Build Team Spirit

TEAM BUILDING is an essential skill of effective managers. The ability to assemble and work with an effective team is a key requirement for promotion and also one of the top qualities that companies look for when seeking out high-potential managers. Your ability to create a peak performing team is absolutely essential to your success.

Stanford Graduate School of Business did a thirty-year research project into the qualities necessary to become a senior executive of a large corporation. The researchers found that the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies all seemed to have two major qualities in common.

The first was the ability to function well in a crisis. “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” This talent, demonstrated early in their careers, allowed them to bounce back from problems and setbacks, deal with them effectively, and push through to achieve company goals.

Be a Team Player

The second quality that top executives had in common was the capacity to form and work as part of a team. When they started their careers, they were excellent team players. They volunteered for every assignment. They quickly moved into the top 20 percent of team members who do 80 percent of the work.

As a result, they were promoted and given people to supervise, who became part of their team. As they accomplished more results by working effectively with their team members, they were given more and more team members to work with. Later on in their careers, as CEOs of Fortune 500 corporations, they found themselves with tens of thousands of people working under them in different capacities.

But here's what they also found in this study: The ability to function well in a crisis could not be taught in a classroom. It had to come from within the individual. But the ability to be an excellent team player, and to build teams that accomplished great results for the company, was a learnable skill.

A Learnable Skill

You become an excellent team leader and build team spirit by doing several things in sequence.

First, be very clear about who you are and what you want. Determine your strengths and your weaknesses. Set clear goals and objectives for yourself and your career, and then clear goals and objectives for your area of responsibility.

Second, take the time to tell people what they, collectively, as a team, are doing and why. Especially, define the team's goals and mission in terms of how the work helps and improves the lives of other people. Make it an inspiring concept so that people will want to be a member of the team that is bringing about this result.

I met the president of Walmart just after he gave a speech at the company's annual convention in Saint Louis, attended by 25,000 Walmart managers and employees. He knew what his values, vision, mission, and purpose truly were. Here is what he said: “We here at Walmart know exactly what we are doing. Our goal is to provide the very best selection of products and services at the lowest possible price to our customers so that they have more money to spend on their families and children.”

The entire room rose and gave him a standing ovation. Their passion for helping to improve the lives of their customers and their families is the driving force of the entire organization.

Talk and Share Ideas

There is a direct relationship between regular communications and team spirit. Hold effective meetings with your staff every week to share ideas and find out what everyone is doing.

Every successful company I have worked with continually seeks out reasons to bring its people together in ways that build spirit, motivation, and dedication to the organization. Wells Fargo bank, for example, is famous for encouraging each branch office to select a charity that everyone in the branch contributes to and supports, even in a small way. This idea has been so successful at building high levels of team spirit in each branch that Wells Fargo now dedicates more than 100 full-time people at headquarters to support this initiative.

Celebrate Important Events

Celebrate birthdays, successes, and victories with prizes and recognition. Make people feel important. When people are praised and celebrated, they feel terrific about themselves and their other team members.

Encourage a climate of harmony. My friend Ken Blanchard, with 172 people in his organization, calls himself the “chief spiritual officer.” He says that his job is to ensure that there is a high level of harmony and happiness among all the staff members. This is one of the most important things you can do as a team leader.

In our company, we tell employees that we want them to be happy in their jobs. I say, “If you have any problems or concerns, please come to me or one of the other executives and we will try to resolve the problem for you.” But if we find a person who is negative or unhappy for any period of time, and who cannot be satisfied, we encourage that person to go and work somewhere else. One unhappy or negative person in a work environment can poison the attitudes of many people.

Keep People Informed

Keep people informed about everything that is going on in the company that affects their work. Tell them how the changing economy might affect their sales and their jobs. Tell them how changes in staff and personnel will affect their jobs and their activities. The more people know about what is going on in their work environment, the more positive and dedicated they are when functioning as members of a team.

Three Levels of Development

There are three levels of development that people go through in their work life. The first is dependence, where they rely on other people to tell them what to do and to provide their workplace, paycheck, and benefits.

The second and higher level is independence. Here, the individual feels competent in his ability to do his work and be recognized for it.

The third level of development is interdependence. It is the highest level of all. At this level, each person works in cooperation with others to accomplish a job that would be impossible for one person to accomplish working on his own.

A way to encourage independence, which is a positive quality, is to establish rewards for independent achievements (namely, for individual accomplishments).

The way that you encourage interdependence is by establishing group rewards, or rewards that are divided up among the individuals on the team on some basis. Rewards can be profit sharing, bonuses, and even celebrations, such as parties, vacations, and company outings, as examples. The more that you bring your team members together to discuss and work together in a spirit of harmony, the more positive and motivated they will feel, and the more committed they will be to your company and to the accomplishment of your goals.