Every team member is a team player. This means that the team counts on each member to do his/her part, and the team member lives up to this responsibility. To do this, team members need to be trained to learn basic team skills that are above and beyond their own specific job skills. When team members support each other, it is beneficial to the group, and in particular, it helps in the development of some players who are new in the team.
Here are some key team characteristics that every member should know and practice.
Knowledge of Policies and Procedures
Team members need to help each other develop, follow and enforce the team’s own policies and procedures which defines the team rules. This includes simple things like how often the team meets and meeting agendas to more complex issues like how the team will handle conflict. Each team member needs to know and understand these basic rules.
Collaboration
Team members need to understand how to collaborate with each other. This means contributing ideas, generating alternatives, discussing creative approaches and expressing what is on their mind without feeling intimidated or without being ridiculed. Collaborative ideas are the real work product of teams. Members develop and communicate ideas through open and frank discussion. Team members encourage each other. The team leader ensures that every member gets a chance to contribute.
Team Consensus
Once ideas are on the table, team members need to know how to reach decisions. Decisions are best reached through consensus, which means sticking with discussions that unravel all the issues, developing a common view of the problems and obstacles and moving to the best possible course of action, given the circumstances.
Conflict Management
Team members are able to deal with the natural conflict and disagreements that occur in team settings. Instead of turning a disagreement into an argument, team members should view conflict as a chance to explore differences and to think about problems from a number of diverse points of view. On a team, no one “wins” an argument. It is a win-win situation.
Inter-Connectedness to other Business Unit Teams
A team is connected to other teams in the company. An isolated one causes a hindrance in the overall success of the business since each team has a specific function to perform. When managers encourage team members to develop relationships with other teams, the "us-them" mentality is prevented, and the business work process flows better, and building of a contact network is facilitated.
To make a team work best requires a manager to encourage back-to-basics process of applying team characteristics or skills.
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