand out as being fundamental to effective team work.

Teams also need to...

• Know the Game – What the team is trying to achieve and the individual roles within this.

• Know the Rules – How to work together, the formal and informal rules.

• Know the Score – How the team is doing against key measures and targets.

At the heart of these differing needs is Communication. Effective communication within teams is akin to the oil that lubricates a machine – we often take it for granted until we realise that it is not present and that the machine is grinding to a halt. Communication should not be onerous but is more a matter of ensuring that each team member has the right information to hand to allow them to perform their job.

The simple model shown above has been developed from our research with teams of all sizes and characteristics. Team performance will be impaired if the team is not well developed in all of the critical areas. We have developed a Team Health Check questionnaire which help pinpoint where your team could most benefit from development.