“Great things in business are never done by one person;
they’re done by a team of people.”
Have you ever watched a highly effective team? A team that appears as an effortless occurrence, with each team member works seamlessly with other team members, almost as if they can anticipate each other’s every move.
What makes a team so highly effective at accomplishing its goals and objectives? What enables a team to become a high performing team, outpacing other teams?
Here we begin exploring some of the secrets behind exceptionally effective teams. Within this post, we'll reveal three crucial elements for team success:
Define Team Roles
Assign Directly Responsible Individuals (DRIs), and
Understand Typical Team Milestones
These secrets are part of the GPS for navigating the team voyage with confidence and extraordinary outcomes [remarkable results].
Team Roles
One of the secrets of effective teams is to define team roles. A group without team roles is a group. A team has defined roles. See the gallery below for more information about team roles, their importance, and team activities.
Directly Responsible Individual (DRI)
One common team challenge is that every team member may know a specific task, deliverable, or target date is important, but no one may takes primary responsibility for it.
This is where DRIs can enhance team effectiveness. A DRI, or Directly Responsible Individual, is the team mate assigned direct responsibility for ensuring the completion of a specific task or deliverable. While the entire team may be involved, having a designated DRI eliminates the risk of team members assuming someone else will hand the task, only later to discover that it was left unaddressed.
DRIs can operate within a team and may coincide with team roles. For instance, a team might find it efficient to assign direct responsibilities to specific team roles. In this way, the team member fulfilling a role also knows the corresponding DRIs.
In unique situations, the DRI may need to be determined on a case-by-case basis.
Overall, using DRIs can prove to be another secret of effective teams.
Team Milestones
Teams pass several milestones on the way to becoming a highly effective, productive team.
Teams understanding these milestones often are more adept at navigating the team journey.
The four milestones are:
Forming
Storming
Norming
Performing
If the team, after accomplishing its purpose, will be disbanded, there is a fifth milestone:
5. Adjourning
To delve deeper into each of these milestones and the GPS tools for a successful team voyage, continue to the next post: Milestone 1 Forming.