Putting a team together

The Ingredients of Forming a Team

There are two main essential ingredients for the formation of any team, the first one is that each team member must be fully aware of and has complete buy in of the team's common goal and the second ingredient is that each team member should fully understand his/her role and its importance towards achieving the common team goal.

The founding person or body drafts the team’s preliminary charter including the mission,team goals, expected outcomes, time requirements, and authority level. In addition, the founding person or body is responsible for defining, communicating, and negotiating the ‘‘what’’ (direction),‘‘why,’’ and ‘‘when’’ to the team. The team may question aspects of the direction or seek clarification; leadership teams often jointly define direction with management. The team is then responsible for determining the ‘‘how’’ (the approach). Management must resist the temptation to draft a charter that spells out every step so clearly that the team has no latitude to create on its own. 

Putting together a team charter

• Define the mission of the team—its primary purpose for existing in a sentence or two.

• Identify the SMART goals for the team: specific, measurable,achievable, results-oriented, and time bound.We find it helpful to encourage the team to draft work breakdown plans for each goal that identify major milestones and key activities under each milestone.

• Describe the major activities that the team is expected to undertake, including specific objectives to be achieved or strategies, recommendations, or analyses to be performed.

• Spell out the expected outcomes or deliverables once theteam’s work is complete.

• Identify the resources available to the team.

• Identify the type and frequency of reporting and the communication expected of the team, including who should receive copies of the team scribe notes and any interim reports.

• Identify any nonnegotiable requirements or rules that the team is expected to adhere to or that it needs to be aware of.

• Identify the skills and abilities that team members must possess for the team to accomplish its task.

• Identify the team members, and in the case of cross functional teams, how membership will be rotated.

• Identify the roles and responsibilities of the team sponsor or coach, team members, and star point roles. • Identify the authority level that the team will have—what decisions it may or may not make—and any spending limitations.

• Identify the key relationships that the team must maintain and/or foster.

• List the key measures to be used to track the team’s success.

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