Stage 1:

This step has two stages, formation of the team and meeting between team members. In this step the team members learn the challenges the team will have to face and what opportunities it will have. In this stage, the members may not understand or be a little confused about the role they will have tom play as a team member. However, they will be completely aware of the goals of the team as a whole. The basic team guidelines will also be established in this stage.

Stage 2:

In this stage there may be open conflict among the members. Often low trust is the primary reason behind these conflicts. Team members might also fight over leadership. The ideal thing to o in this situation is choosing the leadership through proper methods. If the team is under a manager, there’s no other option other than listening to the final decision taken by the manager. However, the manager should always take his decision after consulting each of the team members.

Stage 3:

In this step the team members develop certain work habits; these habits support the values and rules of the team. The team works using the established methods and tools while exhibiting good behavior. In this stage the features of a team are open communication, mutual trust, group focus, motivation and positive teamwork.

Stage 4:

This stage is the stage of increase in loyalty, motivation, decision making ability as a group, cross training, knowledge sharing and participation. In step 4 the team members start directing each other for achieving the team goal and continuing to perform. Personal growth of the members is also observed in this stage.

Stage 5:

This is the final stage in case of project teams, task forces and temporary committees. The team members by this stage develop bonds with each other and thus mourn about the fact that the team will be dissolved.

There are several prerequisites of team collaboration which contribute to the high performance of a team and can make it functionally ideal. Among list of prerequisites of team collaboration the following are essential ones.

• There should be a common objective that will constantly motivate and support team members through the process of innovation and creativity.
• Team as a whole is like an engine where different parts are put together to perform a single function. Every part individually performs a different task and combining all the tasks makes a vehicle run. Similarly, team collaboration should be ingrained with the understanding between all the members to make the objective fulfill. The task of every member is essential and the team members should realize this fact.
• When team collaboration is the matter of conversation a common objective and understanding cannot be the end of discussion. An open communication among the team members is necessary. The need for open communication is felt especially when the leader of a team is given the task of monitoring. Leadership is not synonymous to dictatorship and thus a leader must communicate with members of a team is a way that is comfortable for them. On the contrary, the team members should also respect the leadership and this respect must not be replaced with fear.
• The rules established within a team should not be strict. Flexibility of rules is necessary to make the team members work smoothly.

Finally as a team is made, to make it functional every team members should identify their roles. Team collaboration demands cohesion and thus a sense of comradeship should be developed within a team. A strong competition might ruin team spirit. Team collaboration highly relies on the strengths of every team member and thus variation within task performance cannot let down the team’s objective.

A team is a single unit with that combines an array of smaller units. Hence, every member needs to be on tandem to reach their common goal.

Team negotiation can be visualized, in a layman’s vision, a hall full of employees where a management team member will dictate certain dictums for the team gathered. This is a complete wrong strategy as negotiation is a both way communication. When a team negotiation is running it is imperative that every member participating in it should be given a role. When we day the term ‘team’ we focus on a group of people who work together. Hence, the same theory should be followed when a negotiator call up a team for negotiation.

To conduct a successful negotiation with a team, it is essential that all the 4 essential pillar of negotiation are satisfied. These pillars are required for the composing a team is an orderly fashion; vision, Process, Value and relationship. A negotiator is supposed to address all the four aspect and thus he must create a team where the personal preferences of team members must coincide with these aspects.

The competencies of the team members are of a special importance when a negotiation is conducted. As said earlier, every member of the team must have a role to play and thus a negotiator must be ware of the capabilities of members. Task allotted to a member should comply with his or her competence to ensure successful completion of the task.

Finally, a reasonable team size needs to be maintained. It is always recommended to have a smaller team, which can be managed easily than to have team of a large size.

A team negotiation involves all the above factors to make the object fulfill within the given time. It is not a mere meeting.

Consider a few thoughts to get you started with sales compensation plans in the right direction.

Reward your stars and they’ll reward you

Don’t be stingy with the rewards you give out. Create a plan that recognizes the best performers in your group and reward them for being outstanding in their work. Let’s say your staff has a quota of $100,000 per month to fulfill and most of your staff should be outperforming that figure by 5 to 10% if they are good sellers. But there will be those that rake in $175,000 in sales each month while others will get in $150,000 each month. Incentivize performance in tiers then, with a slight reward available for outperforming the standard sales quota by up to 10% with greater rewards for greater performance. Obviously, those getting $150,000 will not get as much by way of reward as the person selling $175,000 each month. Creating these reward tiers will entice those top performers to at least maintain if not improve on their performance.

Hold a sales contest

Keeping aside a portion of sales aside each month for a sales contest is a great idea. You could either offer cash bonuses and gifts or you could give something in kind. A rep winning tickets to a movie or a concert or even a gift certificate to a popular store makes a big difference to morale among the sales force. They end up feeling good about the business that they are working for and they feel good about the job that they are doing. And this reflects in their performance. I have often observed that sales representatives stick longer with companies that hold sales contests and incentivize sales a lot.

