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4. Conflicts and Compromise Teams are made of PEOPLE! You have to expect conflicts and confrontations. They should not be arbitrarily stamped upon - people have to be made aware that at some point they will have to compromise with other people in order to continuing functioning as an effective team. Members should be encouraged not to hide conflict, but to work it out and arrive at a compromise. The team leader should try and be aware of any conflicts and help to resolve them where necessary. Don't expect your team to never argue - they are all different people, and just like in a family, there is nothing wrong with a healthy argument, as long as it is resolved

5. Chinese Councils ALL team members should have an input to planning and decisions concerning team. People in team should be treated as equals. The team leader is not in that position because they are ‘better", it's just that they have different skills to others. The team leader is not only person that may have good ideas and should always be willing to accept input from others and where necessary amend plans and decisions concerning team and its objectives. However, everyone should be aware that at end, team leader has ultimate responsibility and therefore final say in any decisions, having taken into account input from other team members. This should be a regular ongoing procedure.

6. Assessment and reward Forget ‘Annual Assessments', Competency grids and pay rises based on individual performance! What matters is, "Is TEAM successful?" The team leader should be constantly aware of how team members are performing and giving them feedback and assistance where necessary as project progresses. It is no good leaving it until some later point to let people know if they are not achieving what is required or patting them on back if things are going well. People need constant feedback -with honesty! Reward should be based on success (or failure!) of whole team, not individuals, so that people are encouraged to make sure that everyone in team is pulling together to achieve team goals -not trying to score ‘smarty points' for their own individual advancement. (This would not work in a ‘sales' environment, which is why sales people tend to work as individuals rather than as teams!)

7. Buddies Team members must all be ‘Buddies' with each other. This doesn't mean that you have to be close friends or socialise with each other! What it means is that team members have to support one another at all times. Everyone has ‘off days', and team members should notice when someone else is not performing 100% and offer help and support to get them through this period. Sometimes all it will take is a joke or remark to buck someone up or they may need help with a particular task that is getting on top of them. All members should get into habit of ‘watching out' for each other. There is no shame in seeking or accepting help - we all need it sometimes. We all have different skills and abilities and team members should be encouraged to make use of each other's skills to achieve team objective as efficiently as possible. I was never very good at producing diagrams for presentations, but I had someone in my team who was brilliant at it, and I would always ask her to critique my work so that I could produce a better finished product.

8. No Blame - No Shame EVERYONE MAKES MISTAKES! The secret is to have a culture where people are not ashamed to admit to having made a mistake! That way, mistakes can be rectified quickly, and more importantly, learned from! If someone makes a mistake (deletes a file or something), you don't want them to feel that they will be penalised or marked down in some way. You need them to tell someone and if necessary seek help to rectify it as soon as possible. (Needs ‘honesty', as above!)

Summary You may have noticed something in reading above? No jargon, no ‘hype', no ‘games', no ‘exercises', no ‘concepts'! - NOT NECESSARY! Successful teams are all about PEOPLE, their natural skills, abilities and relationships. Running a successful team is very much like running a successful family and most of values are same - BUT, it will not work WITHOUT HONESTY as above! Remember that is probably hardest thing to achieve due to human nature and conditioning that people are subjected to in normally competitive culture of most work places, but it is worth effort if you really want to achieve effective team building. Think about all of above - how much of it currently applies to teams in your workplace? Could you implement this? Remember - unless you start with HONESTY, it will not work, and you will always just be going through motions of team building!

As always I am completely open to any comments - whole idea of this seminar is to get people thinking and discussing what they do in their teams and how it could be improved.

Acknowledgements Adapted from an original article by John Roberts, freelance training consultant, Director of JayrConsulting Ltd. www.jayrconsulting.co.uk John can be contacted at john.roberts@jayrconsulting.co.uk This article may be freely reproduced / modified and used in any way, providing this acknowledgement is left in its entirety.