Building Teams - You See It Everywhere

Stephanie Tuia 

A college football team has it. A corporation has it. Even a growing family has it. These three organizations share a common desire to build their prospective teams. For example, a college football team continually needs to bring in new players to replace the graduating players. A corporation builds its team to help it grow and meet the needs of clients. A young married couple who are having children are building their own family team. Each of these results has a different outcome. In the end, the goal is to work together, help each other, and collectively reach a higher level of performance. Whatever team you are currently involved with, it is surprising at how much organization is needed to build a great team. Furthermore, the following teams have their own equally important approach as to how they successfully build their prospective teams.

First of all, let's focus on a college football team. Unlike professional sports, coaches have roughly a four-year time period to retain their players. After that period, an athlete's eligibility is complete due to graduation. In order to fill the void left by graduated players, coaches rely heavily on recruiting new players to continue building the football team. Coaches look for the best athletes who have the capability to surpass those athletes before them, so that they can continue a winning team. Coaches face a challenging role to rebuild their program, depending on their previous team's success. At the end of the football season, coaches must take the initiative to re-build their team each year to fill vacancies so their team can move forward again.

During college, I interned for a public relations firm, and on my first day, my supervisor welcomed me with an e-mail that read, Welcome to the team! At first, I felt that only organized athletics reserved the right to use the word team. On a mature level, I've realized companies stay healthy when they implement a team-like atmosphere in the workplace. Being on a team brings out motivation and competition in employees, and also helps them to unite, identify their roles on the team, and produce stronger results. I've attended many career sessions and with every employer I've met, they have emphasized their desire to hire college graduates to join their team. Like a college sports team, an employer needs to recruit prospective candidates to fulfill roles in their company.

Many companies utilize employees as team members because it is a fitting approach when they are competing in an industry. For example, popular competing organizations such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola use the team approach in the workplace. The work environment at Pepsi might have some teams who are directly competing against some rival teams at Coca-Cola. This competition and approach is healthy because it energizes employees to become active team members and promoters for their brand. As mentioned before, being on a team helps members to identify their individual roles in the company and along with motivating them in a competing industry.

You can apply team building skills in any organization. For example, universities that are accepting incoming freshmen will want candidates who will help maintain or even raise the academic standards for greater respect and reputation of their school. Those freshmen are building the university team to improve performance and image. Finally, a chairman will seek out candidates to fulfill his board to bring in fresh ideas and insight to his committee. The chairman is simply building his team for support. In any circumstance, building teams will build a foundation for any organization that wants to progress and move forward. With a purpose and vision to improve your organization, building your own team and improving team interaction will help you achieve outstanding results.