Building teams that strive

One of the top priorities of leaders today is how to build high performance teams and most importantly, how to keep them going and sustain that team spirit. While there are well researched team building theories, leaders until today fail to construct sustainable high performing teams .. Why? .. Let’s review some of the most famous theories and then explore why they simply don’t work as planned ..

1. Bruce Tuckman’s Model (1965)

Probably one of the most famous team forming theories and most frequently used. One of the challenges of this theory is that “purpose” comes at the storming stage, not at the forming stage, and during this stage, conflict prevails and therefore teams don’t develop consensus on direction before they develop personal and individual trust. The mission and vision of the organization then comes at second priority, and in a second stage of team forming.

2. Belbin’s Theory of team roles

This theory focuses on building roles within the team based on genuine skills and values of people, splitting them to three main areas of focus; the strategists, the doers and the harmonizers.

Once again, the purpose of the team is not the focus of this theory, as it focuses on the utilization of team skills and looks at the collective behavior of the team rather that the strategic reason behind this team coming together.

3. MBTI

A great theory that helps leaders understand and position team members to their strengths as well as resolves communication conflict between team members; however, this theory is only good after the team has developed direction and understand the “Why” question.

4. John Adair’s Leadership theory

An excellent leadership tool to help leaders prioritize tasks and focus on areas of leading successful teams. Still, the model doesn’t clearly separate “Purpose” as an individual core dimension.

Taking the first step in building “A” teams

As you must have noticed, the common gap of all theories is that “Purpose” is not a focus of team members selection and management, and that is one key reason of why teams lose focus even if they start at very good energy levels.

People without common purpose, even if equipped with great skills, and communicating to each other very efficiently, will not run in the same direction and might actually use their skills to stop each other at certain stages of individual competition.

The key is then building purpose well before the team operates. Spending enough time to clarify purpose and unite direction is worth it for the team to agree on direction, and then building competencies, technical skills and team relationship could all come next.

During tough times, and when the waves are high, only teams with clear goals stick together against the storm and actually do their best to pass it, all together .. No matter what theory you would like to follow in building your teams, please consider building purpose first before you start any action.. Without the “Why” trust is never possible and direction is at risk at the very first ambiguous situation the team faces..

Written by:

Engagement Expert, International Speaker & Pragmatic researcher