What is a Team?

A team has "A small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and a common approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable"

Why Teams?

Teams are formed because they can achieve far more than their individual members can on their own, and while being part of a high-performing team can be fun, it can take patience and professionalism to get to that stage.

Effective team leaders can accelerate that process and reduce the difficulties that team members experience by understanding what they need to do as their team moves through the stages from forming to storming, norming and, finally, performing.

Project team building for any project is the most important and challenging step. Most Project team building likely, the project manager will require skills from different departments/jobs to achieve the goals of the project.

An effective project team leader is a "social architect". One who understands the interaction of organizational and behavioral variables, can foster a climate of active participation and can minimize dysfunctional conflict. To be effective, the team leader must identify major issues associated with three dimensions.

• The first dimension is the project organization structure, including organizational development, and senior management involvement to ensure visibility, resource availability and overall support for the project throughout its lifecycle.
• The second is team related with emphasis on behavioral aspects such as team structure, trust and respect, or conversely, barriers to team development.
• The third is project task and resource related such as goals and objectives, planning and scope management, scheduling and cost control. These are all accomplished through effective communication.

But what of the other essential ingredient, the team, the followers? Ideally, the more the team can be motivated and empowered to "take the bull by the horns", the more productive they become and the less direction and control is required.

Tip: Project leadership is an ability to get things done well through others. It requires: - Vision of the destination - Compelling reason to get there - Realistic timetable - Capacity to attract a willing team

It is clear that leadership is important to the success of a project because leadership is essentially about motivating people. It is also clear that what may be characterized as “managership” is equally important because this is about getting things done. The Project Manager is responsible for everything that is required to make the project a success - whether directly or indirectly.

It is not like a typical hierarchical line management role. The PM should have the skills, knowledge, and personality necessary to bring the project to fruition. In addition to these traits, the PM must be given the level of responsibility and authority necessary to perform the job.

The PM's actual role depends on the structure of his/her organization, which can be function-oriented, project-oriented, or some type of matrix in between. In a heavily project-oriented organization, the PM may have relatively unlimited authority, answering only to upper management. At the other end of the spectrum is an organization that manages by function. The PM must deal with functional managers as equals, or possibly even superiors, and negotiate for resources. Most organizations fall somewhere in between these two extremes. Through the efforts of the Project Management Institute (“PMI”), an understanding of the importance of "people" to the success of a project has developed rapidly over the last several years. The major thrusts are perhaps best portrayed graphically as shown in figure:

With these attributes in mind, the following definition is a simple, yet comprehensive distillation of leadership thought in the project context.

Managers and Leaders

PMI defines a project manager as one who is responsible for project management, and now defines project management as the application of knowledge, tools and techniques to project activities. However, these definitions only focus on the administrative aspects of project work. Many well-known authors have written about managers and, especially recently, about leadership. Generally, these authors see a distinction according to the primary focus of the leader or manager.

This table shows the respective positions of leaders and managers on a number of issues. It is a truism that leaders focus on doing "the right thing" while managers focus on doing "the thing right".

Subject	Managers focus on	Leaders focus on
Seeks	Goals & Objectives	Vision
Wants	Results	Achievements
Persuasion	Telling How & When	Selling What & Why
Horizon	Short-term	Long-term
Essence	Stability	Change
Dynamic	Reactive	Proactive
	Consistency	Flexibility
Style	Transactional[1]	Transformational[2]
Focus	Managing organization, structure & work	Leading people
Approach	Plans detail	Sets direction
Rules	Makes	Breaks
	Procedures	Policy
Direction	Existing roads	New roads
Have	Subordinates	Followers
Appeal to	Head	Heart
Exchange	Money for work	Excitement for work & challenging
Power	Formal authority	Personal charisma
Decision	Makes	Facilitates
	Autocracy	Democracy
Likes	Action	Striving
Energy	Control	Passion/Directing
Culture	Enacts	Shapes
	Conforming	Enabling
	Maintaining	Developing
	Imitating	Originating
	Administrating	Innovating
	Bottom line	Top line
Conflict	Avoids	Uses
Risk	Minimizes	Takes
	Risk-accidence	Risk-opportunity
Truth	Establishes	Seeks
Credit	Takes	Gives
Blame	Blames	Takes
Concern	Being right	What is right
	Good Managers do Things Right	Good Leaders do Right Things
What about doing right things right?!

---

[1] People are motivated by reward and punishment. Social systems work best with a clear chain of command. When people have agreed to do a job, a part of the deal is that they cede all authority to their manager. The prime purpose of a subordinate is to do what their manager tells them to do.

[2] People will follow a person who inspires them. A person with vision and passion can achieve great things. The way to get things done is by injecting enthusiasm and energy.

