Creating a team identity
Creating a team identity
Do members of your team feel part of a team? Do they work together co-operatively? What you can do to build a team identity.
In the session What is a team?, a team is defined as ‘A group of people with complementary skills who work together to achieve common goals’. The session goes onto define complementary as meaning that people can support each other. Where one person is weak another is strong, so that they can combine their skills to produce better work more quickly. That is, they are more effective in what they do and more efficient. The session also defined common goals as meaning that the team has a set of goals (or objectives or targets) that everyone is working towards. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have individual goals as well, but these help them to achieve the team’s goals. In this session we are going to concentrate on the third element of this definition, working together. In particular we will be looking at how you can get people to see themselves as part of team and want to work with and help other people in the team. This means helping people to develop a sense of a team identity, with a shared sense of what is important and what the team wants to achieve together.
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Creating a team identity
What is an ‘identity’? Who are you? We don’t mean, what is your name, although that is part of who you are, but what do other people see you as? Think about this question and then have a look at how one person answered this question. Then have a go yourself.
Case Study Sam is a team leader in a call centre. The call centre deals with people who want to purchase software. Although Sam isn’t an IT expert, he knows enough about the company’s software to deal with customer queries. Here is his answer to the question, ‘Who are you?’ “I’m Sam White. I’m 28 and a graduate. I have a degree in Geography and Business - not a very good one, but not too bad. I chose it partly because I liked Geography, and I’m a great traveller. I spent a gap year in the far east - Thailand, Vietnam and China - and I like getting away to places for a weekend, which is so easy with all the cheap airfares. “I live with my girlfriend and we’re talking about getting married soon. We’re buying a house here in Sheffield, which is where I was born and grew up. Although I love travelling, I also love this city, and having so many friends I’ve known all my life. I play football and squash with lads I went to primary school with! “I really love my job. I get to talk to all sorts of people and tell them about the software. I’m a great people person. I’ll talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime. That’s why I like travelling - I’ve got friends around the world I MSN to. I met my girlfriend on a bus in China. I just sat down and started talking to her. “I became team leader last year. There are 10 of us in the team. I coach new members, train the team in new products, agree targets and workloads, listen in to a sample of calls to monitor quality. I’d like to get into training, I really enjoy that. I see myself building my career here by moving into the training team in a couple of years time.”
Exercise If you were asked the same question (“Who are you? “), what would you say? Think about how you would identify yourself. You don’t need to stick to the things that Sam talked about. Just think how you would describe yourself to someone who hasn’t met you before.
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Creating a team identity
Your team’s identity If you were to be asked the same question about your team, how would you answer it? Would you talk about the same sort of things. In Sam’s case this would be: Name - does your team have a name, or a label of some sort? Age - is it a long-established team, or fairly new? Skills, knowledge and experience - what does the team collectively possess? Location - where is the team located, both physically (‘on the fourth floor of the council offices’) and in the organisation (‘we deal with all planning enquiries from residents, builders and architects’)? What the job involves - what tasks does the team perform? What drives you - what are the attitudes, values and goals of the team? You can see how, by answering these specific questions you can describe the team’s identity quite well.
Exercise Think about these questions about your team and jot down your answers to them. Does the team have a name?
How long has the team existed?
What skills, knowledge and experience the team collectively possess?
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Creating a team identity
Exercise continued Where is the team located?
What does the job involve?
What drives you, as a team?
Your answers to these questions will give you a sense of the team’s identity, if it has one. If it’s hard to list the team’s skills, knowledge and experience, or to be clear just what the team does, then it may not have a very clear identity. If you can’t say what drives the team, what is important to the team’s members, this will make it hard to identify the team as a team, and not just a group of people who happen to work together. And if you can’t say who is in the team, then it clearly doesn’t have an identity at all!
