What are the Characteristics of an Effective Team?
Increasingly, organizations are realizing the key to their success lies in building high-performing teams. Research proves that effective teams, regardless of industry, tenure, or size, demonstrate certain common characteristics.
What are those characteristics, and how does your team measure up?
In his landmark book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, teamwork thought leader Patrick Lencioni shows how teamwork is essential to organizational success. After many years, this still rings true. In fact, teamwork is more important now, than ever.
To help you see if your team needs to improve, we made this checklist for assessing team effectiveness.
checklist of characteristics of effective teams:
- Deliver excellent results while providing each member of the team the opportunity to grow personally and professionally
- Become a part of, and commit to, a shared goal or vision—one that is larger than themselves and that presents a meaningful challenge
- Have the complementary skills necessary to get the job done and respect what each person brings to the team
- Are committed to working with one another, recognizing that they depend upon one another's efforts
- Seek to align, integrate, and synchronize everything
- Hold themselves jointly accountable for outcomes (they see themselves as being in it together)
- Build a high level of trust and commitment, work well together, and enjoy doing so
- Are motivated to put out their best effort to perform the tasks assigned to them
- Provide value to customers/constituencies and are relevant to their customers
- Achieve recognition for the services they provide
If you’re like most team leaders, you checked some of these. If you checked most, good work! It is more likely that some went unchecked, and there is always room for improvement.
Getting started on effective teamwork doesn't have to be a challenge and FlashPoint is here to help. The Five Behaviors® is a team effectiveness assessment model and tool used to help team members learn to work together more efficiently, effectively, and to become a more cohesive team.
The Five Behaviors® is our assessment and program of choice for team effectiveness. You can read about how we used it for our work with a National Cultural Institution's executive team here.“Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.” — Patrick Lencioni
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