User:Conservative/Teamwork skills

Teamwork skills videos

Teamwork skills

Team leadership skills

Videos:

Team Leadership skils

Articles/books:

9 Extremely Crucial Team Leader Skills
7 SKILLS YOU NEED TO EFFECTIVELY MANAGE TEAMS
7 Skills Used by Effective Team Leaders in the Workplace
The Art of the Leader by William A. Cohen, Online book

Key skills

Here are seven core skills that you must add to your toolbox if you wish to succeed as a leader:

1. Goal Setting. The ability to set goals is one of the core competencies of an effective leader. ...

2. Delegation.

3. Decision Making

4. Communication

5. Time Management

6. Problem Solving

7. Relationship Building.

Coach Herb Brooks in the 2004 movie Miracle

In the classic 2004 hockey movie Miracle, coach Herb Brooks said about the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey team beating the Soviet Union Olympic hockey team:

"The only way we can compete with the Eastern Bloc teams is if we're willing to change. Change the way we train, the way we prepare, even change our schedule. I think we need to make it longer. You know, tougher. Much more competitive.

We also need to change the way we play the game. My plan is to adopt a new style. A hybrid of the Soviet school and the Canadian school. A combination that requires the highest level of conditioning, speed, creativity, and most of all, team chemistry."

Charles A. Garfield's thoughts

"Charles Garfield is the author of the widely acclaimed "Peak Performance" trilogy: Peak Performers, Team Management, and Second to None. Together, the three books -- which focus on high-performing individuals, teams, and organizations, respectively -- are a blueprint for managers pressured to continuously improve while doing more with less.

Garfield's work as a computer analyst and leader of a team of engineers, scientists, and support staff on the Apollo 11 project first led to his discovery of the dynamics of peak performance. For over thirty years, Garfield has conducted a continuous study of business high achievers and their companies. As founder and CEO of Shanti Project, a volunteer organization, he inspired service excellence for peak performers of another kind: patients and families facing life-threatening illness. For his work with Shanti, Garfield was named "National Activist of the Year."

Educom Review: Does the individual-effort paradigm limit performance?

Garfield: Sure. It limits quality. It limits service. If you don't get along with the person you are serving, you are simply not going to provide excellent service. So this "us vs. them" paradigm limits quality, service, performance, speed, innovation -- all the things we have identified over the last two decades as being critical to success in a global economy. At the highest level of productivity, all of those things are best served by a collaborative model that values both individual and team effort.

Educom Review: Why do people perform better in peak-performing teams than they would individually?

Garfield: Because they have coworkers with whom they can brainstorm and innovate. Most innovation is collaborative, despite the fact that we still believe that Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and a few chosen people in the back room are coming up with major breakthroughs all by themselves. If I have colleagues to brainstorm with, if I have people on whom I can rely for facts and strategies and tactics, and if we're all part of the same team pulling in the same direction toward shared missions and goals, then we'll see what I saw on the Apollo 11 project, one of the greatest collaborative efforts in history.

Educom Review: What strategies do you suggest to enhance peak performance?

Garfield: There is no quick fix. There is no one perfect program, no one right way. You have to come up with a system that constantly gets refined and tailored, with innovation being the norm. You are constantly in the design and redesign mode.

I offer flexible blueprints in my speeches, ones that we can adapt or adopt, test or ignore completely. The strategy depends entirely on the fit between that blueprint and the organization's needs. When we are serious about the radical redesign of processes with an aim toward quantum leaps in performance, flexibility is central to our success. Today there is too much change, flux, and fluidity to be rigid, to pretend that there is only one right way. In fact, there is no single right way that you can impose on any organization, no one canned quality or service program that you can expect to work for everyone.

Educom Review: What should organizations do first?

Garfield: Organizations begin the process of transformation by addressing some basic questions: What is our company's vision of the future? What values guide our actions as we move toward achieving our vision? What kind of organization do we want to create? Also, what business are we really in? What are our mission and goals?

Educom Review: Are there signs that an organization is moving in the direction of transformation?

Garfield: Yes. The organization adopts a fluid, flexible structure that accommodates rapid change and generates continuous innovation. A new thinking is evident within the organization, a mindset that eschews the "one right way" of doing things and that embraces change and reconciles opposite points of view.

Educom Review: For many years, you've talked about having a sense of mission. Is that more important than ever?

Garfield: Yes. The mission of the individual needs to align with the mission of the team, which needs to align with the mission of the organization. In fact, I would take it further -- the mission of the organization needs to align with the mission of the society in which it is embedded and the mission of the planet to which we are all indebted.

Educom Review: Why is it hard for people to keep that big picture in their heads?

Garfield: Most of us are dealing with a chronic state of present shock, trying to get through the day. But everybody can ask, "To what degree is my mission in line with the mission of my organization?" If it isn't aligned, you're in for problems. If it is, your career will more likely prosper. Peak performers keep both the bird's eye and the worm's eye view in mind -- to think globally, and act locally. This is just as important in managing a career or team as it is in managing an organization.

Educom Review: Suppose you have a high degree of mission alignment; will that make a significant difference in the meaning and quality of your life?

Garfield: You can be maximally aligned, but if your work does not have a deep meaning and purpose for you, if you don't have a deep sense of appreciation and gratitude for what you are contributing and a deep sense of pride in what you do and what your organization does, then the quality of your life and work will suffer. I see that too much, unfortunately. That's what demotivates people -- the absence of meaning, purpose, and pride.

The most powerful human motivator of all is the desire to be proud of ourselves in the pursuit of something we care about deeply. Some day, we in business will learn to tap the same creative wellspring of human motivation and spirit that gets tapped in causes that human beings hold most dear. Then our best energies will be unleashed in pursuit of aims valued by organizations and by the people who work in them. We will then have a far more ennobling view of business and work -- a view that allows us to see our efforts as powerful contributions to the life of our nations and to the life of the natural environment on which we depend."[1]