How To Form A Team
And grow from it effectively.
Team building is one of the trickiest things out there at times. There are many things that need to be worked on and maintained over the long term in order for teamwork to be an effective tool.
Today I want to be talking about various aspects of team building and how to form an effective team that can support you and others within the team.
Gather The People
“Great teamwork is the only way we create the breakthroughs that define our careers.” — Pat Riley
First is gathering the people. This is no short task as there are a few things to consider. First of all some of the things mentioned below are crucial to establish first before looking for people.
Forming a group requires planning and with all plans, you need a vision.
Much like if you want to achieve or attract something, you need a plan of action.
But for people specifically, here’s some things to keep in mind.
Firstly, not every member in the group needs to be in the same kind of field. In fact, it’s better if its diverse.
You want each member to contribute to the group in some capacity and the only real way to do that is to have a bit of diversity. This can be a combination of different races, occupation, upbringing, and more.
Secondly, although you want the group to be diverse, you want the people to agree with the vision of the group.
At the very least you want to have a vision in mind on a general scale. You don’t need an ironclad and specific reason. It can be broad. For example, The Inklings were a group of writers and other arts people coming together. At the foundation it was simply that but it broadened further as the group gathered and discussed. You can do the same thing.
Establish Norms
“No individual can win a game by himself.” — Pele
I’ll be talking about this in a little more detail in some later posts, however norms are important and can sink a group when not established properly.
Norms are these unspoken rules that are determined by the flow of conversations and peoples reactions to certain things.
These norms can steer particular view points but also how ideas are shared, who is talking, and more.
You want to be establishing norms that foster a growing community. I’ll talk about this later, but some good methods to establishing norms is allowing people to speak, and being supportive when they share something personable.
Some other norms to consider is not tolerating interruptions as well as appreciating everyone’s input rather than praising one person in particular.
Decide How Big The Group Needs To Be
“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” — Henry Ford
Another important thing to keep in mind is figuring out the group specifics as well.
As mentioned above, if you’ve figured out what the group is generally about, you can piece together how many people you want in the group.
This is important because you want a big enough group to achieve the purpose of the group.
But not too big that you can lose focus of the goal or it becomes too much.
Consider Tools That Boost Teamwork
“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” — Steve Jobs
Once you have all the details ironed out and starting to network and grow your group, you can also consider tools that can help with the group as well.
Of course the first thing that comes to mind is Facebook Groups as a one stop place for people to share info, events, and more. But there are some other tools that can help depending on the nature of the group.
For communication you can consider platforms like Slack, Flowdock. Helpful for groups where people travel a lot or can’t gather in one physical spot.
Productivity tools like Trello and ProofHub can help in keeping groups productive and know what’s done and what else needs to get done.
Lastly you can use platforms like Google Docs, Evernote and Igloo. These allow you to share notes, ideas, reports, and more amongst the group.
Those are but a handful of tools, but there are more you can consider here.
Try This
Team building, when done correctly, can change a lot of peoples lives as you’ll be seeing. As a team, it can help in lifting people up and bolstering confidence in instances where the group is benefiting everyone involved.
To your growth!
Eric S Burdon
This post is part of an 3 month writing challenge that I’m committing myself to. Every day for 3 months, I’ll be writing articles with specific criteria in mind. You can learn all about my reasoning as well as what that criteria is right here. This is 27 of 91 of this series.
Call to action
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this article, be sure to click the clap icon👏 to applaud and so others will see it. And then share it on Twitter & Facebook too.
