Have you ever witnessed a wining sports team or a well rehearsed orchestra and the felt the commitment and energy the team demonstrated? What you saw was more than just teamwork – it was team synergy, a phenomenon that occurs when a team achieves greater results than the sum of its parts. Using learning instruments, hands-on activities, and an interactive team simulation, teams gain a clearer sense of direction, clarify roles and responsibilities, improve operating processes and bolster both interpersonal and inter-team relationships.Skills required to built a synergic team
• Vision: vision means being able to excite the team with large, desired outcomes. The goal must be bigger than a paycheck. Everyone should be proud of perusing the goal.
• Commitment : Commitment can be a dangerous concept because of its attendant assumptions. When the leader assumes that everyone in his team must be committed, he may overlook the difficulties of individuals in fulfilling his vision of commitment. The commitment is always for the future & there is always a factor of uncertainty about the future. It is common for people to neither jump nor climb back down the "ladder," but rather to stay stuck at the end of the board, immobilized in pros, cons, obstacles, and worries. In this state of mind, the obstacles begin to rule, obscuring the vision, blunting motivation.
The leader must understand these factors & he must give assurance to support to his subordinates, in case any unexpected unwanted incidence. Otherwise the team members will pretend to be committed, will say ‘Yes’ to the boss, when they are actually saying ‘May be’.
The commitment process generally goes into 3 steps.
List of unknowns
Access worst case scenarios
Research of the unknowns
• Trust : The nature of commitment requirement for building a synergic team requires ‘Trust’. Trust is the antidote to the fears and risks attendant to meaningful commitment. Trust means confidence in team leadership and vision. When trust prevails, team members are more willing to go through a difficult process, supported through ups, downs, risk and potential loss.
• Inclusion : Inclusion means getting others to commit to the team effort, helping others through their "diving board doubts" to genuine commitment. Since leaders now understand this process first hand, we need only communicate with the potential team members to complete inclusion.
• Help Exchange : At this point, the leadership role is to catalyze consensus, not to issue orders. Consensus means that team members agree to, whether they necessarily agree with, a particular approach. Consensus occurs easily when most feel their ideas were heard and considered, whether or not the team ultimately chooses those ideas
Ref: http://www.learningcenter.net/library/building.shtml
