Starting Out

Starting Out > Welcome to Teams101x > Welcome to Teams101x

• In work and in life there are many different types of teams – work teams, recreational/sporting teams, large or small teams, informal or formally organised teams and teams that are the only way to deal with complex problems that would be insurmountable for individuals.
• In these examples we can see that good teams and good team players are winners, survivors and problem solvers.
• Effective teams make a difference! Our starting point for this course is to highlight the difference between groups and teams.
• What would you say are the most important differences between a group and a team? Lydia: For me, groups are characterised by members having their own individual interests in working towards the outcome.
• If you look at the output of a team it is difficult to clearly distinguish the work of any one individual because of the team synergies.
• When people start working in a team, a common mistake is to sub-divide their project into individual tasks and then bring it together in some kind of synthesis towards the end.
• In this course we will: – describe the lifecycle of teams – the characteristics of high performing teams – we’ll talk about team roles – we’ll highlight the different forms of leadership and explain the importance of listening, and of course give you strategies for setting up teams for best effect.
• David: Lydia, I think we should also say that in this course we’ll provide structured opportunities for course participants to reflect on their experience and approaches to teamwork, and provide them with a basic toolkit for addressing problems such as conflict resolution and team dysfunction.
• Lydia: And this is good place to point out that David and I have been working as a team for more than 10 years.