Team Success

The U.S. Department of Labor sponsored panel discussions on "Lessons Learned in Moving into Teams," attended by representatives from both the Federal and private sectors. Panelists shared their respective experiences in transitionning to teams. Five factors were identified as highly important to team success, as follows:

• Training - Team training needs to be an on-going process to introduce and then reinforce team participation skills, including how to set goals and measure goal accomplishment. Such training should continue even as the team develops and matures.
• Communication - Maintaining communication within the team and between the team and the organization is vital to team success. Team members should build skills in both formal-professional and informal-interpersonal communication. Communication between the team and the organization must be maintained so that the team does not become isolated from the rest of the organization.
• Management Support - Support from top management is critical to team success. Ideally, the team has a "champion" in top management to help create a climate conducive to team success. As the team develops and matures, top management should delegate increasing authority to the team.
• Accountability - Team members should hold themselves individually accountable for progress and goal achievement, as well as, holding each other and the team accountable. Team goals should be aligned with the organization's goals with the team developing the action plan for accomplishing its own goals, including metrics for assessing the team's progress and processes.
• Team Supportive Behavior - Team members need to practice team-supportive behaviors such as cooperation with each other, patience in consensus building, honesty in feedback, interpersonal relationship building, and goal directed work activities. *

* adapted from OPM, Workforce Performance Newsletter Reprint, April 1996.