Building your Team

#createavision #leadership #projectmanagement #teamleader

Take a little time at the beginning of each project to pull your team together, even if your core team remains from the same group of people. Have a brain storming session where you create the bigger vision of the project and create the team charter. The vision will help pull them together under a common purpose and the team charter will guide how the team engages with each other, how you as a team handle meetings, how you handle conflicts and what you do with errant team members. The team charter is an internal document no one outside outside of the team will see it.

Create a Vision

The bigger vision, creates a picture that goes deeper than the project scope. You are not building a simple house, but building a home, where the family will create memories. Or you are not building a simple office, but creating a space where innovation and future vision will happen. Make sure all rally around that vision and buy in. Just like the cleaner at Nasa, who when asked what he does responded he is helping putting man on the moon. No he was not overambitious, but he knew his work is important to enable the technical team there work. Just imagine if there would not have been any cleaner in those Nasa operations offices in 1968 – a lot could have gone wrong. Can you imagine the mess dust etc could have done in the computer systems….. Yes, the cleaner & tea cook are part of the team and need to be part of the vision.

I also remember when we were doing medical camps along the railway line to Kisumu treating people in the railway stations. Often we did not have time to get up and have tea, since there were simply too many patients. Our chef took it on himself, to ensure he brought us tea, soda and snacks to our workstations and then ensured the bosses put people in lunch hour shifts, so that everyone got a chance for a lunch break. When asked why he is going over and above, he said the doctors and nurses need fuel, like a car, if there is not enough fuel, they may misdiagnose people and he does not want to be responsible for such a disaster. Talking about being responsible and part of the team, no matter your position! I personally will never forget this young chef.

As a Project Manager, you are the Leader who needs to create this vision in the team.

Team Formation

The 5 good old stages of team formation apply every time you do have a team member or several team members who have not worked with the others. The team will go through these 5 stages and you can support them to get to performing faster.

Forming

This is an easy phase since usually people are exited and at their best behavior. You get to see your team together and it may look like a interesting bunch, now it is your job to turn them into a performing team.

Storming

This is a critical phase, where you watch your team closely. You will see the strong characters who may undermine the others and you need to steer them in the right frame of mind, where they will allow the others to shine.

Norming

Make sure you do not get stuck here, since this is the stage where they expect you to make all decisions and be in charge of everything. To really perform at the best, your team needs to get into the next stage

Performing

To reach the highest performance you need to think outside the box. Don’t just think about traditional job roles, but think about each team members unique character, knowledge and background. How and where do they fit best within the team? Where can they contribute the best? Involve the team in these decisions.

Once your team has each found where within the puzzle they belong, has developed some synergy and has started respecting each other they are now ready to perform

Adjourning

This is often forgotten or felt unnecessary. It can be detrimental if you leave this stage out.

If a team has worked together under the pressures of a project, they need some formal adjournment. They are all moving on to different work or other projects, but they had been a tight knit team that performed. Create some adjournment for them. Do an informal lessons learned, where you encourage them to talk about personal experiences and what they especially enjoyed. Let them talk about what they appreciated in team members etc. It will really help them to end on a good note without the empty feeling that can be left. If the company has not budget for a Get Together, you can pool your funds and still meet, it is not an issue.

Work with your team, pull them together and then bring out the best in them, by stepping back from directing and letting them self govern. Become part of the team. It is more fun and brings better results for all.