Nehme N.

Bechalany

Teambuilding:

Modern society tends to become more fluid, dynamic and specialized nowadays. This
change is mainly due to many factors including revolution in communications, the global
market and the division of labor. Thus, any individual, specialized in a field, needs to
work with people specialized in other fields in order to fulfill a task. Joining people
together and ask them to share the same aim is not that simple. This led to the creation of
techniques and methods to help people adapt to the new requirements needed to become a
member of good team.
Teambuilding is the process of building a good team from a bad team. In other words, it
refers to the process of establishing and developing a greater sense of collaboration and
trust between team members with the intention of achieving better teamwork and
collective performance in order to complete the task successfully and to have its purpose
fulfilled.
The requirements for team building are:
1. Selection of participants and size of the group:
Selecting the future members of a team is a crucial point. The leader bases his
choice on many criteria, some being more important than others:
• Working knowledge consisting of experience and problem solving ability.
• Teamwork consisting of openness, supportiveness, action orientation and
personal style.
The size of a team can vary from an individual to a big organization.
• Individuals are selected in order to develop their skills and to become
effective team members very quickly.
• Small teams consist of 2-12 people. The 2 main priorities of the leader are
to build the foundation of collective ownership of team objectives and
then overcome the inhibitors by team bonding (better relationship between
people), facilitation, processes…
• Island teams consist of different teams not relating well. A larger scale is
involved: achieve higher goals than the team goal. The challenge is to
bridge the different teams so that people have positive attitudes towards
those in other teams and ameliorate the relationships of these different
teams.
• Organizations involving a large number of people. A change in the
personal of the organization has a limited impact on the organization
culture. New members tend to follow the already established culture.
2. Establishing the goals.
It is very important for the leader to establish the goal early in the aim of letting
the members understand the purpose of participating. The goal must be attainable
and achievable so that participants are motivated to excel in their activities.
Without a goal, members have noting to strive for.
3. Allocation of roles:
It is very important to fit a person in his specific role. In other words, each
member should be assigned a role that is clearly defined and relates to his or her
personality. It is also important to clarify each of these roles at the very first
meeting so members know exactly what they have to do. Moreover, it is crucial

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for a leader to know what kind of personality he/she should have in order to gain
respect from the team’s members.
4. Team work:
A team must know how to work together in order to be productive and successful.
If a team can work together, they will be able to raise and resolve issues that are
standing in the way of accomplishing a goal. Working together may not come
easy at first, but with proper training (workshops in communication skills,
listening, assertiveness, conflict resolution…) the team will be able to adapt
quickly.
5. Support:
Supportiveness is the aspiration to help other succeed.
Different kinds of support exist:
• Emotional
• Informational
• Instrumental
• Appraisal
6. Effective use of resources:
Resources are essential to team building and they must be used wisely and
efficiently.
7. Communication between the leader and the team’s members:
A leader with good communication skills must be able to speak the truth and deal
with problems openly. His/her goal should be to promote listening, to understand
different viewpoints, and to work toward a resolution. It is important for a team
leader to make team members feel comfortable enough to express their needs and
their wants. Members want to feel that they know what is going on at all time and
are informed about things such as plans, priorities, and progress the group is
making.

Bruce Tuckman, in 1965, proposed a 4 stage model (what became a 5 stage model later
on) that is necessary and inevitable for a team to grow, to face up challenges, to tackle
problems, to find solutions, to plan work and to deliver results.
1. Forming:
The team meets and learns about the opportunity, challenges, agrees on goals and
begins to tackle the tasks. Team members tend to behave quite independently.
Supervisors of the team during this phase tend to need to be directive.
2. Storming:
Different ideas compete for consideration. The team addresses issues such as what
problems they are really supposed to solve, how they will function independently
and together and what leadership model they will accept. Team members open out
to each other and confront each other's ideas and perspectives.
Tolerance of each team member and their differences needs to be emphasized.
Without tolerance and patience the team will fail. This phase can become
destructive to the team and will lower motivation if allowed to get out of control.
Supervisors of the team during this phase may be more accessible but tend to still
need to be directive in their guidance of decision-making and professional
behavior.

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3. Norming:
Team members adjust their behavior to each other as they develop work habits
that make teamwork seem more natural and fluid. Team members often work
through this stage by agreeing on rules, values, professional behavior, shared
methods and even taboos. Team members begin to trust each other. Motivation
increases as the team gets more acquainted with the project.
Supervisors of the team during this phase tend to be participative more than in the
earlier stages. The team members can be expected to take more responsibility for
making decisions and for their professional behavior.
4. Performing:
These high-performing teams are able to function as a unit as they find ways to
get the job done smoothly and effectively without inappropriate conflict or the
need for external supervision. Team members are motivated, knowledgeable and
interdependent. The team members are now competent, autonomous and able to
handle the decision-making process without supervision.
Supervisors of the team during this phase are almost always participative. The
team will make most of the necessary decisions.
5. Adjourning:
When the task is completed successfully and its purpose fulfilled, the team must
break up. Every member can move on to new things feeling good about what has
been achieved.
Tuckman insists that a team can be stuck at one stage or advance to another stage and
regress to the previous one. Most competent teams will be able to pass from one stage to
another and complete their goal.

Not to forget that team building can be handicapped by rigid overuse or underuse.
Examples of these are independence, slow or vague thinking and chaos or the multitude
of initiatives, bureaucracy, speed of thinking and the Appolo syndrome (team is
composed of highly capable people, that achieves little, but claims great success!)…