It is extremely difficult to build team integrity if individual members of the team are not exhibiting characteristics of integrity all the time. Personal integrity is the key to building successful team integrity.

What is personal integrity? Individuals demonstrate integrity by upholding personal values and ethics in the work environment.

Team integrity can have two meanings, the building up of a team as a whole unit that works successfully as one, and integrity that allows the team to fulfil the ethical standards and guidelines expected of the team project. Without personal integrity, team members are unlikely to build team integrity.

People with personal integrity work as hard to make the team’s project a success as they do to ensure their own personal projects are a success. A person with integrity will complete agreed tasks that benefit the team in the time allotted, without turning up to the next team meeting with an excuse.

A person with integrity will ensure the time available is put to good use and will not waste valuable time and resources, whether a supervisor is watching or not. Personal integrity is an important characteristic of team players, because if someone cannot work well for his own satisfaction at a job well done, the person will be unlikely to work well for the team.

If a team member lacks personal integrity, the team as a whole will suffer. A person lacking personal integrity will be likely to be late to team meetings, be unprepared or not complete allocated individual tasks, and may even use unethical means to take the credit for other’s work, instead of giving credit to the team.

Obviously, other team members will not appreciate this kind of team destroying behaviour and having just one person in the team who lacks personal integrity can cause huge rifts in the team. If the team spends more time arguing instead of getting on with the work of the project, the team will achieve nothing.

So, how you build personal integrity? For many people, the concept of personal integrity links directly to self-esteem. If you feel confident in your own abilities to work well on a particular project, you are less likely to employ unethical or underhand methods to look good in front of the boss. You will let the work speak for itself.

Personal integrity is linked to the moral and ethical values the individual employs in daily life. If a person lies to people around them, including family and friends, then a lie to the team is unlikely to worry the individual. If a person plays underhanded political power plays at work to either make trouble for other individuals or to boost their own individual standings with the boss, then the person is unlikely to be a good team player.

People with high levels of personal integrity will find it difficult to lie or to play power politics at work, especially if it means belittling someone else in order to get ahead. This means a person with high personal integrity will be more likely to support the team and give credit to the entire team, rather than try to get individual credit to boost his or her own personal self-esteem.

Individual personal integrity is an essential building block to becoming a good team player and to creating the indispensable team integrity that will ensure the team’s project is a success.

If you are a team coach and want to build an effective and successful team, you need to understand how the individual team members’ values either will contribute to the success of the team or will work against the team. Most people will define an effective team as a group of people who have the same values and are working towards fulfilling a common goal. Having a clear and shared purpose and a vision for the future is helpful for all teams, but without shared values the team could still fall apart.

Values are the qualities or characteristics that are most important to team members, or that are valuable and admired. Characteristics such as trust, respect, punctuality, ability to deliver on time projects, and the capacity to work well with others are among the common values of successful and effective teams. Effective and high performing teams will always operate in a climate of trust, where individual team members are free to express an opinion without judgement.

The best way to establish team values is to ask team members to bring a list of five values that are important to each member as a professional individual to the first team meeting. Ask each person to define the values and include a couple of ways he or she demonstrates these values in his or her daily working life. This self-reflective pre-meeting work will give each individual some ideas to contribute to the list of team values you will build at the first team meeting, so everyone has input and therefore buy in to the eventual list of team values that your team will create.

At the first meeting, every team member should discuss one value that is different to the other values under discussion. However, give each team member the opportunity to bring all five of their personal values to the discussion, so that the team ends up with a broad list of important values. Some values will overlap, which will help the team recognise similarities between individual team members.

The whole team can brainstorm ways the team can demonstrate that value throughout the duration of the project. Encourage the team to make a list of the most important values from the individual values under discussion. It can be difficult to get agreement on the most important values, which can lead to good practice in conflict resolution for the emerging team. A good team coach will facilitate this discussion with reference to the values, such as respect of other’s opinions.

Once the team has defined and agreed to a set of values, you can easily create some guidelines to ensure that the team works effectively and is able to implement these values in the daily work of the team. These guidelines or value statements are extremely useful when the team cannot make a decision or to encourage the individual team members to focus on the tasks at hand.

