Team Building

The essence of the power and the impact of any work group is in its teams. 

Old school business models that followed Taylor and were driven by a boss were not environments where teams existed.  Directives for work and goals were handed down to individuals in a hierarchy of authority to be given to the workforce.  (Taylor, F. (2007). The principles of scientific management; Green, Practicing the Art of Leadership, 2013, 97). Few current successful businesses use the Taylor model.  Instead, facilitative leadership has replaced most workforce arrangements, where employees have voice and impact on the decisions of the business.

Facilitative leadership, as posted in another blog post, described the actions of culture building, consensus building, and collaborative environments.  (Ibid., 105-106). It projects a sense of fellowship and guided interaction.  It requires the clear defining of what it means to be a “team.”

Team Is a Mindset

Team is a mindset … an ethos … a collaborative environment that seeks to access a unity of purpose and collective involvement that can generate a collective ownership of the organization’s mission.  This garnering the feeling of owning the activity of the entity … not simply receiving directions from authority to be followed and obeyed … engenders a team spirit … an esprit de corps.

Teaming is central to any business success in the current field of play, as leadership is a team sport.  

This concept is best evidenced in sports, where those units that play together and develop a close and enduring bond succeed beyond the league.  Think of our Super Bowl participants … the Rams and the Bengals … and acknowledge their unified execution and overwhelming collective spirit, and we get a good snapshot of team.  

Collaboration is at the heart of this team development

Collaboration is the key to effective decision-making, as shared decision-making is shared responsibility.  When all are involved in the processes of the business then all can reap the feeling of success … what we can call “Collective Efficacy.”  (Brinson, D., & Steiner, L. [2007]. Building Collective Efficacy: How Leaders Inspire Teachers to Achieve [Issue Brief]. Washington, DC: Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement: Hattie etal, 2018. The power of collective efficacy. Education Leadership.)   CSE is the perception that the full organization can generate actions that achieve stated goals through a “can do” attitude.  It is where the group invests and the group reaps benefits through interactive engagement in the actions of the business.  It is one of the most impactful means to the accomplishment of team transcendency.

Transcendency: that state of affairs where the group excels or surpasses commonly held expectations, going beyond the existing limits of their organization.  (merriam-webster.com). 

In the current business environment post-pandemic, and amid ongoing inflation, having a workforce team carry a capacity for extra-ordinary performance is key to reaching organizational goals and ongoing success. Organizational transcendent teams are no longer a luxury for the most elite businesses.  They have become the key to all business entities.  With up to 67% of resignations leading to an individual quitting his/her place of employment, and job openings high and hiring low, the current workforce is unstable at best. (Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics, FRED. Chart: Will

Chase/Axios).

Transcendent teams are developed through vision casting of the purpose and practice of the organization  

At the heart of these teams is the foundation of fairness and equity, and a sense of decency and purpose. The included poem, “The People That I Love Best” speaks to the character, the ethos, the culture of healthy teams. When team members are treated as internal customers (Carrol, HIA, May 2022) we generate the culture that Piercy highlights herein:

The People That I Love Best

By Marge Piercy

The people that I love best 

Jump into work head-first

Without dallying in the shadows

And swim off with sure strokes 

Almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element

The black sleek heads of seals

Bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves,

An ox to a heavy cart,

Who pull like water buffalo,

With massive patience,

Who strain in the mud and the muck

To move things forward,

Who do what has to be done,

Again, and again.

I want to be with people who submerge in the task,

Who go into the fields to harvest

And work in a row and pass the bags along,

Who stand in the line and haul in their places,

Who are not parlor generals and field deserters, 

But move in a common rhythm

When the food must come in

Or the fire to be put out.