How to build a brilliant team

In the coming weeks, Prime Minister Julia Gillard will face a challenge that entrepreneurs know only too well – how to make teams work.

With a government team made up of Labor MPs, in all their factions, Greens and two rural independents, former Nationals, those lessons are going to be hard. Experts say Gillard will have to use the first rule in politics and team building: listen to other people and understand where they are coming from.

Executive coach and facilitator Vivienne Barrett says the first thing Gillard needs to do is establish that everyone is working for the same thing.

“The first place that I always start with teams is look at is whether we are all on the same page,” Barrett says.

“It’s to look at what page we are on and obviously there are philosophical differences between all these people but in the end, everyone does want a better Australia.”

Barrett says Gillard also has to build on strengths within the team.

“She has to see where everyone is heading to make sure they are all heading in the same direction. When you think about it, the independents and the Greens have their own agenda and in normal companies too, some people will have their own agenda.”

“That issue of agenda is almost always out there. It’s about seeing whether we are passionate about the same thing and how are we all going to move towards that, given that we have our own agendas as well.”

So what are some of the other team-building lessons that leaders must learn?

Apart from ensuring everyone is on the same page, other companies make sure their teams work better by welcoming new members, and making them feel they are contributing straight away.

At online job agency Seek, for example, newcomers to the general team are embraced straight away. When someone joins, a general email is sent out with their photo welcoming them on board. Helium balloons are put on their desk so that everyone can come up and introduce themselves.

All teams at Seek, from sales to human resources, are expected to have rewards for solid achievements from individuals and the team itself. At human resources, for example, stand out performers are given a list of things to choose from, ranging from a movie voucher to a day off. It’s not stuff that costs lots of money, but as Seek’s human resources director Meahan Callaghan says, it doesn’t have to be expensive to be effective. People need recognition. To create an effective team, she says you have to make that award special.

“It’s more the point that you are taking the trouble to acknowledge someone rather than throw money at them,” Callaghan says.

“If you only give them an envelope with a movie voucher, it’s not the same as when you recognise them in front of the team.”

Teams are made up of individuals, the two go together. As actor Ricky Gervais says, there’s no “I” in TEAM, but there is a “Me” if you look closely. Smart companies try to find a balance between the two.

Seek, which last month reported a whopping 62% increase in its annual profit to $89.521 million, up from $55.3 million in the prior corresponding period, works hard on its team development, both inside the workplace and outside it.

For example, everybody gets one day off a year to go and do community work. People are encouraged to go in teams. Over the last year, they have rebuilt fences and schools damaged in the bushfires, put in time at the Royal Children’s Hospital and served lunch at the Sacred Heart Mission in St Kilda. Callaghan says it helps make good teams even better. “It’s just a different environment for the team to get to know each other,” she says.

There is a big focus on communication at Seek. That means back-to-back meetings for all teams: weekly catch up meetings, daily scrum meetings in the morning to discuss what needs to be done and fortnightly retro meetings which examine how things are tracking and what needs to be done differently.

“All of that stuff that says you don’t need meetings means you are not having enough communication,” says Callaghan.

“We don’t have meetings for meeting’s sake. But if you have a meeting, it has to be very powerful, and that achieves something by being very clear about what the objective of that meeting is.”

Another technique used by Seek to ensure its teams work well in the larger company are hard reporting lines and dotted reporting lines that keep other teams in the loop. For example, the company’s IT director in Sydney has a formal reporting line connecting him to the head of IT in Melbourne. But there is a dotted line requiring him to report to the head of the business unit in Sydney. Both give feedback on his performance.

To make good teams great, team building experts say teams need leadership, clear rules and systems that build on the strengths of each individual team member.

Barrett says teams are at their most effective when they focus on the big picture. Companies need to establish systems that encourage this.

“The first thing that the team needs is to be on the same page and know where they are going,” Barrett says. “It means starting with the big picture goals. The team goals come from the organisational strategy. The team has to make sure they are in line with that.”

“Many people don’t actually look at that part first, they look at the mechanics of the team, but that’s how it should start.”

Psychologist Eve Ash says it comes down to leadership.

“The teams where I find really highly motivated people would say the same thing about the leader. They walk around, they are visible, they know your name, they care about you, they know what’s going on in your life.”

“Most people who report on great teams will say their leader has regular meetings and communicates changes and what’s happening with the team.”

She says another important step is to establish clear ground rules. “There are agreed behaviors. You get everyone on the team trying to brainstorm ideas. It might for example be around punctuality. And for some people, what really pisses them off is the untidiness of others in their team. They will get really stressed by things that are left lying around that are shared, or the kitchen area has been left really grubby or things left behind in the fridge that nobody claims,” she says.

“It’s like housekeeping rules if you live with someone. That tends to iron out the things that make people feel annoyed. If you have the ground rules in place.”

She says rewards for team members are another good strategy.

But isn’t there a contradiction when you give awards to individuals instead of a top-performing team? And if the entire team is rewarded, wouldn’t create a problem with free riders?

Ash says that is a matter for the team to work through. “The team can decide what the awards are and how they work,” she says. “They can decide if it is a person each month or they can decide it it’s going to be the whole team at the end of the year. If they agree together, they will usually take more responsibility for it.”

She says another good technique is to create a buddy or mentoring system for people in the team. People can share skills. A geek, for example, could learn about spread sheets from a buddy and then teach the buddy how to get the most out of their computer. Or they could fill in for each other when one is away.

Timothy Sharp, chief happiness officer at the Happiness Institute, says his organisation teaches corporations to focus on the strengths of team members.

Good teams work better when the members play to their strengths, he says. These are identified through formal surveys and questionnaires.