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It sometimes amazes me how much emphasis the corporate world places on teamwork without actively doing anything about facilitating the team forming process. Teams are often expected to form “naturally”, because surely if a bunch of random people are thrown together they are bound to start cooperating effectively eventually, right? In million dollar projects, the amount of money allocated to team building is effectively zero, the attitude seems to be – “team building require budget, that’s unpossible!” – and that’s when team building is even on the agenda.

On the other end of the scale, it also sometimes amazes me how overly concerned with facilitating team building the corporate world seems to be. Huge budgets are allocated to various activities for the sole purpose of possibly creating a better team. Awkward corporate retreats, contrived team building activities, hokey trust exercises those are all a staple of the team building junky and no amount of money is too large to get more of that kind of stuff happening.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that the right question is not:

What’s your team building budget?

but rather:

Are you spending your team building budget wisely?

You do have funds allocated to team building don’t you? Since you now know how to retain your employees, you do want them to work effectively in teams, don’t you?

The funny thing about putting groups of people together is that they WANT to form teams (humans are herd animals after all). However depending on the numbers of people involved and the different personalities the natural process can take a long time and it is not unknown for a team to form “badly”, with tension, backstabbing and undercurrents of mistrust.

What you need to do is stack the odds in the favour of a team forming well. You also want your team to become a unit quickly, so you need to give the “natural process” a helping hand. Surprisingly enough this can be very inexpensive, but you need to be alert and energetic, you need to recognise team building opportunities when they present themselves and you need to occasionally create them. Most importantly you have to be willing to bend the rules and be unconventional once in a while. Remember, if you stick to a path well-travelled, you will arrive at your destination when everybody else does!

Here are 5 ways you can turn a collection of individuals into a team without spending inordinate amounts of money. These are common sense, but it is surprising how many people don’t recognise these for what they are (team building opportunities) and even when they do, don’t handle the situation sufficiently well to give maximum benefit.

1. Finish work an hour or two early on a weekday and take the whole team out to the pub for drinks. Remember what I said about bending the rules? I can’t believe how much the lowly is underestimated as a team building tool. I seriously can’t think of too many things more effective than an hour or having a few drinks and shooting the breeze at whatever watering hole is closest to your work. Ever noticed how in a large team, often small groups of people can become friends very quickly while the rest of the group are still find their feet, 9 times out of 10 I bet you that small group of people have been to the pub together after work a time or two.

You can’t expect your whole team to come to the pub after work, people have commitments and families, but if work finishes an hour or two early, there is nothing much else to do. There is not much more you need to do after everyone is at the pub, bonding will happen naturally (alcohol facilitated). You can however allow yourself to be convinced to buy everyone a round or two at the company’s expense (don’t worry someone will bring it up). You should have been prepared to do that anyway, but spontaneous generosity works even better. Then again you know what they say, the best way to be spontaneous is to plan for it beforehand.

2. Do something interesting, unexpected and out of the ordinary for your team, that will get people talking and shaking their head at your audacity. I found a really good example of this when I was reading “Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams” by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister (at least I think it was Peopleware, I don’t recall for sure). They were talking about how a project manager on a large project went out before lunchtime and hired a hot dog vendor to come and serve hot dogs to his whole team where they worked. The trick was that the team was located on the umpteenth floor of a high-rise building, so the hot dog vendor had to bring his cart up in the elevator to reach the team.

You can imagine the site of a hot dog cart trying to maneuver inside the corporate offices and you can imagine the amount of fun people would have had with the whole experience, especially after they got their hot dogs.

This kind of stuff is great for team morale and bonding. Shared experiences especially fun experiences, moments of hilarity, opportunities for gossip (people love gossip), all of these will bring your team closer together like nothing else will (except perhaps the pub trip from number 1). Trust me, people will still be reminiscing about the sheer amount of moxie it took for you to accomplish something like this in 6 months and even in 12 months. You will have helped forge lasting relationships.

3. I simply can’t understate the team building value of organic social activities at the expense of the company and what better way than a fun weekend outing. This is as distinct from enforced social activities at company expense, such as a team building retreat. People don’t often miss an opportunity to do something they like when someone else is paying for it and if the family can tag along as well, that’s even better.

You have very little chance of getting the majority of your team to come together on a weekend at their own expense, your chances improve almost 100% when the same activity you were planning is sponsored by the company. Allowing family participation not only increases your participation chances even further but will also take the whole team bonding thing to a whole other level. Think back to the least time you made a good friend, how much closer did you feel to that person when you had a personal experience to share (e.g. you met their family, you went on a fun camping trip etc.). There aren’t many things more personal than getting to know someone’s family.

Of course getting the company to sponsor weekend activities for employees and their families would not be an easy thing to accomplish. But hey, that’s what your mad people skills are for, right? And what did I say about moxie? Anyway, remember, unconventional approach and bending the rules, and hope your boss appreciates initiative because he/she is bound to appreciate the exponential increases in productivity that your happy, well-oiled machine of a team will no doubt achieve.