This is, of course, an illustrative characterization, and there is a whole spectrum between either ends of these scales along which each role can range. And many people lead and manage at the same time, and so may display a combination of behaviors.

Can a Manager be a Leader and a Leader be a Manager?

The answer to the question is "yes." The skills to be a leader or a manager are not exclusive in nature. A leader who only displays leadership skills will be ineffective when it comes to checking time cards, completing employee reviews, and scheduling employee vacation time; things that employers require their managers to do on timely bases. Similarly, a manager who spends all his/her time completing paperwork and reading reports; only creates more problems for him or her because they lack a developing relationship with their employees.

If you are a manager who has spent too much time managing and not leading his/her employees, start spending 10% of your time each week leading until you can establish 25% of your time in leadership practices. If you are a leader who only likes to lead, either become a politician, hire an assistant to be the manager, or start spending 50% of your time getting the paperwork done.

Building your Team

Appointing the team members should balance between the skills required for a task and who can join the team. Don’t dream of white elephants. They are rare. However, never settle for someone who cannot do the task assigned to.

Remember to exercise the team building techniques as soon as possible with all team members. Informal chats help a lot.

Once you’ve assembled a great group of people, whether it’s in the office, inter-office, or flung around the country or the globe, your next big project will be to take that assembly and turn them into a team. Of course, natural human interaction between the members of your new team will easily get this started, but that needs to be supplemented to create a true team.

This basic team building boils down to one major thing: leadership. Your team must have solid leadership. That doesn’t mean infallible, perfect leadership; it means solid, trustworthy, and honest leadership. That last sentence should explain the very basic cornerstone of being a good leader to your new team: trustworthy and honest leadership.

Trustworthiness is usually gained over time and will happen naturally as your team members begin to learn that they can trust in you to be a good leader, to be supportive, provide direction, and most importantly that you are open to feedback. One of the best attributes of a great leader is the ability to bring on people that are smarter than you. A leader cannot do everything and so you must hire or bring together the best people to get that job done and in doing that cultivate the strongest and most beneficial contributions from the individuals in your team. Empowering team members to take charge on their assigned duties and tasks will foster a trust in you and the team that directing and micromanaging can never accomplish.

The second part of good team building comes down to honesty. If you’re honest with your team, treat them with respect, and openly admit when you’ve been wrong or chosen the wrong path, your team will believe in you. No one expects anyone else to be perfect. Your team does expect their leadership to be honest, however, or the team building will never happen because politics, fear, and distrust will get in the way. Part of being honest is recognizing when team members go above and beyond their assigned roles, if you express appreciation and recognize those individuals they will be more apt to go that extra mile again.

A leader must tread carefully with honesty, you do not want to be “brutally” honest but you also do not want to mislead or down play situations that are important to the task and team. Tact and Honesty go hand in hand, if a misstep has been made by you the leader or one of the team members you must address the misstep, but in pointing out the error you must also provide a positive means of redirection or a solution. So be honest but with a goal towards building a positive, productive, and cohesive team in mind.

Once honesty and trustworthiness are established, the rest of team building is pretty simple. From the beginning, you should be honest. Then you should establish trust by showing your team that everyone in the team is important and that each contribution is integral to the success of the team. At the same time, you should consider each team members motivations for the project, their reasons for being there, and their needs to keep them interested and active with the team project. The most successful teams are those where each member has buy in, can see the vision, and takes ownership of the intended goal.

Motivation is a huge subject all to itself, but for this section’s purpose, we’ll just say that motivation can be much more than money and benefits. Often, simple things like providing coffee at face-to-face team meetings, recognizing every day efforts as well as the outstanding ones, or just allowing time to hang out and talk once in a while, as a group, without business getting in the way will take your team miles. Work is important, getting the job done even more important, but without motivation and a cohesive team structure you will not get to the essentials without quite a few headaches along the way. When team members get to know each other on a more personal level they tend to support one another within the team a bit more, so allow some room for the banter and friendship building it will build a team for the long term.

Above all, make sure that your team building includes participation from all members of the team. Give the team purpose, some challenge, and personal freedom to allow for responsibility and accomplishment on an individual, group, and team basis. Finally, as we said before, the true center of good team building is establishing trust and being honest with your team. Do these things and you’ll have a great team in the making!

“The 'P' in 'PM' is as much about 'People Management' as it is about 'Project Management'.” - Cornelius Fichtner

Stages of Group Development

Effective teamwork is essential in today's world, but as you'll know from the teams you have led or belonged to, you can't expect a new team to perform exceptionally from the very outset. Team formation takes time, and usually follows some easily recognizable stages, as the team journeys from being a group of strangers to becoming a united team with a common goal.

Whether your team is a temporary working group or a newly-formed, permanent team, by understanding these stages you will be able to help it quickly become productive.

