Building a Great Team

The following is an excellent approach to team building. It was strongly based on Patrick Lencioni's book The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team. We took the principles of his book and made it into an easy to strategy for team building.

There are 5 steps of the strategy to building a great team. The challenge is to have the leadership on the team to drive the strategy from the first step through the process and understanding where the team is on their journey to greatness.  Typically, there is one person that is NOT aligned and this must be corrected to achieve any success.

Below is a summary of the process: 

5 Steps to Building a GREAT Team

Build Trust

Objective: Create an environment where team members are comfortable being vulnerable with each other.

How: Encourage open dialogue, admit mistakes, and show empathy

Master Conflict (Encourage Positive Conflict)

Objective: Enable team members to engage in constructive conflict focused on ideas and solutions, rather than personal attacks. Everyone does NOT have to agree, but they should be able to respect the disagreement with others.

How: Establish ground rules for healthy debate and encourage differing viewpoints.

Achieve Commitment (Disagree and COMMIT)

Objective: Ensure that all team members are committed to the decisions and plans made. THIS IS HARD, but everyone has to respect the final decision, regardless of their agreement, and be willing to do whatever is necessary to succeed

How: Involve everyone in decision-making and make sure all voices are heard before reaching a consensus.

Embrace Accountability (Everyone is responsible for Accountability)

Objective: Hold each other accountable for delivering against those plans. It’s NOT just the Team Leader’s job

How: Set clear expectations and consequences for not meeting them. Create a culture where team members are comfortable calling out lapses.

Focus on Results (for Team)

Objective: Prioritize collective results over individual ego and recognition. Commit to this team over the individual’s team

How: Align team goals with organizational objectives and measure performance against those goals regularly.

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The following is the presentation that is used for the training. Feel free to use this information. It is highly recommended to buy Lencioni's book for your team to help provide a parable context to the process.