Team values only work when everyone in the team is committed to the team values. This is why aligning the team values to personal values of team members in the first place is so important. If the team’s values are incongruent with personal values, the team member can have an internal conflict, and will usually follow personal values rather than team values.

When every team member agrees to and honours the team values, the value statement serves as a powerful binding force for the team, helps to resolve conflicts, and is a reminder that the team has common ground with the common, agreed values.

Photo credit: photo credit: thinkpublic

One of the most important things that a manager or team leader should be communicating is the team vision. The term “vision” is related to the meaning of the people working hard in an organization. The team vision is the achievements and goals of high-level objective leaders. It is the big picture of how the team should work together to achieve the overall expected outcome of the project.

Encouraging your team or department to work towards and maintain a particular set of desired values or objectives means more than simply putting up a notice on the wall, as this will not impact the attitudes and behaviors of your team members.

An effective team vision is the vision where it is a lively mental image representing the persons view of the desired organization in a very effective and inspiring way.

A set of objectives and a list of values is the combination of a mission.

An effective team vision will arouse team members’ to have enthusiasm and passion for the tasks and project of the team. It generally describes about values, environment and culture for inspiring the team vision.

The first step of creating an effective team vision is communicating with your team and establishing common values or ideas on how the team will work together. The next step of establishing a team vision is a discussion of the objectives and tasks that are needed to complete your team’s achievements.

Finally, together as a team, decide on a specific statement that encompasses both steps. An effective team vision will be smart: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time effective. It is a statement of the big picture goals, and should include a statement of how the team is planning on achieving the goals.

If you can develop a vision as a team, so that every individual member of the team has buy-in to the vision and will work to uphold the idealistic vision, your team will be more effective. If your team cannot decide on a team vision, you may need to establish a statement anyway, but it is more effective if your team members agree wholeheartedly to the team vision.

A team vision is about establishing the big picture – both in goals, and a general statement about how to get there. An example of an effective team vision is:

“Working together and always respecting each other’s abilities and contributions, we will overcome the challenges to finalize “project x” within the specified timeline and budget to achieve the accolades we deserve.”

Getting your team members to agree to the team vision will make people work hard to reach individual goals and tasks with greater passion. As a team leader, it’s important to communicate the reason why a team needs a collaborative and agreed team vision. It is the vision that drives the team to perform at a high standard. Create a team vision that encourages excellence and see how it makes a difference to your team’s performance.

Communication is very important in team vision. It is like a two way street and traffic should be flowing down the streets all and all the time. If communication breaks down in a team vision then the team, the project, and every thing may go backwards in all aspects. Good communication is an effective key to realize and to grow the vision.

If you have a vision of what you are going to achieve and what would it like to achieve then it is easier to align the tasks and work of the team to fit the vision. What does it mean to finalize the project within the specified timeline, for example? Well, it might mean setting particular milestones along the way to ensure that the tasks are completed on time, and will not hold up the overall project.

If you want to make your team successful, you have to know how successful the team is running at present, so aligning current status to the terms of the big picture vision will help you to ensure your team is successful. Knowing updates frequently from each and every team member makes you knowing the future plans and steps of your team which will reach your expectations.

A team vision is a simple statement that encompasses the big picture goals of the team and includes an ideal method of working together that inspires individual team members and the team as a whole. Communicate the team vision effectively, and align the team’s achievements to the vision to ensure your team vision is a useful tool, and is not forgotten throughout the project.

Photo Credit: photo credit: Angélique ~

I’d like to share with you a story. It’s about Linda, a team leader who one day reached crisis point with her team and a key lesson she learned when she was forced to face up to why it all went wrong and what she needed to do to get back on track.

Let’s find out a bit more…

Linda sits with her head in her hands and wonders what went wrong. She had so wanted her team to work well together and make the project a success. Instead, her team meeting has fallen apart with four of the members of the team stalking out in anger in a team meeting where acrimonious argument rather than productive discussion was the order of the day. The rest of the team members yelled at Linda for a while, blaming her for the team falling apart, and then left.

Linda needs to get her team back together and quickly. First, she starts to think about when things started to go wrong for the team. There were some early decisions made that some team members disagreed with, and as team leader she had made the final call.

At least one of the decisions included making a short cut that she had hoped would get the team finishing the project BEFORE the deadline, even if it was not exactly something she would normally agree with in her personal work life.

