| Understand your staff for Effective Team building |
As a manager, effective team building exercise could mean the difference
between your success or failure. Being a manager means you became a
team leader in some sense or another.
Understanding the type of team members that you might end up with
makes your business team building exercise more effective and helps
you build a team that will work with you to achieve the goals. This
means your success or failure in the job assigned to you.
Many times you will find that the team members might be imposed on
you. This is very frequent if you work in an established organization. To
start a team building exercise from scratch happens only when you start
a new company or department.
Resisting the appointment of certain team members requires a lot of
diplomacy from you. Never confront the system or your manager.
Instead, explain to them that such team members might mean the
failure of the whole project. Explain to them that their success is on the
line more than yours.
There are five main streams of team members that you have to deal
with when you plan to an effective team building exercise:
Passive: you assign tasks to them. They do it and then stop. Some
academics refer to them as the “passengers”
“Yes Sir” members: They do the assigned tasks by the manager and fully
depend on him or her for inspiration.
Cynical members: they are bit advanced than the other two categories
above in their ability to criticize and think, but will still be passive in
doing the tasks assigned to them by the leader. Being critical never
means that they oppose the manager.
Edge team members: they sit on the fence and watch the others do the
work. They play it politically right by not opposing the manager or the
system. They await their chance for promotion by claiming credit of the
others’ work.
The Doers member: These members think and act upon the instructions
of the manager, but they do things with passion and confidence and
plan for the next step. They are risk takers. They are noticed as their
managers and deserve the promotion and appraisal.
Depending on your management skills, culture and situation, the type of
team members mentioned above differs. However, becoming a manager
or team leader means that you have to handle all types of staff…you are
the manager after all.
Return to the Management Skills page from the Effective Team Building
page
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