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Goals and Team Work Performance experts stress the importance of goals for individuals. Does the same thing apply to teams? According to D. Ray and H. Bronstein, in their 1995 book published by McGraw-Hill, Teaming Up, goals are the most critical defining feature of a team. As they state, "Without goals, which can be measured, there is no team." That's a very strong statement and suggests a number of implications. Basically goals set the limits of what teams can do and what they can't do, and they create a standard for accountability. It is easy to blame a team that does not achieve goals, but part of the problem be that the dynamics of the team began to drift when the team didn't know what it was to accomplish. Goals are the laser focus for performance to be targeted. Probably most readers have been on teams of the "drifting" type. The team meets but without clear direction, so it doesn't matter much what happens with speed, focus, or accuracy. Teams placed in this position generally spend a great deal of their time trying to figure out what their managers want from them and what will be the consequences of not completing some vague task. What can you do if you are part of a team in this "drift" position? Begin by making a list of every question you can think of. At a minimum, you'll be taking charge of the frustration and anxiety that accompanies being on a team that has been charged with "something," but nothing clearly defined. If you do not receive adequate responses to your questions, then make a list of assumptions under which you will operate. Give this list to whoever set up the team, so they understand clearly what you assume your mandate to be. If you are working in a highly-charged political atmosphere, tell a lot of people what you are doing. Sometimes goals get established when more than one set of eyes look at what a group is doing. One assumption could be: "We assume that we cannot operate without a clear answer to the following question: _____" A team mandate should, in effect, be a clear statement of goals. It's a map as to how a group of people need to behave and accomplish tasks together. In this regard, team goals are no different from individual goals. And the lack of goals merely amplifies also what happens when individuals operate without goals! It's possible that goals for a team change as the team accomplishes tasks along the way. If this is the case, then the goals need to be regularly looked at, examined for their accuracy and criticality, and always, always communicated to the people who matter. Team goals are, in short, a tool that will guarantee your effectiveness and help you to communicate with others who are not so clear as to what you are trying to accomplish! Janelle Barlow, President
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