Team building

 ( Industrial And Organizational Psychology ) 

Goal setting and role clarification have the greatest impact because they enhance motivation, reduce conflict and help to set individual purposes, goals and motivation.

Teams with 10 or more members appear to benefit the most from team building. This is attributed to larger teams having – generally speaking – a greater reservoir of cognitive resources and capabilities than smaller teams.

Teams are then assembled to address specific problems, while the underlying causes are not ignored.

Dyer highlighted three challenges for team builders:Dyer, W. G., Dyer, W. G., & Dyer, J. H. (2007). Team building: Proven strategies for improving team performance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bas

• Lack of teamwork skills: One of the challenges facing leaders is to find team-oriented employees. Most organizations rely on educational institutions to have inculcated these skills into students. Dyer believed however, that students are encouraged to work individually and succeed without having to collaborate. This works against the kinds of behavior needed for teamwork. Another study found that team training improved cognitive, affective, process and performance outcomes. Employee resistance and lack of teamwork skills may result where employees are required to work with other employees with whom they are unfamiliar. In this case, the new teams are breaking up established social relationships.
• Virtual workplaces and across organizational boundaries: according to Dyer, organizations individuals who are not in the same physical space increasingly work together. Members are typically unable to build concrete relationships with other team members. Another study found that face-to-face communication is very important in building an effective team environment. Face-to-face contact was key to developing trust. Formal team building sessions with a facilitator led the members to "agree to the relationship" and define how the teams were work. Informal contact was also mentioned.
• Globalization and virtualization: Teams increasingly include members who have dissimilar languages, cultures, values and problem-solving approaches problems. One-to-one meetings has been successful in some organizations.

The International Journal of Management and Entrepreneurship highlights the point of groupthink being another challenge within team building. A group thinking or making decisions in a way that discourages creativity or individual control creates potential for increased conflict over decision making.

Another challenge to team building include three types of conflict that can occur which are task conflict, process conflict and relationship conflict.

• Task Conflict: Conflict over the work or goals of the project, including different approaches, perspectives and interpretations
• Process Conflict: Conflict over how the logistics of the work are completed and assigning responsibilities
• Relationship Conflict: Conflict over interpersonal relationships, including personality clashes, differing personal views and perspectives.

Fun is an important component to team building, but the intent is to become productive, focused, and aligned. Purely recreational activities can be helpful, but must be timed and consider the capabilities of team members (e.g., sports are not for everyone). Other activities geared toward creating a learning environment, exceeding results and engaging employees must be present.

Employee engagement and Team-building exercises allow teams to create solutions that are meaningful to them, with direct impact on the individuals, the team and the organization. Experiential learning and ramification methods are effective ways to engage millennials in the workplace. Employee engagement is effective because:

• employees enjoy problem-solving activities;
• problem-solving creates ownership;
• it can increase capacity;
• competitive activities encourage a results-based outlook.

Outdoor activities can be an effective way to engage the team, but there are many different types of team building activities possible.

In 2011, senior Human Resource leaders at Mars Inc. conducted a study on their global workforce to better understand team collaboration and team effectiveness, as they like many companies, had spent large sums of money on team building activities without much return on these investments of money and time. Their study, published in the Harvard Business Review, determined that employees are motivated by a sense of accountability for their work and strong relationships and trust are forged outcomes of dedicated people striving together. Putting success-minded people together is what unlocks productive teamwork more so than offsite, company directed teambuilding activities.

According to Yukelson, "In sports, teams are made up of a collection of interdependent individuals, coordinated and orchestrated into various task efficient roles for the purpose of achieving goals and objectives that are deemed important for that particular team".

Team building in sports develops behaviors and skills that “result in improvements in team effectiveness.” A basic tenet of team building is when team members foster a sense of unity, or togetherness. This creates a catalyzing function bolstering the individual members' efforts through increased motivation. This directs them towards their common goals, and improves team performance outcomes.

A study examined whether a team building intervention program that stressed the importance of goal setting increased cohesion: 86 high school basketball players were studied. The hypothesis employed season-long goal setting. Participants were asked to individually assign targets for the team and negotiate with other team members to finalize a goal score for the team.

In the control branch, the coach occasionally encouraged participants to cheer for and support other team members. The research concluded that at the beginning of the study, all the teams had the same level of cohesion, but the team with the season long goal setting intervention program performed better.

The level of team cohesion did not increase as a result of ceiling effect with the intervention program, but the level decreased significantly for the control group. This was attributed to the lack of emphasis on team goals.

Core components for building a successful sports team:

• The coach communicates the goals and objectives to the team, defining roles and group norms.
• Team members should know what is expected from them. Mission statements can encourage the team to support each in achieving the goals.
• Team members should be trained that the team comes first and that each member is accountable for individual action and the actions of the team as a whole.
• "Team culture refers to the psychosocial leadership within the team, team motives, team identity, team sport and collective efficacy".Martens, R. (1987). Coaches guide to sport psychology. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics The coach builds a positive culture. This can be done during recruiting for team-oriented athletes.
• Instill a sense of pride in group membership. Team identity can be created by motivating team members commit to team goals and have pride in performance.
• Open and honest communication process can bring the team together. This includes both verbal and non-verbal communication. Trust, honesty, mutual sharing and understanding should be emphasized. The team members should be encouraged and given the chance to speak during debriefing sessions.
• Teammates help each other before, after and during games.

Benefits of team building in sports include;

• Improved team cohesion.
• Improved communications skills on and off field.
• Increased motivation and enjoyment.
• Builds player to player and player to manager trust.
• Mitigates conflict.
• Encourages communication.

• Mandatory fun
• Group development
• Industrial and organizational psychology
• Leadership development
• Maslow's hierarchy of needs
• Personal development
• Socionics
• Team management
• Teamwork
• Team effectiveness
• Workplace politics