When to use teams in a business

The phrase <I>team building</I> is bantered about like it's a passage from some business oracle guaranteeing business success. There are so many books about teams you could stock the New York Central Library and still have some left over.

A successful team is essential for a successful operation, but many managers get hung up on the idea of trying to implement the concept and forget to focus on their primary responsibility, which is the operational management of the business.

If you focus on identifying the problem and successful areas, concentrate on solving problems long term, encouraging the successful and motivating the mediocre areas you will probably form a successful team without force feeding the concept to everyone. Force feeding team concepts could alienate the successful areas whom are already performing in the team spirit and miss the problem areas by not focusing the message towards the underperforming sections.

Too often, managers choose whom they want to be team leaders, which I was guilty of early in my management career. As managers continue to grow through experience and education, they learn alternate techniques for determining team leaders and individuals who should never be team leaders.

So how do you choose the leader? Preferably assemble your team, assign them a small task and then monitor them carefully until the project is successful or a given time frame has transpired. The reason you monitor (observe) them is to label a number of key personalities with the leader chosen by the team itself.

The majority of times, this will not be by verbal vote, but by silent support to the true leader's ideas and directions. The most vocal person may not be the best leader and often is the bottleneck in ideas and accomplishments.

As we gain experience we realize allowing employees to choose their own teams usually leads to few or zero successful teams. Most people want to be on teams with people they like, not necessarily who will provide the skills and cohesion the team needs to succeed at accomplishing the task assigned.

Some teams are successful despite having individuals wrongly assigned to a specific team. The reason the task is accomplished is the remaining team members exclude the misplaced person and complete the task on their own. You want to avoid this situation or correct it as soon as possible because you are endangering the team's and individuals' successful accomplishment of the goal.

Team leaders are not born, but hatched from careful training, education, and experience. Without delving into the depths of psychology, how a person is nurtured in these areas from infancy will assist in determining their ability to be capable leaders in life. That being said, if you identify an individual you desire as a team leader, there are steps you can initiate currently to develop their abilities. First and foremost be sure they want to be in this position with all the ramifications, then proceed on a structured training, educational and experience enhancing program with definite attainable goals.

Team building is every manager's responsibility. That being said, tattoo the following message in the frontal lobe of your brain. Do not assign yourself as team leader for every team, because you become a team of one, and that is not a team but a monarchy.

Good luck and have fun.