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Team Building part 1 - Another Brick in the Wall! Business Articles | May 19 Cheap Nike Air Max 95 UK China , 2005

The first in a series of articles giving a slightly different viewpoint on effective team building, condensed from an original seminar presented by the author, John Roberts. John is a Freelance Training Consultant and director of JayrConsulting Ltd. Part 1 deals with selecting and building the initial team. The ideas expressed are personal opinions built up from many years of experience in the ElectronicsAerospace industry Cheap Nike Air Max 95 UK Online , the Armed Forces, the Telecoms industry and the Training industry. There is no suggestion of this being a 100% solution applicable to or workable in all situations, but it is aimed at getting people to think outside of the norm and question the ?normal' way of doing things.



1. Analogy - The bricks in the wall


Most people have been on some form of ?team building' course. They vary according to contemporary fashion from things like ?learning how to work together Cheap Nike Air Max 95 Youth UK , to build bridges out of sheets of paper', to the more active residential courses, where people build rafts out of rope and washing up liquid bottles Cheap Nike Air Max 95 Womens UK , to ?cross a crocodile filled' ravine! They all have two things in common: -
(a)They tend to be very expensive in terms of cost per delegate to the participants.
(b)They are actually not very effective in building effective teams when people return to their real life situation.
Teams are about individual PEOPLE and the INDIVIDUAL skills that they bring to the team and how these should be selected and put together to form an effective and lasting entity. All that is needed can be covered in a 1-day seminardiscussion with a group of delegates with no more props than a white board and marker pen. If it is delivered in such a way that the delegates can be coerced to look at themselves and their teams HONESTLY, it can provide effective change in team culture, creating belief and ?buy in' from delegates and without imposing high expenses on clients.


The analogy that I use to explain the basic ideas is that of building a wall Cheap Nike Air Max 95 Mens UK , and I use two types of wall to explain the contemporary team building model and the alternative one. The contemporary model is likened to a ?standard' brick wall and the alternative model is likened to a ?dry stone' wall, of the type found in northern fields!


2. The contemporary model and it's shortcomings!


Visualise a contemporary brick wall: Bricks all the same size, weight and shape. In order to stand up the bricks have to be ?glued' together with mortar. Bricks must be aligned exactly in rows vertically and horizontally or the wall will fall down. The mortar has to be replaced periodically Cheap Nike Air Max 95 UK , or the wall falls down. If a brick is not exactly the same size as all the others it has to be padded out with extra mortar, or - the wall falls down! The bricklayer has to keep tending the wall - replacing mortar etc. - or the wall falls down! Life of wall is fairly limited due to wearing out of materials, so eventually - the wall falls down! Bricklayer is competent enough Nike Air Max 95 White UK , as long as the bricks match and he has an ongoing supply of mortar and the time to effect repairs.


Key: - Bricks = Individuals and their skills
Mortar = support from Team Leader and Human resources ( competencies, assessments etc )
Bricklayer = Team leader


Problems often start at the recruitment stage. The recruiter ( Team leader or manager ) tends to put together an all-encompassing job description, instead of isolating specific individual EXPERT skills that are required for the project and are very unlikely to all be expert skills for one person. You only have to look at the average recruitment advert to see the types of skill lists that people ask for from one delegate!
Human resources then compile a list of required competencies based on this information that ALL delegates have to fit into - and we are well on the way to selecting our almost identical bricks.


What tends to happen now is that you have a team of good ?all rounders' but few people with exciting expert skills in any one thing. So what you get is a team that is competent but not outstanding and this has become the normal model that people tend to have become used to. This type of team conforms to all of the standard corporate ?norms' and is much easier to deal with for a ?team leader' that is also possibly not a truly expert and exciting ?leader'.


Remember - ?if you do what you have always done - you get what you have always got!'
Over the years I have experienced too man