Psychologist Bruce Tuckman first came up with the memorable phrase "forming, storming, norming and performing" back in 1965. He used it to describe the path to high-performance that most teams follow. Later, he added a fifth stage that he called "adjourning" (and others often call "mourning" – it rhymes better!):

1. Forming: The group comes together and gets to initially know one other and form as a group.
2. Storming: A chaotic vying for leadership and trialing of group processes
3. Norming: Eventually agreement is reached on how the group operates (norming)
4. Performing: The group practices its craft and becomes effective in meeting its objectives.
5. Adjourning: The process of "unforming" the group, that is, letting go of the group structure and moving on.

Forming

Teams initially go through a "forming" stage in which members are positive and polite. Some members are anxious, as they haven't yet worked out exactly what work the team will involve. Others are simply excited about the task ahead. As leader, you play a dominant role at this stage: other members' roles and responsibilities are less clear.

This stage is usually fairly short, and may only last for the single meeting at which people are introduced to one-another. At this stage there may be discussions about how the team will work, which can be frustrating for some members who simply want to get on with the team task.

This stage is characterized by:

• High dependence on leader for guidance and direction
• Little agreement on team aims other than received from leader
• Individual roles and responsibilities are unclear
• Leader must be prepared to answer lots of questions about the team's purpose, objectives and external relationships
• Processes are often ignored
• Members test tolerance of system and leader
• Leader directs

Storming

Soon, reality sets in and your team moves into a "storming" phase. Your authority may be challenged as others jockey for position and their roles are clarified. The ways of working start to be defined and, as leader, you must be aware that some members may feel overwhelmed by how much there is to do, or uncomfortable with the approach being used. Some may react by questioning how worthwhile the goal of the team is, and by resisting taking on tasks. This is the stage when many teams fail, and even those that stick with the task may feel that they are on an emotional roller coaster, as they try to focus on the job in hand without the support of established processes or relationships with their colleagues.

This stage is characterized by:

• Decisions don't come easily within group
• Team members vie for position as they attempt to establish themselves in relation to other team members and the leader, who might receive challenges from team members
• Clarity of purpose increases but plenty of uncertainties persist
• Cliques and factions form and there may be power struggles
• The team needs to be focused on its goals to avoid becoming distracted by relationships and emotional issues
• Compromises may be required to enable progress
• Leader coaches

Norming

Gradually, the team moves into a "norming" stage, as a hierarchy is established. Team members come to respect your authority as a leader, and others show leadership in specific areas.

Now that the team members know each other better, they may be socializing together, and they are able to ask each other for help and provide constructive criticism. The team develops a stronger commitment to the team goal, and you start to see good progress towards it.

There is often a prolonged overlap between storming and norming behavior: As new tasks come up, the team may lapse back into typical storming stage behavior, but this eventually dies out.

This stage is characterized by:

• Agreement and consensus is largely forms among team, who respond well to facilitation by leader
• Roles and responsibilities are clear and accepted. Big decisions are made by group agreement
• Smaller decisions may be delegated to individuals or small teams within group
• Commitment and unity is strong
• The team may engage in fun and social activities
• The team discusses and develops its processes and working style
• There is general respect for the leader and some of leadership is more shared by the team
• Leader facilitates and enables

Performing

When the team reaches the "performing" stage, hard work leads directly to progress towards the shared vision of their goal, supported by the structures and processes that have been set up. Individual team members may join or leave the team without affecting the performing culture.

As leader, you are able to delegate much of the work and can concentrate on developing team members. Being part of the team at this stage feels "easy" compared with earlier on.

This stage is characterized by:

• The team is more strategically aware; the team knows clearly why it is doing what it is doing
• The team has a shared vision and is able to stand on its own feet with no interference or participation from the leader
• There is a focus on over-achieving goals, and the team makes most of the decisions against criteria agreed with the leader
• The team has a high degree of autonomy
• Disagreements occur but now they are resolved within the team positively and necessary changes to processes and structure are made by the team
• The team is able to work towards achieving the goal, and also to attend to relationship, style and process issues along the way
• Team members look after each other
• The team requires delegated tasks and projects from the leader
• The team does not need to be instructed or assisted
• Team members might ask for assistance from the leader with personal and interpersonal development
• Leader delegates and oversees

Adjourning

Project teams exist only for a fixed period, and even permanent teams may be disbanded through organizational restructuring. As team leader, your concern is both for the team's goal and the team members. Breaking up a team can be stressful for all concerned and the "adjourning" or "mourning" stage is important in reaching both team goal and personal conclusions.

The breakup of the team can be hard for members who like routine or who have developed close working relationships with other team members, particularly if their future roles or even jobs look uncertain.