What is team identity and why is it critical for team success? Join me to discover the three key factors that make up team identity and how these factors can be boosted by the team leader to accelerate performance. Team identity is the extent to which a team member identifies with the team they belong to, rather than the organization. It is not the same as team cohesion. All high performing teams have a healthy team identity. Not only will you have a better understanding of the attributes of team identity, you will have the practical steps to shape this. The content from this session comes from Dr. Tim Baker's latest book, "WINNING TEAMS: The Eight Characteristics of High Performing Teams".

1. Building A
Robust Team
Identity For
Optimal
Performance
Dr. Tim Baker
tim@winnersatwork.com.au
www.winnersatwork.com.au

2. WHAT IS TEAM IDENTITY? CHARACTERISTICS OF
TEAM IDENTITY
STRATEGIES

3. What is team identity?
 Team identity refers to
the extent to which its
members identify with
the team.
 The stronger a team’s
identity, the more its
members connect with
the team’s ethos.
 A compelling team
identity results in its
members readily
associating with their
team before the
organization-at-large.

4. Team identity
model

5. Buffering
 Buffering involves protecting the
team’s resources from unwanted
outside influence, distraction,
and interference.
 Without buffering, other teams
and individuals can easily
cannibalize a team’s resources—
whether they be human,
administrative, or technical.

6. Examples of outside
intrusion
• A short-staffed team exerts pressure to redeploy
an individual from another team to restore its
capacity (human resources).
• A project manager, working in a matrix
organizational structure, coax a functional team
member to attend several time-wasting project
meetings, restricting the capacity of the functional
team to get its work done (human resources).
• Excessive administrative procedures that suffocate
a team with red tape, under the guise of
accountability or transparency (administrative
resources).
• A manager takes possession of what they believe
is a ‘spare’ computer to suit their team’s purposes
from a vacant workstation of another team
(technical resources).

7. Bridging
Bridging is the opposite of buffering.
While buffering is an internal defence
mechanism to shield the team, bridging
involves reaching out to critical people
and resources beyond the team.
Having constructive working
relationships with key stakeholders
enables the team to achieve its goals.
Bridging strengthen alliances within and
outside the organization. Robust
business relationships and partnerships
galvanizes a team’s relevance.

8. Building
• Building involves cultivating and sustaining a productive
team culture.
• Harnessing the benefits of a diversity, streamlining
systems and processes, and promoting continuous
learning are essential building blocks of a robust team
culture.
• Like buffering, building is internally focused.
• But unlike buffering—where the energy is devoted to
keeping at bay external forces that might interrupt and
distract the work of the team—building activities are
directed to attracting the energies and enterprise of
members to a common purpose.
• And in contract to bridging—where the effort is directed
to importing critical resources and cooperation from the
wider landscape—building entails utilizing team resources
to accomplish the task-at-hand.

9. Strategies

10. The Three Key
Elements of
Productive Working
Relationships in
Teams
Dr. Tim Baker
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/413827197287
Fri, September 30, 2022
10 AM – 10:30 AM AEST

11. Normally $28 +
postage. Now
available for
$15 + postage
tim@winnersatwork.com.au