Thinking back, Linda is sure that this is when the team really started falling apart and individual team members started to work against each other. Linda realises her team is lacking integrity.

Integrity is one of the most important characteristics of successful teams. While each team member should have personal integrity, the team as a whole needs integrity.

The dictionary has three definitions of the word integrity: adherence to moral and ethical principles, the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished, and being in a sound, unimpaired, or perfect condition. The first two are the most important for the integrity of a team.

Team integrity can have two ways of showing: the team upholds moral and ethical principles, and the team works together as a complete whole being with undiminished power to be cohesive in productivity. Without integrity, the team will ultimately fall apart and become unproductive.

Building integrity into the team is part of building team trust and building the team into a productive, cohesive unit. Making decisions that individual team members cannot agree with, or worse, feel are working against personal standards of integrity will prevent those individuals from putting their all into the team project, as the individuals seek to disassociate themselves with the team.

Across the hallway from Linda, Brian is also closing a team meeting. His team is working together on a productive level, and the project is nearing completion.

Brian thanks his team members for their hard work and confirms the individual and team tasks that need to be completed for the next meeting. With nods of agreement, his team meeting closes with renewed enthusiasm for finishing the project. Brian packs up his team notes and walks out of the meeting room with a smile on his face. He sees his colleague Linda, who is leading another team on a similar project and stops for a chat. Linda’s team is not going so well and she is worried. Linda asks Brian about the team rules his team works by.

“Well, we agreed in the very first meeting to make this project something we could all be proud of – the type of project we would want mentioned during our retirement celebrations! With that goal, everyone is working hard to make the project our legacy.”

“We had some tough decisions to make along the way; some of the ideas a couple of team members suggested did not sit well with the personal integrity of other members, but in the end, the team came back to our guiding principle of making the project something we could ALL be proud of, and so the team’s integrity remained intact.”

“Everyone turns up on time to the meetings and has completed the delegated tasks in the meantime, so the project is moving forward at a solid pace. We’ll make the deadline for sure,” Brian said.

Setting and agreeing to guiding rules and principles for the team to follow early on and upholding those rules and principles has been the way to build greater trust and a sense of integrity in the team.

Brian’s team has integrity because the team members all want the project to be something to be proud of and therefore refused to take the short cuts that Linda’s team did.

The individual team members show integrity by completing designated tasks and supporting the team by showing up to team meetings on time. Everyone is working towards the final goal of completing the project on time all the time.

Linda realises that team integrity is not something that is optional, or something that the team shows only part of the time. Every decision either adds to the team’s integrity or takes away from it.

Lesson learned

Decisions that reduce team integrity will push the team apart, while decisions that add to team integrity pull the team together. Team integrity is essential to build a productive team, and good team leaders develop this characteristic in the team consistently from day one.

Photo Credit: photo credit: Francis Carnaúba

You may not have thought about it much before, but colours can make a big difference to how creative and productive your team is.  Psychologists have studied the effects of different colours for several years and have discovered that certain colours are more advantageous to have in rooms or environments when you are looking for creativity.

When you are setting up the room for a team idea generation session, you can use the colours below to spark creativity. At the least, you may wish to wear a shirt in the right colour, as the facilitator of the session usually draws all eyes and can wear clothes that subtly affect the mood of the room. Use colours on the whiteboard instead of plain black markers to increase the colour impact. If you have a choice of rooms, choose the room with the most creative colours in the paintings or pr, ints on the walls. You may even like to use coloured paper to write on to create the perfect environment for creativity.

Here is how psychologists describe the effect of each base colour on our psychology and the impact the colour can have on your team:

Blue

Blue is the colour of peace and tranquillity and can increase wisdom energy, according to some colour psychologists. Studies have shown that judiciously wearing blue tones can lower blood pressure. I find it especially useful to wear a light blue shirt on a deadline day, as I find I tend to be less stressed. If your team has been feeling the pressures towards the end of the project, wearing a light blue shirt could provide an emphasis on stability, harmony, and order.

Many scientific studies have proven that people are more productive in a room with blue tones, so a blue carpet is popular in meeting rooms. Lighter blues are better than darker blues though, as the darker shades of blue can evoke sadness or depression in some people. A bright blue or lighter shade of blue can exude confidence and create harmony in the team.

