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Effective Teams Health Check |
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Effective teams pause once in a while to review the quality of their teamworking. Teams can often be working well enough to do the job, without really unlocking the potential that they have within themselves. Here is a tool which helps teams review their effectiveness. It's a simple three step process. The process requires a facilitator, which can be either a member of the team, or an external person. It is not necessarily a good idea for the team leader to be the facilitator, as this can limit feedback on team leadership and may constrain discussion on how to improve teamworking. |
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First, each member of the team uses the Effective Teams Health Check to record their own assessment of how the team is currently operating. These are then collated by the facilitator, who calculates an average score for all members of the team. The second stage of the process is for the whole team to meet and develop an overall team score for each statement. The facilitator should guide the process, spending relatively little time on those where the team is pretty much agreed on the score, and it is a reasonably positive score. More time will be required where the team has widely divergent views on how it is performing in a particular area, or if the team feels that it is struggling in a certain aspect. Next the team develops a list of things that it would like to do differently. The process is completed by the writing of an action plan on how it will tackle the most important three or four things on that list. These are not necessarily the ones with the lowest score but rather those which will make the greatest contribution to team effectiveness. Three or four things are plenty to focus on. Don't try and work on all twenty areas at once!! Most effective teams should aim to reach a target score of 4 or more in the longer term. A score of between 3 and 4 indicates that the team is performing fairly well, but that there are still some areas to be tackled. A score of less than 3 suggests that the team is either in its infancy, or that there are some particular issues that need to be addressed. Repeat the exercise after a year to see whether the desired improvements have been met. (This period could be shortened to six months for a team who are meeting and working together frequently.) |
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