Ben Fischer - Assignment 2: Creating A Dream Team

• Promote understanding
  
• Ensure the team has adequate knowledge
  
• Facilitate effective interaction

These three tenants of team building are important because they set the foundation upon which a high performing team can be built.  Promoting understanding means ensuring that the team members understand the goal that the team is to accomplish as well as the individual roles of each team member and how those roles fit together to accomplish the goal.  This relates to the second tenant in that it is important that each team member has enough information on the team's goal was well as the team members individual roles to ensure that the team can successfully achieve its goal.  Lastly, it is the responsibility of the leader to facilitate effective interaction among the team members to promote a coordination of effort and a positive can-do attitude that will lead to good problem-solving and achievement of the goal. 

The article goes on to examine the characteristics of highly effective teams.  The characteristics of highly effective teams can be summarized as:

• Understanding the big picture
  
• Having common goals
  
• Working collaboratively as a unit

In order to function as a highly effective team, the team must not only understand the goal that it is to achieve, but also the "big picture" of how the team's efforts fit into the overall mission of the organization.  Understanding the big picture fosters team collaboration and commitment and can improve the quality of the team's work.  The article emphases the importance of a team having agreed-upon goals that essentially utilize the SMART principle that we learned about during the course.  This approach to goal setting is a good practice because it sets goals that include metrics and are time-bound which encourages accountability of all team members.  The characteristic of working collaboratively as a unit can be achieved by ensuring that the team has an awareness of the interdependence between each team member's roles.  This creates an environment that fosters personal responsibility and accountability on the part of each team member.  When each team member feels that they have a stake in the team's overall success in achieving the goal, the team is functioning a a highly effective level.

A link to the article is provided below:

www.inc.com/resources/leadership/articles/20070101/musselwhite.html