Red

Although red is an energising colour, you should use it sparingly in a creative environment. A splash of red colour is more conducive to creativity than a whole wall painted in red. Typically, red enhances self-assurance and produces an illusion of fantasy.

These can be feelings that are helpful when brainstorming, but because red also stimulates passion, you could end up with a team who is tense and argumentative if there is too much red around. Red can be both energising and fatiguing, so use red judiciously. Wear a red tie or scarf to add a splash of red to the environment, without the colour becoming overwhelming.

Yellow

Yellow is also a stimulating colour and can provide an energising lift to the environment. However, like red, yellow can be a fatiguing colour to the eyes, and if too much of the room is yellow can be draining rather than uplifting. Yellow communicates happiness, warmth, and joy, but you should use yellow as an accent colour in an environment when you want creativity to shine, rather than paint the whole room yellow. Yellow is renown for being intellectually stimulating, so it is not a bad colour to have in some areas in your team’s working environment. Accent a lemon yellow colour with light blue in the room to create a good colour combination for creativity. The yellow gives your team’s spirits a lift and the blue provides a calming influence.

Green

Green inspires unity, motivation, concentration, and balance. It is one of the best colours to use to create an environment conducive to creativity. As the colour most associated with nature, green is both restful and tranquil, and restores energy. Since colour psychologists consider green to represent fertility, using green in your creative environment could fertilise and encourage imagination.

Give out light green coloured paper to participants in the brainstorm to write notes on and see if the colour has a positive influence on the levels of concentration in the room. Some researchers have discovered that laying a transparent sheet of green plastic over reading material increases reading speed and comprehension, so if you are providing reading material to your team with detailed information on technical aspects of the project, try printing the data on the light green paper.

Use colour in your team’s environment to promote creativity, energy, and inspiration.

photo credit: ThaRainbowRaider.

Collaboration is a key ingredient in any team recipe, but you can extend the field of collaboration beyond your immediate team for creative results. As a team leader, you should work to create and maintain an atmosphere of collaboration both within your team and externally to your team.

Why Collaboration Is Important

Collaboration is the key to leading a successful team. Without it, a great idea can remain only as an idea, instead of the team implementing the idea in a practical way. Often an individual can come up with a great idea but has no way of implementing the idea. However, other team members may be able to find ways of bringing the idea to fruition.

Without a spirit of collaboration, the team is merely a group of individuals and not a unified team. One person cannot come up with all the components to make a project work, but the team who works together, and accepts ideas from every team member and builds on those ideas together can create amazing projects.

How to Create Collaboration

As a team leader, you have a pivotal role in helping your team to build a collaborative spirit, moving individuals away from holding onto ideas for personal gain to sharing the ideas for the benefit of the whole team.

Encourage your team members to share ideas, not only group meetings but via the email system or by chatting in small groups outside of the team. Sometimes, two or three people will be able to nut out an idea and present a practical, viable solution to the rest of the team at the next team meeting.

During team meetings, you may like to a whole team brainstorm session to generate initial ideas and then ask the team to break into smaller groups, with each group given a particular idea to discuss in more detail and report the pros and cons of that idea back to the whole team before a final decision is made on which idea to recommend to the board.

Who to Collaborate With

As well as creating a collaborative spirit with the team, you can collaborate with other people on the project. You may find that discussing the project with people who have no stake in the project can help you to see the problems or issues with the proposed solutions.

Look beyond your immediate circle of friends, or team members for input on some issues. Key stakeholders within the company may be able to give your team information on the practicality of implementing your team’s ideas. You may want to pass a drawing, model, or sample of the finished product among the people on the manufacturing floor, and people in the marketing department for thoughts, suggestions, and input, before your team suggests a brand new product to the board.

You can also collaborate with people outside your company but within the industry. Be careful not to share confidential company information, or to give your competitors’ an edge by sharing too many details, especially if your creative team is responsible for designing a new product. However, you may find that collaborating with other people in the industry can help your team. If another company has tried a similar project in the past with disastrous results, finding out what did not work can only improve your team’s chance of success.

Any good team leader should work towards creating a collaborative spirit within your team and with appropriate other people in the company and in the industry.

Do you have any tips on how to improve team collaboration?

What do you think makes an effective team?