• Make your work environment a more pleasurable experience to work in, offer free snacks and coffee with a good relaxing and entertaining area with Television and games on the computer. Your working facility should not bore your employees of anything. Provide a clean and neat environment to your employees by providing them with good hygiene facilities.
• Explain your employees the importance of the work they are doing, help them realize the value of the work they are doing. Always thank your employees for the good work they are doing. Tell them the ways they can improve on their work, help them understand the processes more clearly. Develop a desire in them to learn new things and how to face the challenges at work.
• Appreciate your employees in front of everyone for the good work done. A pat on back is always welcome from employees who are hard working. Take opportunity to always spell out good work in front of other employees or during meetings or announcements.
• It’s obvious, that employees are working to earn a living and pay their bills. There are just a few of them who are working for emotional benefit at work. Reward your hard working employees with monetary gains and benefits. Make monetary benefits, rewards and perks as a part of the monthly routine. You will see in no time, your employees are more than motivated to work harder.
• Take notice of the difficulties your workers are facing at work. It is very important that your employees communicate their frustrations or work assignments with colleagues in the office. Try to make time to meet all the employees individually at least once in a month and help them speak out their emotional quotients. Let your employees express honest answers and be responsive in helping them.

Its highly important that your employees feel happy about the work they are doing and are highly encouraged to achieve the objectives at work. The motivation in the workplace helps employees give their best productivity power.

Team cohesiveness promotes stronger communication amongst the team players and brings all the common characteristics of team together. The team cohesiveness is based on mutual reliance which helps the group players stay informed about the developments happening in the team and gets them the clear understanding of the group’s goals. Team cohesiveness brings around developmental changes in raw teams and let the teams use the word “WE” instead of “I”, which brings the teams together. There are 2 forces, which bind the members of the team together; they are positive and negative forces. Here are some of the factors that influences team cohesiveness, which helps individuals gel well with each other:

• The members of the team are of same age, gender and share equal values, etc.
• The success factor that each individual in the team shares and the tasks accomplished for the betterment of the team.
• The external threats faced from other competitive companies or individuals, they are bound together with the common objectives and fight against the danger being caused to their processes.

A team is said to be highly cohesive when there are increased levels of motivation amongst the team players to participate together in the team activities in accordance with the social norms that are agreed upon by the team.

Task related

Teams are split as per the tasks, different people have different capabilities of doing their jobs, some may do it faster while some may be slower. The complexities and the challenges of the tasks determine the jobs of each team, the actual teams are interdependent on each other for completing their whole project.

The structural team

The structural teams are those who maintain the stability of the team with the perfect input and resources required. Each of the teams are split so as to get the organized work done, the expertise in the team plays a key role in building the team’s future and getting the tasks done from them. The physical proximity of teams helps them interact and also in problem solving agenda meetings. The employees of the company are regulated with a specific set of rules and regulations to be followed. The diverse nature of teams brings in lots of new ideas and creativity in the work procedure.

External support

The actual teams are more prone to get external support whether the process related support or the technical support. The new employees or workers can be easily trained and bring about social and technical skills in the organization along with business understanding of new projects and processes being developed in the organization.

Virtual teams are getting popular where individuals seated at different places can interact and do their work efficiently with the help of communication technology where they can see each other virtually and solve or interact their work methods or processes. The main advantages of having a virtual team are:

• It can work at any time of day or night; there are no set rule that applies to the time they should be working.
• People from different places can bring in their insights relating to a particular subject matter.
• It gets flexible for people to work as per their set schedules; it has a faster responsive system than our actual teams.
• They approach high collaborative methods, which creates great teamwork and high trustworthy relations amongst each other.

Although as much advantages, we might discuss about the virtual teams, it carries equal amount of disadvantages too as there are lots of chances of miscommunication happening, members should be adaptive in taking up different assignments, there is loss of productivity if at all any virtual member resigns, there is no strict adherence to the guidelines set by the parent company. Both, the virtual teams and the actual teams are prone to difficulties while managing them so its up to us, how to cope with the challenges and bring about a change in the working system and supporting your employees to work from different corners of the world if the process, so demands!

If the concept of Virtual Teams sounds to be interesting then lets have a quick run through the types of virtual teams: Network team, product development team, parallel team, production teams, service teams.

Today, we are definitely going to do something exciting which you can use in your company as an ice breaker between the teams and in no time you will see all of your employees knowing each other well and understanding each other’s point of view and sharing the lessons they learnt in their management schools. Successful implementation of management lessons is a key to successful operation of teams in an organization. There are various activities you can do as a ice breaker between the teams in an organization, organization as a drama in groups for a company social gathering, dance or singing in a group, then arranging fun activities like indoor games, outings, sports activities, arranging a picnic, etc. this things hardly take any of your time and can create great results for company in future as teams are the most powerful productivity generating resources of a company.