4. You may not think of this one as a team building activity, but one of the best things to bring a small group of people closer together is to send them to a conference. This works very well for smaller groups of people. When a small group of people who know each other even a little find themselves among hundreds of strangers, they tend to draw together, it is a natural psychological reaction (herd instinct at play or something). Even if they’ve only know each other a little bit, it is still more than they know everyone else there, and noone wants to be the odd guy out at a conference. It makes no sense, since most people at a conference are the odd guy out, but it is true nevertheless. If you are not convinced, just think back to the last time you were at a conference by yourself and met someone you knew there, did you end sticking together with that person for the whole day? I think I just proved my point.

The other potential upside to this whole idea is if the conference is boring, your people will probably leave early and having nothing to do they’ll go to the pub and gossip about how great their boss is(that’s you) for doing all these cool and quirky things lately and all paid for by the company to boot. For other benefits of this, see number 1 again.

5. When your team is surrounded by enemies on all sides, when everyone is on your back and even a duck could tell the expectations placed on your team are unrealistic, you are potentially in team building nirvana. This is, of course, an extremely dangerous situation to be in and you certainly never want to try and generate this kind of situation, but fortunately or not – corporate world being what it is – these kinds of circumstances arise often enough by themselves.

Shared adversity can bring even the most unlikely set of individuals together and getting through adversity can form bonds that last decades and create a very tight-knit group out of people you never would have expected to work well together. And adversity doesn’t have to mean trekking through the desert, the kind of adversity you will find when your team just can’t seem to cop a break will do just fine.

In this kind of situation it is very important to balance “shielding” the team with involving them so that they are aware of the state of affairs, so that they feel that they are collectively trying to improve their situation. Do this well and you can sit back and marvel at how quickly people will find common ground and be willing to take on all comers to try and protect each other and the team.

Of course the downside of this kind of situation is that it may not improve and only get worse no matter what you do. One thing you can be sure of however is that the relationships your team forges during this time will undoubtedly last, unfortunately if will probably have to last over e-mail from the various new places that you will all be working at. However, if the situation does improve and you team is able to stay together you are very likely to find yourself not only on one of the most productive teams you’ve ever worked with, but also one with the best atmosphere as well.

The important thing to remember in all this, is that there is no need to be constrained by conventional “wisdom” when it comes to getting a team to gel and generate a cooperative and productive atmosphere. All you have to do is:

• create team building opportunities from everyday events (use your imagination and have some fun with it)
• be alert for natural opportunities in your day-to-day activities (dozens of everyday events have team building potential, you just need to learn to recognise them)
• actually put some effort and energy into forming your team into a cohesive unit
• bend the rules occasionally and as much as you can try to be unconventional in your approach

The results will speak for themselves.

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Any team will usually be made up of 2 types of people, leaders and followers. And I don’t mean this according to their designated position on the team, but according to their disposition as individuals.

Some people are inherently leaders while others are inherently followers. Both kinds of people can be equally competent (or incompetent) in their job, but leaders will inevitably strive to take charge of situations, promote their agenda and generally try to take the team where they think it should go. Followers on the other hand, will tend to stay in the background and will not push their opinion as forcefully. And no, this is not just extroverted and introverted behaviour. There are plenty of introverted leaders and extroverted followers.

How Would A Team Form Naturally

Whenever a team is formed for any purpose, it is important to know what kind of individuals will make up the team and based on this knowledge, it is even more important to make sure that the roles the people are assigned on the team are conducive to the teams ability to perform.

The leaders in any group of people will naturally tend to dominate. Some leaders will be stronger than others and will tend dominate the weaker leaders, while the followers will align themselves behind the hierarchy that forms. This of course is what would happen if we let a team form naturally with no interference. In real life however, management and other external factors will always play a role when deciding what positions particular people hold on a team.

What Kind Of Teams Form In Real Life

Usually the person who ends up leading the team, is assigned to the role and this person will either be a strong leader, a weak leader or a follower (yep, a follower in a leadership role, like that has never happened before). Based on the type of person the assigned leader is and the natural dispositions of the other people in the team, you will end up with one of 4 situations:

• a strong leader with a team full of followers
• a strong leader with a team full of leaders
• a weak leader with a team full of followers
• a weak leader with a team full of leaders

I have made the following assumptions:

• if there is more than one potential leader in the team, I consider it a team full of leaders
• a weak leader is the same as a follower when there is a team full of leaders
• a weak leader is the same as a strong leader when there is a team full of followers

With this information in hand, we can actually make a fairly accurate prediction regarding how the team will function and whether or not they can be successful and productive.

1. Strong Leader – Team Full Of Followers

This kind of team can be very successful. Infact the vast majority of successful teams have probably fallen into this category. A strong or visionary leader at the head of a group of weaker leaders and followers.

