Teams and team building are great. When they work. But,
they won't work without a sense of cohesiveness. As you may
know, cohesion generally refers to the shared commitment
that members feel to their group and to each other. And, as
we'll see, communication is critical for cohesiveness.
Starting with the cohesiveness factor, we know that leaders
within the armed forces, in every nation and throughout
history, work hard to build cohesion within their military
organizations. Boot camps, for example, use the principle
of replacing a recruit's existing value set with a new one
that reflects the values of the military unit. It's a
cornerstone of that type of team building.
No doubt you've also seen the desire for cohesiveness
become an issue in companies and other organizations. It
can be anything from birthday parties for members of a
department to a top-down, organization-wide initiative to
increase morale.
And as you can imagine, cohesion and team building cannot
take place without communication.
Members of a group can only develop a sense of belonging
when someone communicates to them that they are a valued
part. Sometimes, that communication comes formally, in an
initiation ceremony, for example. Or, it may be informal,
as in the sense of allowing new members to participate in
group activities.
In team building, those who become members of a group must
reciprocate, of course. They must signal to other members
that they value the membership they received. That may
involve expressions of gratitude, or it may involve doing
something, even if distasteful (as in a fraternity) or
criminal. For example, becoming a member of a street gang
or an outlaw motorcycle gang may involve the commission of
crimes.
Leaders intent on team building must be acutely aware of
their communicating role, and consistently evoke or invoke
the shared values that hold the group together. To do that,
they may speak of shared experiences or shared dreams. In
some unfortunate cases, it may involve scapegoating
individuals or groups that are unlike them in some way.
There's also the issue of the group communicating its
cohesiveness to those outside the group. Members of Little
League baseball teams wear team jackets, for example, and
members of fraternal orders and service clubs wear vests or
badges.
In talking about cohesiveness, the experts also, and
invariably, mention the downside of this togetherness. They
refer to groupthink, for example, which sees organizations
make bad decisions because they put unanimity ahead of a
good debate about the pros and cons of an issue. Members of
the group think it's more important to avoid disagreements
than to reach the right decision.
Groupthink also involves limited input from outside the
group, meaning that important facts or opinions may not get
to the group before it makes its decision. Most often, the
outside information that does get in supports existing
beliefs.
In summary, good communication, is always a cornerstone of
any team building effort. And, we can see the connections,
from communication to cohesiveness, and from cohesiveness
to team building.
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Robert F. Abbott writes extensively about business
communication, and his work includes the book, A Manager's
Guide to Newsletters: Communicating for Results. You can
read more of his free workplace communication articles at:
http://www.communicate-with-confidence.com/workplace-communi
cation.html .
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