Team Building

Definition of team

'' A team is a small numbers of people with complementary skills, who are committed to a common purpose, performance, goals and approach for which they are mutually accountable.''(Katzenbach and Smith, 1995)

Characteristics of successful business team

1. Definiteness of purpose

2. Knowledge of business

3. Commitment

4. Goal and result Oriented

5. They are individual thinkers and critical problem solver

6. They are team player

7. They are bounded by the business mission statement

8. They are strategic in their approach

9. They are competitive

10. They are responsible and accountable

11. They are opportunistic

12. They are excellent communicator

Every successful business team has some specific characteristics, which separates it from group. There are some live examples of successful business teams, and the marketing team of Sikkim Manipaal University is the live and best example of successful business team. Although university can not be called best in terms of course material and facilities, still the numbers of admission are touching the sky, and that is because of their marketing team. They can be called successful team as they have following characteristics

1. Knowledge of the business-Knowledge of the business is the key element for the success of any business team. The market and business tactics depend on the nature of the business. The marketing team of SMU has full knowledge of education sector and they are master of marketing tactics as well. They know who their prospective student is and which group of students have the potential to be targeted. The each member of team is fully aware about the courses, are being run by the university and how they are going to introduce those courses to the students.

2. They are excellent communicators- Successful business team knows how to motivate the workforce and the customers, they have the ability to gain business through their spoken words. The marketing team is able to persuade the student to take admission in distance learning programme, even student wants to take admission in regular programme, and that is because of capability of communication. They know how they can draw the attention of student towards the course.

3. Participative leadership- The meetings are held at end of every month to take feedback about the old marketing strategies from each team member. Every member of team has freedom to adopt new ideas when it comes to take the admission. They are fully free to decide about the tactics and strategies for getting more admission.

4. Common purpose- The main objective of SMU is to maximise the admissions, and marketing team works for the same objective. The team members may use different ways to do their work, may be they try to influence the targeted market by using different tactics but they work for the admission at the end of the day.

5. They are opportunistic- Successful business team always seeks for diamond in the coal. Best example of that, when IMT stopped providing MBA degree and started providing diploma instead, then SMU team started targeting the students of IMT, as they could provide degree, and students in India have more interest in degree.

6. They are competitive- The competence can be tested in the market, and SMU marketing team is on the top, as they are player in the market.

Assessing the importance of team roles in successful business team

Team role is about forming teams and assigned the team role according to the characteristic of an individual.

Team role: A tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way.'' (Belbin, 1981), Belbin introduced nine team roles plant, resources investigator, co-ordinator, shaper, monitor evaluator, team worker, implementer, completer and specialist,

Importance of team role:

* The performance and success of any team depends on the way, the team interact and exploit the strengths of an individual, and team role helps the team to become "team focus" and "task focus" by enhancing the effectiveness of team members.

* It facilitates the team in achieving objectives.

* It helps to bring balance in the team.

RNR education Pvt. Ltd is a huge institute in terms of space, facilities and delivery of course, and they are associated with big names like IMT Ghaziabad, Sikkim Manipal University and IIM, still they are facing the problem of sluggish growth. The problem is not with the strategic direction of the organisation but the problem is with the RNR management team and that is because of poor mix of team roles in the management, therefore by adopting Belbin team role theory they can eradicate the label of poor management.

It can be said there is poor mix of team role in RNR as the person who is playing the role of coordinator has got all the traits of specialist as he is self reliant and knowledgeable, but according to Belbin theory a person can be best coordinator if he is mature, extrovert and if he is able to encourage others, so the person who is coordinator there, better fits in the role of specialist. Apart from this in RNR the person has the attributes of opportunistic and extrovert having the responsibility of implementer, he is not able to exploit his strengths as an implementer, his traits matches with resources investigator.

By above example it can be said that an individual and team can excel when given role can exploit team member's strengths.

Analyzing the value of Theoretical model when building of successful business team

Implication of theoretical model in building of successful team is very important. The various theoretical models revealed the fact that no team is full formed, fully organized and fully functioned, when it starts. Every team is created or made, or we can say every successful team is based on theoretical model. For example some organization