The “Course Topics” series from Manage Train Learn and Slide Topics is a collection of over 4000 slides that will help you master a wide range of management and personal development skills. The 202 PowerPoints in this series offer you a complete and in-depth study of each topic. This presentation is on "The Nature of Teams".

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The Nature of Teams
Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
The Nature of Teams
TEAMBUILDING

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The Nature of Teams
Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
The Course Topics series from Manage Train Learn is a large collection of topics that will help you as a learner
to quickly and easily master a range of skills in your everyday working life and life outside work. If you are a
trainer, they are perfect for adding to your classroom courses and online learning plans.
COURSE TOPICS FROM MTL
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The Nature of Teams
Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
ARE YOU READY?
OK, LET’S START!

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The Nature of Teams
Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
INTRODUCTION
Our lives are made up of belonging to groups. We are raised
in families; go to school in classes; and work alongside
others in organisations. Group membership helps us define
who we are.
So often, however, group membership is not as fulfilling as it
could be. Individuals fail to hit it off and self comes before
group. When groups fail, life can be miserable and
unproductive. That is when members and leaders need to
apply the skills and principles of team-building.

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Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
WHAT IS A TEAM?
The following are two definitions of a "team":
1. "A team is a group of people who work together with
and for one another to achieve a common purpose.“
2. "A team is a group in which the jobs and skills of each
member fit in with those of others as - to take a very
mechanical and static analogy - in a jigsaw puzzle,
pieces fit together without distortion and together
produce some overall pattern." (B. Babington Smith, as
quoted by John Adair)
"One thing I believe to the fullest is that if you think and
achieve as a team, the individual accolades will take care of
themselves. Talent wins games, but teamwork and
intelligence win championships." (Michael Jordan, US
basketball player)

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Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
THE ORIGINS OF TEAMS
The drive to be part of a team seems to be instinctive and
probably originated when human beings came down from
trees to live on the open plains as a result of long-term
climate change.
The challenges early man faced were two-fold. There were
problems of scale, for example, in facing a threat from a
pride of lions, and problems of complexity, primarily in how
to handle a range of environmental threats to find food,
shelter, warmth, and safety.
Leaving everyone to sort things out for themselves had
limitations. No individual could fight a pride of lions alone,
nor create a long-term safe environment to live in. The
answer was to pool resources and co-ordinate what
everyone did. The concept of the tribe was born which in
due course evolved into the concept of the team.

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Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
SUCCESSFUL TEAMS
A successful team is one in which the team members not
only achieve something special and worthwhile, but feel as
if they have participated in something special and
worthwhile.
Unlike a group,...
1. teams create varying levels of deep and meaningful
personal relationships
2. teams arouse feelings in their members for what the
team stands for
3. teams provide stimulus and motivation to those in them
4. teams provide various forms of synergy
5. teams are always developing
6. teams have purposeful unifying activity
7. teams feel special to those in them.
"Upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all."
(Alexander the Great 356-323 BC)

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Teambuilding
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ORGANISATIONAL TEAMS
Although we join organisations as individuals with individual
titles, job descriptions and salaries, it is usually as part of a
team that we live out our organisational lives.
These teams may be varied and include:
1. the functional team (ie the official team)
2. the special, short-lived team we join for project work,
committee work, seminars
3. sub-teams of other teams
4. the networked team of people at different levels and
different functions who stay in touch with us and us
with them
5. personal teams, consisting of friends, role models,
people we like, who may be from inside the
organisation, on its fringes or right outside it.
Teams are the building blocks of organisational life.

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The Nature of Teams
Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
WORKPLACE TEAMS
Occupational psychologists, from Abraham Maslow
onwards, have emphasised the importance for employee
satisfaction and job performance of workplace relationships.
Indeed, workplace relationships may be the basis of the
most important relationships in our lives, given the
widespread breakdown of family life and divorce.
The work team can become the source of the most
satisfying and longest lasting of relationships based on
mutual assistance, trust and sharing.
It is not surprising that when we no longer work, a majority
of people say that the thing they miss most is their friends
at work.

