Team Formula

Research into team effectiveness in multiple industries provided interesting insights, including potentially transferable themes that could benefit team building in many spheres. Sports team studies noted leader-member relationships, team building, role clarity, and collective ownership as foundational to successful performance. The military concluded that shared consciousness and empowered execution, along with an extreme challenge, will foster team excellence. Healthcare emphasised the value of collective planning and debriefing to learn and perform. At the same time, education reinforced the value of profiling tools such as Belbin team-role theory to apply science to team formation, role clarity, and better collaboration.

Recent business research into team performance noted the significance of leadership in creating the right climate for team effectiveness. Human Performance Improvement (HPI) and Human Factors (HF) maintain relevance while humans are involved, especially when a human-machine interface exists. Communication is potentially the most central theme but given the importance of building personal relationships within strong teams, the style of communication needs to be best suited to each individual within the team in order for each to feel important, valued and fully "bought in".

A simple illustration of the themes that emerged from this cross-industry team research is shown below. Simple but very effective if applied by team leaders with purpose.