Tweet

7 Ways to Successful Group Dynamics for Your Team

Written by: Sylvia Lafair

Article Overview: How do you as a leader weave your team together as one strong unit, whether you are with them or not? Like a good parent, you hope ‘the kids’ behave even when you’re not at home. Here are 7 principles to help your group connect and work together.

7 Ways to Successful Group Dynamics for Your Team

As a leader you are always living in the world of "both/and". That means you must always look at how you respond individually, as well as how you weave together the dynamics of your group to make it become and stay a team. When you look at yourself or when you are in an executive coaching setting to explore your own personal strengths and weaknesses, the questions to ask are "What set me off, what pushes my buttons, why do I get so annoyed when someone is late, or makes dumb jokes, or challenges my decision?"

When you are working with group dynamics, the questions are of a different nature. The key questions address how to enhance interpersonal communication in your team, how to create alignment between functional silos, how to provide constructive and future-oriented feedback.

Here are the 7 major principles to consider when you are the one to connect your group and have them find the best ways to respond to each other. Whether you are there or not, these are the major areas all of your employees need to learn and practice:

• Pattern awareness: to become aware that when stress is high, there is a tendency to revert to patterns of behavior learned as children that were there for survival and security.

• Emotional intelligence: Learn how to handle emotions in a way that does not create an either/or dynamic where sides are chosen, much like they were in the school playground.

• 360 Feedback: offer colleagues perspectives to help keep employees on track and become aware of the blind spots that can, if not tended, cause ugly clashes and crashes.

• Creative conflict resolution: develop an arena where it is safe to challenge one another and ask penetrating open-ended questions to gain new perspectives to problem areas.

• Stretch goals: Set up experiential situations, simulations of work problems that take individuals out of their comfort zones and have them play each others' roles and have to see situations through each others' eyes.

• Silo samba: give employees time to talk about the stresses and challenges in each department and let those in other areas ask clarifying questions to find new ways to work together for the good of the company.

• Team transforming: Help the team go through the essential and necessary developmental markers that make them a tight-knit and connected one that includes forming, storming, norming and eventually transforming to highest potential.

The essential success of a team of a company is how well leaders are able to do both the introspection work required for personal growth, as well as the inter-individual connecting that is at the heart of how strong and viable systems can operate in an optimal fashion

Related Articles
  Focus Groups are for Lipstick, not Technology
  Are You Leading a TOP Team?
  Kickstarting a Brand New Team
  Directors Want Better Boards - And Rightly So
  Effective Steps to Becoming a Leader

Article Tags: 360 feedback, creative conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, group dynamics



Related Forum Posts
Re: Anyone Uses Elance.com? Guru.com? Rentacoder.com? - I've had quite a bit of success on oDesk.com. I've never used Elance so I can't compare. I like oDesk.com 'cos I get to sort thru people (e.g. within a certain bid range) with a single click. I find their help response very quick and I like the oDesk Team software that "providers" must install. This gives me the Buyer more insight as to what I am paying for. The Team software takes screenshots of the Providers screen on 10 min increments so I can see that the person is infact doing work for me.
BNI Groups - do they work? - Hi Lesley, From the members in my Mastermind Group I've heard a number of positive and negative things about BNI Groups. Just like a Mastermind Group, it all depends on who the people are. If the personalities fit and the members can add value to your business it can be worth checking out. The best bet is to go to a meeting as a guest to get a sense of who is in the group and if it is for you. It doesn't cost you anything except a little extra sleep the morning of. Good luck!
Re: On Which Social Media Sites Are You Most Active? - I must respectfully disagree completely with that premise Evan. When speaking of a "Small Group", we are talking abotu a "Mastermind Group". As we all know, such a group is instrumental to success, online or off. The groups can grow quite large too. My group currently has 35 members, but several are actively participating and sharing content.
Re: What's 1 word to describe what your business will be in 2012 - Successful.
Books for Women Entrepreneurs - There's a thread for good books in the Resources folder, but it doesn't target books for businesswomen particularly, so I figured I'd start such a thread here. It doesn't matter how successful you are in your business - it's always possible to learn something new. In subsequent posts I give Table of Contents and brief descriptions for various titles - most of them devoted to the businesswoman - and sometimes a review. If anyone else has read a review, or has read the book and found it useful, please comment! 1. The Old Girl's Network 2. Mother's Work 3. The 7 Greatest Truths About Successful Women 4. Pitch Like A Girl 5. Workplace Warrior 6. Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the Modern Consumer 7. Contingency Planning & Disaster Recovery 8. She Wins, You Win 9. Napoleon On Project Management 10. Why Good Girls Dont' Get Ahead, But Gutsy Girls Do 11. Comeback Moms: How to Leave Work, Raise Children, and Restart your Career even If you Haven't Had a Job in Years 12. The One Minute Millionaire 13. Talking From 9 to 5 14. Soloing: Realizing Your Life's Ambitions 15. 101 Best Home Based Businesses for Women: Everything You Need to Know About Getting Started on the Road To Success 16. Work With Passion: How to Do What You Love for a Living. Revised and Expanded 17. Fail-Proof Your Business: Beat the Odds and be Successful 18. Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End 19. Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide 20. Millionaire Women Next Door: The Many Journeys of Successful American Businesswomen 21. Start Small, Finish Big: Fifteen Key Lessons to Start - and Run - Your Own Successful Business 22. Rewired, Rehired or Retired: A Global Guide for the Experienced Worker 23. The Martha Rules: 10 essentials for achieving success as you start, build or manage a business 24. The Essentials of Entrepreneurship: What it takes to create Successful Enterprises 25. Net Ready: Strategies for Success in the E-conomy 26. The Promotable Woman 27. Leave The Office Earlier: The Productivity Pro shows you how to do more in less time and feel great about it 28. The Work At Home Balancing Act: The professional resource guide for managing yourself, your work, and your family at home 29. Secrets of Six-Figure Women


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Download a template or see a lawyer?

Ways to Improve Your Landing Page Conversions

The five pillars of internet marketing strategy

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.