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Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
THE VIRTUAL TEAM
As organisations meet global competition with the tools of
new technology, so a new type of team has emerged that
cuts across physical boundaries of time and space. It is the
virtual team.
The virtual team is "virtual" because it rarely if ever meets
face-to-face and because it is shaped by modern means of
communication.
So, for example, a lawyer based in New York can collaborate
with a colleague in London, a boss in Singapore and a
project leader in Sydney. It also exists across 24 hours
without sleeping. So, when the European office closes, the
American office takes over, until it is time for it to close and
hand over to one in the Far East.
Through such global collaboration, and the sharing of
information and expertise, virtual teams add speed and
value to the organisation.

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Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
I MISS YOU
In research carried out by Morse and Weiss in the 1950's,
unemployed people were asked what they missed most
about not working.
These were their findings:
• 31% said they missed their teammates
• 25% said they missed the feeling of doing something
useful
• 12% said they missed the work
• 9% said they missed doing worthwhile work
• 6% said they missed the routine
• 5% said they missed the interest in their work.

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Teambuilding
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TEAMS MOTIVATE
In the early 1990's, many workplace pundits predicted the
demise of the traditional workplace because of the advent
of telecommunications.
As organisations found they could keep in touch with their
employees wherever they were - via video conferencing,
mobile phones, computer networks, fax machines - so they
realised that people did not have to physically be in the
workplace to work together. Rank UK were one of the first
major UK companies to encourage staff to work from home.
But it did not happen as predicted. People like to work with
each other and work better because of it.
Charles Handy suggests that, in the future, organisations
must grasp the opportunities that technology offers and
meet people's affiliation needs. He suggests that people will
work wherever they need to but will want to come back to
base to meet their team needs.

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Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
TEAM NEEDS
Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs can be applied to
people's affiliation needs in the following ways;
9. Spiritual needs: "there is a team spirit in our team which
is very special to us“
8. Freedom needs: "I can be myself when I am part of the
team".
7. Leadership needs: "I am able to use my leadership skills
as a member of the team"
6. Learning needs: "I learn more from being in the team"
5. Achievement needs: "the team helps me to do more"
4. Social needs: "in the team I can make friends"
3. Recognition needs: "the team let me know how well I am
doing"
2. Security needs: “Safety in numbers”.
1. Basic survival needs: "I can earn more money as a
member of the team".

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Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
SYNERGY
Synergy is the idea that "whole systems, such as living
things, behave in ways that cannot be predicted from the
behaviour of their individual parts," (Buckminster Fuller).
In other words, synergy is a natural coming together of
"bits" which results in an unexpected and remarkable
whole. The human body and the whole of the natural world
are examples of synergy at work.
Synergy is also:
• 2 and 2 = 5
• sodium and chlorine (both on their own harmful) = salt
• Lennon and McCartney
• Hewlett and Packard
• Gilbert and Sullivan
• Rolls and Royce
• Marks and Spencer.

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Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
TEAMS PERFORM BETTER
A Case Western Reserve University (Weatherhead School of
Management) study of 150 self-managing teams showed
that high-performing teams achieve results that in some
cases are 3 or 4 times greater than those achieved by
mediocre teams.
For example, in the 1980’s, Honda dominated the Japanese
sports car market with 80% of market share. Within just 2
years, Nissan had replaced them by increasing their sports
car sales by 500%.
They did this by changing the way their internal design
teams worked together and used a wider range of age
groups, backgrounds and areas within the organization.

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Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
KARASSES AND GRANFALOONS
In his novel "Cat's Cradle", Kurt Vonnegut introduces us to
the character of Bokonon, an imaginary prophet who
teaches the concept of Karasses and Granfaloons.
Bokonon believes that "humanity is organized into teams,
teams that do God's will without ever discovering what they
are doing." Such teams are termed "Karasses" by Bokonon
who notes that: "if you find your life tangled up with
somebody else's life for no very logical reasons, that person
may be a member of your Karass.“ A Karass may be any mix
of people, known, unknown, close, distant, dead, alive,
whose spirit or practical help inspires you.
By contrast, Bokonon tells us, "Granfaloons" are the teams
that people frequently identify with, such as the
organisational team, and which are meaningless in the way
God really gets things done.