The leader will be respected by all the people in the team and his authority is unlikely to be challenged. The team members will want the respect of the leader and will therefore do their best when performing their roles. The leader, being a strong leader is able to channel the energy of the team constrictively and maintain morale.  The strong leader is also able to shield the team from outside interference.

The results that this kind of team can produce can be quite spectacular, like I said, this is the classic structure of a successful team. The reason it is the classic structure is because it is closest to what would naturally occur if the team was left to form organically. This also means that there are no major challenges when it comes to managing such a team as the team is already where it wants to be.

The one major weakness of this situation is the fact that everything is riding on the strong leader. If the leader were to be taken out of the picture for whatever reason (illness, moving on to a different role, etc.), there is a very good chance that such a team would collapse. At the very least productivity would suffer, unless there is a likely successor who is also a strong leader, but then this team would have fallen into the next category.

2. Strong Leader – Team Full Of Leaders

When a team falls in this category a lot of good things can happen. Potentially this is the best performing team and can achieve the kinds of the results that the other 3 types of teams can only dream about. However managing this kind of situation is extremely challenging and requires significant energy and commitment  on behalf of the leader as well as a level of flexibility on behalf of the other leaders who make up the team.

Most people are only human (well, all people, I guess) and can’t maintain the kind of energy and drive necessary to make this kind of team continuously successful. Therefore, when a team falls into this category, it can usually produce excellent results for a short period of time and average/good results the rest of the time.

The team members all respect each other and the leader in charge and they are all happy to work together. But, at the same time, if the strong leaders “drops the reigns” even to a small degree, the others can’t help but try to fill the gaps. This is not a failing on their part as they are only doing what good leaders should, showing initiative and picking up the slack. Unfortunately, the different people on the team would tend to pick up the slack in different places which leads to a leadership conflict (it is not necessarily overt, but it is there to some degree). This tends to unfocus the team significantly.

If you can succeed in managing this kind of team well and keeping them constantly focused (be warned that this does not happen often), the team can produce some truly superb results, but the level of experience and energy required, means that only a very few strong leaders can accomplish this.

3. Weak Leader – Team Full Of Followers

This situation is actually similar to the first situation. Here we still have a leader with a team full of followers, however the leader is not a very strong leader and is not necessarily visionary. I would say that the majority of teams out there would probably fall into this category. This kind of team is by no means a bad team. It can produce some fairly decent results and if the weaker leader is experienced, it can even produce very good results. However I would not count on anything more than average from this kind of team at any one time.

In this case the weaker leader may be respected by most of the members of the team, but some of the better followers (I.e. they are excellent at their job, but not leaders by disposition) may not respect him as much, since they can tell that he is not a strong leader. The leader may know where the team needs to get to, but simply does not have the capability to motivate and focus the team to a sufficient degree.

A lot of the time when a team is in this situation, the weak leader will subconsciously recognise that he doesn’t have the capability to drive the team as he should and will therefore tend to not interact with the team as much as he should. This can degenerate into managing/leading by e-mail, which works to some extent, but is not the way to get the best possible results from a team.

4. Weak Leader – Team Full Of Leaders

This is the worst situation for a team to be in. It is actually similar in some ways to number 2 above but only in that it is what number 2 could be at it’s worst. Here the leader is comparatively ineffectual since many of the people he is leading, can see themselves doing a better job in his place.

The respect may or may not be there, but the weak leader is certainly not respected by everyone on the team. Other team members constantly exercise their initiative even if it sometimes to the detriment of the team. The weak leader is unable to get the majority of the people to line up behind him and buy into his vision, instead the other leaders try to pitch their own vision to each other and the team. In this situation it is common for a team to fracture into multiple cliques as multiple people get behind their preferred stronger leader.

Having said all of this, it doesn’t mean that this kind of team can’t show results. If there are enough good followers and some other good leaders on the team, this team can perform fairly well, mostly by virtue of the individual effort of these people. However, this kind of team can never gel properly unless the weak leader is replaced and will therefore never show results that are better than average.

What Can We Learn From This?

The biggest lesson to take away from this is, know your people! This just incidentally happens to be one of the core laws of leadership, in the army they say, know you men (and women). If you know the natural tendencies of your people, you are a lot better equipped to place them in a team situation where they have a better chance of success.

The second lesson is pretty common sense. If you don’t have a strong leader, you need to find one. If you do have one, make sure they don’t get lured away while your team is in the middle of doing its thing. You can’t really go wrong with putting a strong leader in charge of a team. However not having a strong leader in charge can be quite detrimental to team productivity and moral.

Lastly,  everything I stated above is my opinion based on my thoughts, observations and ideas. I would love to hear other people’s opinions regarding the role of leadership in the success/failure of teams, so please leave a comment  if you have something to say on the subject.

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