Beyond Team Building

4COMPETENCIES: TEAM SKILLS THAT ARE NEEDED FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE

Once the team context and team composition are created to support team effectiveness, the next step is to develop team competencies. Such competencies are not just the attributes of individual team members but competencies that are developed and shared by members of the team. In this chapter, we discuss the competencies of high-performing teams and provide an assessment tool at the end of the chapter to determine to what extent a team has those competencies.

Developing the Competencies of High-Performing Teams

In this chapter, we describe ten characteristics of high-performing teams:

1. The ability to set clear, measurable goals
2. Making clear team assignments and ensuring that team members are competent to carry out those assignments
3. Using effective decision-making processes
4. Establishing accountability for team members
5. Running effective meetings
6. High trust
7. Creating open communications
8. Managing conflict effectively
9. Creating mutual respect for team members to encourage collaboration
10. Encouraging risk taking and innovation

We will discuss an eleventh competency, change management, in the next chapter.

While these are the competencies that we have found in high-performing teams, each team should identify the set of competencies it will need to achieve success, since certain competencies are more important than others given a team's unique mission and task.

Using our list of ten competencies as a guide, team members should ...