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Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
TEAM DEVELOPMENT
While groups remain largely static, repeating what they do
at a fixed or standardised level of performance, teams can
grow and change and work towards an excellent level of
performance.
This development can be shown in five stages:
· stage one: the team is just a collection of people with
nothing in common other than nominal membership of the
organisation
· stage two: the team is a group of people with loose links,
eg sharing a building, meeting occasionally
· stage three: the team come together on work which has a
purpose and a goal that the members all share
· stage four: the team start to put the team before
themselves being willing to sacrifice personal glory for the
sake of the team.
· stage five: the team consistently achieve things together
and evolve.

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Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
PURPOSEFUL ACTIVITY
Richard Hackman in "The Design of Work Teams" says that,
instead of just throwing people together, managers need to
take four steps to build a team.
Step one: Pre-work In the pre-work stage, the manager
needs to decide what jobs a team can do and what an
individual can do. Many jobs are better done by individuals
than by teams.
Step two: Performance conditions Next, the manager sets
the team's performance conditions which include its
objectives, resources and performance criteria.
Step three: Forming and building There are three parts to
putting a team together: forming boundaries which clarifies
who is in the team; committing the team to the objectives;
and clarifying who will do what and how.
Step four: On-going help The manager supports the team's
work by helping the team to overcome its problems and
achieve a high level of effective work.

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Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
TEAMS ARE SPECIAL
The series of experiments conducted by Elton Mayo and his
team at the General Electric Company assembly plant in
Hawthorne, Chicago in the 1930's and 40's showed that
when a group is made to feel special, through being singled
out for observation, it can produce spectacular results.
1. under observation, the assembly room team was able
to produce high output even though the room's lighting
had been reduced to a level equivalent to that of
moonlight
2. under observation, the team's output rose consistently,
despite a steady worsening in conditions such as
heating, lighting, meal breaks, working hours
3. under observation, the absentee rate of the observed
team fell by 20%

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Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
TEAM CREATION
The emergence of workplace teams owes its origin to the
ground breaking studies at the GEC Hawthorne plant in
Chicago by Elton Mayo in the 1920's and 30's. Before these
studies, the concept of teamwork at work did not really
exist. There is, for example, no mention of teamwork in
Henri Fayol's principles of management in the early 20th
century.
The analysis of the teams at the Hawthorne plant showed
that the key factors in team creation were:
a sense of group identity and belonging
a feeling of support from others in the team
a sense of cohesion from working together
the personal interest, pride and help from the leader.
As a result of these factors, the people at Hawthorne
developed a sense of confidence and candour that simply
did not exist when they worked alone.

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Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
THE LAWS OF THE TEAM
Writer John Maxwell's book "The 17 Indisputable Laws of
Teamwork" includes some familiar features of teamwork,
such as communications, shared values, goals, vision,
leadership, challenge, investment in the team, feedback,
high morale, and knowing one's value.
Here are the remaining 7.
1. The Law of Significance: one person is too small to
achieve greatness
2. The Law of the Niche: all players must add most value
3. The Law of the Chain: the team is as strong as its weakest
link
4. The Law of the Catalyst: all teams have players who make
things happen
5. The Law of the Bad Apple: rotten attitudes ruin a team
6. The Law of the Bench: great teams have depth
7. The Law of Accountability: teammates must be able to
count on each other when it counts.

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Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
SAM'S WAGON
Sam's bull pulled his wagon into a rut. Several of the wagons
behind Sam stopped and demanded that Sam move his
wagon immediately.
Sam stepped off his wagon, scratched his chin and yelled
"OK Blake!" The bull in front of the wagon didn't budge.
Sam yelled out again "Let her go Alma!” Still no movement.
Then, he yelled again, “Pull hard, Franklin!”. But still no
movement.
Then, finally, Sam yelled, "Now get going Hause!" and the
bull pulled the wagon out of the rut.
Confounded, one of the other wagon drivers turned to Sam
and asked him why he didn't call the bull by the right name
in the first place.
"Well," Sam retorted, "if Hause thought he was gonna move
that wagon out of that ditch all by himself we'd never have
gotten out of here."

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Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
THAT’S
IT!
WELL DONE!

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The Nature of Teams
Teambuilding
MTL Course Topics
THANK YOU
This has been a Slide Topic from Manage Train Learn