What Kind of Team

In my last post I wrote about how to think about electing or appointing members to a team. Today I will get a bit more specific. I love the kitchen, hey I am a guy, so I will return to the kitchen for an example. Sometimes my mom would have specific projects like canning. She loved to can strawberry jam, plum jam, and zucchini relish. Now the jams always involved us. We all had a specific talent we brought. Dad crunched the numbers according to how much jam we needed to make. Mom mixed the ingredients and my sister and I were the appointed stirrers. As you saw in my example about a thanksgiving dinner different members were present and our duties were slightly different. It is the same way with teams in businesses and organizations.

When the space capsule was returning from space but the computer system went down with and it had to be guided in manually. A project team was appointed. There job was to solve the problems necessary to maximize the astronaut’s chances of getting back alive. Generally problem solving teams are kept between three and seven members. Remember my analogy in my last post about too many cooks in the kitchen? On some projects especially emergency ones there is not a lot of time for mediating compromises so the fewer the numbers to do the job the better. In other words, this is not the time for political appointments.

A second type of team is called a standing committee. These are the people who determine policies, corporate culture and so on. Think of standing committees like when the relatives get together to determine a family trip or reunion. Now when planning something like this it is important to get feedback (opinions) of all the decision makers and then come to a consensus. Otherwise feelings will get hurt. Uncle Ernie will be frosted if reunion only involves trips to art museums and there is no beer, fishing or hunting. Policies and corporate culture issues usually call for larger teams to decide these issues: therefore, standing teams include anywhere from six to fifteen members. These usually involve all the key stakeholders. That would be union officials, human resources, and ought to include the senior people in the organization.

Your organization will likely have all different kind of teams. The important thing to remember is each member of a team should be clear about their personal role, performance expectations, and what process is acceptable for accomplishing the task (Van Wart, 2005). As mentioned in the prior post it is also important that each person on a team has the necessary competency to fulfill the role. You don’t want to put indecisive cousin Martha, who gets her shorts in a knot easily to be a part of the decision process of the trip just because she wants to feel a part of the plan. Putting people on a team ought not to be a favor or punishment. The best qualified people need to be elected to the team.