Here is an activity which I have been following in my management classes for some time now, you can use it in your company premises, seminars, workshops or just social get together, it will help in building the confidence, enhance the personality of your team members and also let them talk freely in the company:

1. Ask the participants to form groups of 5 members each, whom they don’t know really well because most of the times they will select the people they are already familiar with. So let them select the partners they don’t know.
2. Ask each of the groups to select one person, who will make notes and also to read out the list when asked to for the said group.
3. You can ask them to discuss things that are common amongst them, this will create discussions amongst them and they will be more familiar to each other.
4. Then you can ask the volunteer of each group to come forward and share the things they found common in the group. It will be really funny for them to know, what type of things are common amongst them and this will break their silence and break the ice which was stopping them. The best way to reach a person’s heart is through the laugher so get going with funky jokes and laughter stories together.
5. When in a group, people are always going to look upon something and have fun, these are the best times to bond with the group and let them know of your skills too.
6. Group discussions are the best way you can create interaction going amongst themselves and it will surely bring some great idea for the team and can benefit the whole company too.

The activity takes hardly 10 to 15 minutes of your time, depends on the activity, which you select, and the number of groups you have. Other than this, you can arrange for general knowledge quiz, company process quiz, and other stuff, which will let them take keen interest in-group activity. So what are you waiting for? Break the ICE today!

As far as my thinking process goes, I can term team as one person, a single entity working together to achieve a common target. Working as a group is not just beneficial to you as a person but all the members in a team, the company, the manager and everybody who are connected with the process. A success of team is highly dependent on the efforts and the commitment by their members, we cannot just single out people working in one cabin as team, a team knows well what it goes in to achieving the targets of a company and what it takes to see success and what it takes to know each other better, what it takes to work together, know together and everything we can think of. A team is like your second family, you work in harmony and share your views and if need be ask the person to improve where he possibly can. Teams have formal relations, but they blend well when the team is older and formal ties takes a back step. The key to team building and team success comes when members are solely committed to doing their work and striving hard to achieve their objectives or business goals.

Given below are some of my few gestured points that will help you understand the level of commitment that comes from each of your employees, after knowing that level you can take some steps to improve upon and proceed ahead in achieving the goals of your company:

1. The choices of your team members
   Its very important for your team members to participate in all the activities that are happening in a team, whether it be a social participation or taking up an initiative project work. If they show least interest in taking part voluntarily then they wouldn’t take interest in team otherwise. A mandatory action by employees helps them to participate and they can set directions for themselves.
2. Perceiving work as mission
   Try to find out whether your employees are really taking work seriously, if no, then what is stopping them. All the members of a team should take their objectives as mission for a company, they should know where their mission falls and that they are a part of bigger organizational functions and their participation is really important.
3. Valued employees
   Your employees should have an idea that they are valued although in real sense too they are praised and valued, it is important for them to know, try to find out whether they take themselves and their services as valuable part of a company? A team member is motivated when he gets good appraisal not in monetary terms, just an announcement in the whole team or ovation by team members would do to raise his self esteem and he will strive even harder.
4. Company’s challenges
   The team members should feel excited about new projects coming in the company, if they lack interest in this, then their commitment are surely going to be on lower end.
5. Recognition
   An employee needs to be recognized for his work, keeping the records of your employee’s performance helps them to get motivated on timely basis. The efforts recognized will never go wasted; they will act as a strong resource for the company.

Team building is not easy as much as we think, there is lots of consideration and thinking process which goes in to building teams especially people of different thinking, attitude, smartness level, etc join in the company. Set their goals right and you will win the battle!

Lots of things go in to building your teams and get them working in an organization, there are planning sessions, varied seminars and retreats too which brings the employees together and also share their views with their seniors. Lets see some of the ways in which organizations work:

1. Teams work together to solve their actual work related issues that will improve their work processes, the managers work hard to bring in the members of the team together and help each other to perform their tasks better. The main reason for forming teams is to provide them the needed training as per the work processes and there is a uniform output from all the members.
2. Under one teams there are various processes, each is a specialized team working uniformly and giving more or less the same output, the team managers form different department meetings for giving their members the feedback, report about their progress and reviewing of their recent projects. This helps them to improve and become more progressive ahead in future.
3. The team doesn’t just come together to do work, sometimes they have work too on their agenda and certainly the fun part is required when they are working really hard to achieve the objectives of a company. They believe in working hard and partying harder, companies have a said portion of revenue dedicated to their employees for their welfare and take them on various trips or hiking or a grand annual party in hotels.
4. There are companies who held their team meeting per weekly basis, in this they discuss about new projects being launched, appreciate the members who have done well throughout the week and if time permits there is a laughing session too, in which the participant said some jokes or mimicry, this helps the employees to laugh together and also to know each other well.
5. On a yearly basis, companies held their grand annual celebrations in bigger hotels, where there is booze, dance, fashion shows, and lots of entertainment and not forgetting the most awaited award ceremony, here they announce the major promotions and also appreciate the employees who worked really hard. Some employees arrange dance, or singing, jokes, etc. it helps employees to bond.

The very purpose of forming teams in an organization is that all the employees are bonded, they can share each other’s views and help in case someone is stuck somewhere. Major time is spent in building the teams and is one of the most challenging tasks for a manager where each employee comes from different background, the thinking capabilities, their reasoning power, their attitude, etc. but by smooth intervention of managers everything falls right in place.