Team building and the workplace

The concept of team building began to appear in the workplace at a time when individual empowerment, total quality management and whole quality emphasis emerged, according to Jeffrey Reed, a professor of management and head of the business administration program at Marian University in Fond du Lac.

In the past, Reed said most employers placed far less emphasis on team work skills. That changed in the 1990s when companies began to look for ways to cut costs, he said. When employers began reducing middle management, they looked at ways to individualize their workload.

“That’s related to the change in the organizational structures in the 1970s and 1980s when organizations began to downsize,” Reed said. “They took out a layer of middle management and required those in charge to take on responsibility for more people.”

While working for Xerox Corp. in the 1980s, Reed saw first-hand the need to address teamwork and problem-solving skills within an organization.

“What we’re seeing now is a continuation of that,” Reed said. “As we look at the complexity of organizations and businesses, it’s important to look at how teams function and work with other teams.”

Business students at Marian are frequently involved on teams and are taught the development of team work skills, he said.

“Employers expect that, so it’s important that students gain those skills,” Reed said.

 

It’s amazing what animals can teach us about ourselves.

Janet Hagen, a professor of leadership within the College of Education and Human Services at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, has worked with horses for years to help those she’s worked with better understand themselves and their relationships with others around them. She’s also consulted with employers on a wide range of issues that can have a direct impact at the workplace. She recently launched Pegasus Leadership Consultants LLC, a group that helps Fox Valley organizations improve the relationship skills of their human capital.

Groups of employees meet with her and a small team of facilitators at a stable near Black Creek to actively learn and develop leadership skills. Together, they use the horses to address the perceptions of employees in team building.

“You typically have a business model that goes CEO, VP and the people under it. This is more of a circular thing with the horses and the process in the middle,” Hagen said.

One of Hagen’s facilitators, Heather Thenell, leads co-workers through an exercise of understanding several workplace processes. She addresses such issues as how women can release themselves from traditional barriers and gain the self-efficacy they need to become leaders, for example.

A corporate attorney for Thrivent Financial, Thenell often works with women in leadership – or lack of leadership – positions within their own employer.

“One thing we know about self-efficacy is that mastery is the best way to increase your self-efficacy, and having self-efficacy in respect to a particular talent is going to get you there. It is going to motivate you to try harder and to do it,” Thenell said.

Facilitators in the Pegasus program often work with employers to address other issues in the workplace, such as ethnicity and sensitivity training.

“People are afraid to talk about diversity – race, religion and those types of things. They don’t want to offend another person, they don’t want to hurt anyone else’s feelings,”  Hagen said. “When you work with the horses, you have entered a different culture. Even though they have some social structure like we do, their social structure is a little different.”

The concept of self-efficacy is the foundation of the Pegasus program, which addresses why people are motivated to behave the way they do, said Hagen, who collects pre- and post data on the program.

Even with a group of employees who are articulate and talented, Hagen said she tends to get positive results, even from employees who clearly understand the concepts of teams and leadership.

 

There are a number of venues where team building concepts can be illustrated. Often, the process can be encouraged by turning it into a recreational activity.

The Players Choice indoor recreation facility in Appleton hosts several athletic leagues and tournaments all year, but it also presents opportunities for businesses to put together meetings and team building activities, said Mike Lichtfuss, owner of the 68,000-sq. ft. center.

To address the variation among employees in athletic abilities, Lichtfuss encourages companies conducting team building exercises to consider contests that place everyone on a level playing field.

“Blind” volleyball – where a sheet is hung over the net separating the two teams – is one example. Other popular choices are whiffle ball, dodgeball and kickball.

“It can get the heart pumping a little bit or blow off a little steam or it can generate that camaraderie among peers,” Lichtfuss said.

Such events can accomplish a lot among a team of employees over the course of just two or three hours in an afternoon. A big commitment of personal or on-the-clock time isn’t needed, he said.

“Employees leave here and say how much fun they’ve had,” Lichtfuss said. “It’s not about who beats who. It’s about creating a little different way for them to bond.”

The Players Choice currently provides team building-related activities to between 20 and 30 businesses annually. While some of those are for employers typically in an office setting, others come from field service or manufacturing-based companies.

“What I hear from businesses is that it’s great to get out of your regular work environment,” Lichtfuss said. “Often employees haven’t participated in these activities since they were youths.”

 

At Marian, Reed’s experience working with business faculty colleagues through the school’s Center for Spirituality have helped illustrate the components of building a strong team.

 “If one person is going in a different direction, that presents problems,” Reed observed. “People have to work together, they have to have a shared understanding of what the goals and objectives are.”

Among an established team, the members must be able to understand and agree upon what it is they want to accomplish, Reed said. They have to agree on their goals. Without that, people will move in cross-purposes from each other.

By having a shared understanding of the expected outcome for the team, members can better examine how they will deal with conflicts or crisis, he said.

Often, our employees and chosen leaders within a company become specialists in a skill set in which they have no background.

“One problem solving skill is to recognize when you don’t have the knowledge and to recognize who does, and go to that correct person to help you solve the problem,” said Thenell.

When a team is established, it must have trust and openness to be able to solve its problems, Reed said. The team has to determine how much autonomy and authority it will have.

The intangible aspects of effective teamwork – such as trust, conflict resolution, accountability and a focus on results – may be more important than the tangible aspects of the team.

“When you look at team building, many people have to develop skills because they’re being asked to do a lot of things they’ve never done before,” Reed said. “What are the rules, the expectations, and the roles? How will we work together?”