Case Study Sam described his team like this: “My team? We’re called the ‘Bowlers’ because we all go out ten pin bowling once a month. I don’t know why we started, but it’s a regular thing now. I joined the team when I started work here three years ago, as did most of the others. I think two people left and our team leader got promoted - she’s now leading a specialist team dealing with small businesses. The people who came in really fitted in well, though. “We’re a real mixed bunch. Most of us are in our twenties, but two are over forty, and have worked in a whole range of different jobs. We’ve got a qualified nurse, a partially qualified electrician, and three other graduates straight out of Uni. We’re a really mixed bunch, different ages, backgrounds, races and everything, but we all get on well. We’re on the third floor of an office-block near the city centre, and we (Continued on page 5)
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Creating a team identity are all part of the customer service division. As I said, we deal with telephone enquiries from members of the public who’ve received one of our mailings and want to take up the special introductory offer. They often want to know what the software does and how it works. We explain it to them, and also try to get them to buy a bundle of software that adds to the basic product. We can usually get someone to double or treble their order value. “We all believe in the software because it really is as good as we say, and incredibly good value. There are programmes that cost ten times as much that don’t offer anything more in functionality. We are quite competitive to make sales, because the team with the best sales figures each week gets a prize. It’s usually something like a night out at a swanky restaurant, with partners. “The good thing is, we’re not under time pressure. We can spend as long as we like with a customer. It’s up to us to decide whether it’s worth continuing. When one of us makes a sale we all cheer. We like to see team members doing well because it means the team is doing well. If someone is struggling to hit their target we’ll always help. I like the idea that we’re working together. “
You can see that Sam’s team have a clear identity - they know who they are, and what they are trying to achieve. They have a strong team culture. In the session Organisations and their culture, culture was described as ‘the way we do things around here’. It is the result of the team members’: attitudes (how they look at the world), customs (how they normally behave) expectations (what they expect others to do). If people have very different attitudes, customs and expectations of how other people will behave, it makes it very different for them to work together. At the very least, it means that people will not communicate with each other very well, because they don’t have very much to say to each other. At worst, it may cause all sorts of tensions in the team. If people see things differently from each other, if they behave differently and expect other people to behave differently from the way that they do, then they will not get on well. This doesn’t mean that team members all have to be the same. As Sam says, the people in his team are very varied.
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Creating a team identity However, when it comes to their work they have the same attitudes, customs and expectations. They all believe in what they are selling, and have the same competitive attitude. They have got customs, like going out bowling together and cheering when a member makes a sale. And they expect the other team members to strive to achieve their targets and, in return, to help them do it. If a team member refused to go bowling, or sat quietly when everyone was cheering, or didn’t help a fellow member of the team, there would soon be tension in the team. One person can cause the whole team to suffer. In fact, the stronger the team identity, the more one person can make people feel unhappy if they don’t fit in.
How do you create a team identity? As a team leader, one of your responsibilities is to help the team create its own identity. You can’t force it on the team, but you can encourage it to develop. Be clear what the team is trying to achieve what it’s goals are. If you don’t know, the team won’t, so discuss it with your manager to help you be clear in your own mind. Then discuss this with your team. Help them to understand and agree the team’s goals. If you are able to do so, add some that you think are important, like: supporting each other in the team aiming to be the best team in the organisation always meeting (and, if you can, beating) your sales, output or quality targets. These will help you establish what is important to you as a team, what your values are. Talking about what really matters to them, will help team members to agree on their attitudes to their work. There may be some customs already, like having a cake on someone’s birthday, so encourage them if they help the team to work together well. Talk about what you expect from the team and what the team expects from you. Then you can talk to them about what they expect from each other. Only if you deliver what they expect can you ask them to do the same for you and each other. One of the hardest parts of being a leader is being in front. Only if you do something can you ask others to do it. Your role is to set the standard you want others to achieve. The identity of the team will be as strong as your identity as the team’s leader.
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Creating a team identity
Comprehension Check Complete the following exercises. Refer back to the session if necessary. A. This session started with a definition of a team. Fill in the gaps in the definition, below: A
of people with
who work together to achieve B. Read through the questions below and then choose the option that best answers each question by circling the letter before each: 1. A team’s identity is: a. the name the organisation gives it. b. how well the team performs. c. how the team’s members see themselves. 2. A team’s culture is: a. how well-mannered the team members are. b. the team’s shared attitudes, customs and expectations. c. the rules and procedures the team has to follow. 3. You can help the team develop its own identity by: a. agreeing clear goals with the team. b. choosing a name for the team. c. getting the team to behave in the way you want. 4. The team’s values are: a. how much each person gets paid. b. what the team thinks is important. c. what the organisation thinks is important.
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Creating a team identity
Making Connections Answer the questions following the case. Jaina is a newly appointed Internet sales administration team leader. Her team has just been created after a reorganisation. All six members of the team have worked for the organisation for several years, but in different areas, mainly in telephone sales. Their job is to monitor orders placed online and deal with any enquiries (by ‘phone or email) from customers. Jaina wants to create a strong team identity, and to do so quickly because the different team members need to support each other. If one person is away, the others must deal with any outstanding enquiries from customers. People who place Internet orders expect really quick service. What would you advise Jaina to do to help create a strong team identity?
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Creating a team identity
Think and Apply How well do you use the skills in this session? Think about your team and its identity. Does the team have a strong and clear identity? Do team members share the same values, in relation to what they do and how they work? What can you do to support the team in developing and supporting its identity?
1. Read the list of skills. Tick the boxes to show your strengths and weaknesses. Skills
strengths weaknesses I’m good at this
I’m I’m not I’m quite so quite good good poor at this at this at this
recognising the team’s identity encouraging the team to have clear goals encouraging the team to develop shared values about their work 2. Do you want to improve any of these skills?
3. How do you plan to improve the skills you listed in question 2? (You might want to discuss this with your line manager or your tutor/mentor/coach.)
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