Working with The Dream Team✨

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

Have you ever think about what makes a team so great that you call them a ‘dream team’? Yes, the team may consist of highly skilled individuals with good personality. But when working in a team, there is one more thing to think about: team dynamics. A good team is a team with a great dynamic to support outstanding results. This article will talk about team dynamics and how it affects team performance and results.

What is Team Dynamics?

According to rallybright.com,

Team dynamics describes the behavioral relationships between the members of a group. The dynamic between them includes how they interact, communicate and cooperate with one another. How well your team is able to do these things directly influences what it can accomplish.

Team dynamics are created by the environment, personalities, and working relationship. When the team dynamics are good, people in the team are more comfortable doing their tasks and better performance. A team with good dynamics will achieve their goals and have fewer conflicts.

Now, how do you build good team dynamics?

Factors of Team Dynamics

To build a team dynamic, these factors are essentials:

1. Open Communication — When faced with a difficult situation, staying silent is never an option. Communicate with your team, even when it means a little arguing. It shows that the team is communicating well and care about solving the problem.
2. Empowerment — A good team dynamic can be seen when the team is empowered to make their own decision regarding the work they are doing. You will notice that confidence and a feeling of strength emerge. However, you can only do this to the team that is experienced. Make sure the team is ready for empowerment, or the organization will suffer from the consequences of its poor decisions.
3. Clear Roles and Responsibilities — Each team member needs to have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities, so they know what to expect and what is expected. This will create an effective team dynamic, where each member also know whom they can count for helping them with their work.
4. Goal Clarity — Make sure that everyone in the team has the same goals. It will make a good dynamic where everyone is moving in the same direction. There may be times where the team members will be confronted with difficult problems that need to be solved. In this situation, you can reflect on the goals. If it supports the goal, proceed. If it works against the goal, stop.

Stages Of Group Dynamics

1. Forming — When the team just formed, the members do not know each other well. This is where we need a good leader to make it easier to define the tasks and responsibilities for each member.
2. Storming — This stage involves good communication where every member discuss how to achieve the goals and what can be done by each member.
3. Norming — At this stage, the team already agreed on how to achieve the common goals.
4. Performing — This is the production stage—each member working on their tasks to reach the goal.
5. Adjourning — The last stage is where the team celebrate their success. This is the time when the members praise the efforts that enabled the project to be finished.

Servant Leader in Team Dynamics

According to forbes.com,

A servant leader focuses on the people directly below them rather than the company as a whole. In servant leadership, the leader ensures that the followers are growing in all areas — their profession, knowledge, autonomy and even their health and physical development.

Aligned with the team dynamics theory, many believe that when the leader focuses on the people, they are more likely to be skilled, talented, knowledgeable, and motivated people who will help reach the goals. There are three things to be focused on when applying servant leadership:

1. Be a good listener — Servant leaders always listen to people before they speak their minds.
2. Put others first — Servant leaders prioritize their people before themselves.
3. Have empathy — Servant leaders try hard to resolve those issues by fulfilling the needs and wants of the general public.

Team Dynamics in PPL

Timtam Team

In these past few months, the Timtam team has gone through all the stages mentioned above. We are trying our best to maximize the team dynamic by applying all the knowledge that we’ve got. With the help of our servant leaders — in this case, the scrum master and product owner — the journey is fun yet productive!

What about you? Have you implemented a good team dynamic?

Reference:

Team Dynamics

How to Improve Group Dynamics of Software Development Team

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