What does it take to build a team? Does having one really matter? 
Read on to learn what makes teams click, how communication helps build them, how your shop can benefit and when to completely nix the idea.

If you walk into Alexandria, Va.,-based Wagonwork Collision Center early on any Friday morning, the smell of eggs, bacon, sausage and gravy wafts in the air and there’s the sound of men and women’s voices talking and laughing while sharing stories. No, this collision repair shop isn’t doubling as a restaurant. The food and camaraderie is all just part of Marty Eubach’s, one of the shop’s long-time technician’s weekly ritual. Every Friday morning, he cooks breakfast for everyone in the shop. And every Friday, all of the shop’s employees traipse into work early just to samplehis culinary creations and to hang out and talk. It’s part of their teambuilding as a collision repair facility and a way to keep spirits and confidence high by letting everyone get to know each other better.

“Every Friday morning, Marty brings his electric skillet, all the guys chip in for the cost, and he cooks,” says Donald Hughes, a technician at the shop. Hughes never misses the breakfast gathering, nor do many of the technicians. “At 7 a.m., there are a lot of guys here waiting for breakfast. We all get along so well, and what better way to do something outside work than to sit around [over breakfast] and talk about different things.”

Gathering together like this as a group is how technicians at this shop build up morale and build up themselves as a team—not just a group of people who work together. This is a time when they open up to each other, enjoy each others’ company and learn a little bit more about each others’ personal lives. This is crucial because as the technicians gather together during non-work time, they’re provided with the opportunity to see how each person is different—and how some of these skills and interests may be able to translate to the workplace. 

Building ‘social capital’
The early morning breakfasts at Wagonwork Collision Center help build “social capital,” or the networks, shared norms and values that facilitate cooperation among groups. Oftentimes, companies will build social capital at off-premises events, such as golf outings, drinks or dinners after hours, or even a shop baseball or other sporting team. Although the Friday morning breakfasts are held on the premises at Wagonwork Collision Center, the point is that the employees aren’t on the clock so they are much more relaxed—instead of being focused on repairing a vehicle. 

This type of situation allows people “to start to know each other more personally and understand some styles of behavior in which people engage,” says Paul Arntson, alumnae teaching professor of leadership and communication studies at Evanston, Ill.,-based Northwestern University and founder of the university’s Undergraduate Leadership Institute. In a way, he says, it’s an informal way of administering the Meyers-Briggs, a standardized test that assesses behavior, personality and skills such as leadership and teamwork potential.

“Sometimes it’s nice to know people are into cooking,” adds Arntson, who also specializes in teaching and helping implement teambuilding. “It’s getting to know people, but it’s also useful in a strategic way.” Bringing people together and isolating them from their normal routines and the pressures they typically deal with is key to this. 

Don’t judge a tech by the cover
Jay Perry, founder and CEO of Auto Body Consulting (ABC Consulting), says, “It’s difficult to hate someone you know. But it’s easy to hate someone you don’t know because you are hating a concept.” This is because people develop a pre-conceived notion—a concept of someone—before getting to know him or her. “A first impression is formed within 90 seconds of meeting or seeing a person,” says Perry, who has developed a class on teambuilding and communication. He gives the example of a person talking very loudly and being somewhat obnoxious without much concern about how it’s affecting others in the room. Your reaction might be that this person is annoying and not someone with which you want to associate. However, in talking to this person later, you may find that he or she has kids in Little League, plays in a local band or volunteers within the community, he says.

By getting to know this person on a more personal level—away from the typical work environment, “once you start to know that individual, all the prejudice can be supplanted because you have been hating a concept.” This won’t happen overnight, but through what’s termed, “repetitive exposure.” There will be those who are afraid to let down their guard and get to know someone or allow themselves to open up, but with repetitive exposure throughout a period of time in an environment in which the insecure people feel comfortable, they will allow themselves to be broken down some and will be willing to have some of their preconceptions of others broken down. 

When this happens, Perry says, “You are opening up their minds.” But those who continue to be stubborn and won’t participate in teambuilding efforts “are going to be so left behind that they will naturally disappear,” he says. They won’t fit in, so they’ll leave the shop or whatever facility they’re working at, and their lack of participation won’t hinder the teambuilding process.

However, what will impede teambuilding is if events aren’t held for this reason, but if they are being done just for political reasons—i.e. because a shop or company feels it should have a “teambuilding” event just as a formality. 

Teams vs. workgroups 
Merely holding or attending “teambuilding” events are a great idea as long as there are deliberate things being done for teambuilding. If a shop owner or manager doesn’t feel his or her employees operate as a team to the optimal level and holds an event to actually work on this predicament, that’s one thing. However, just holding the event to hold it—because you think it’s just something you should do—won’t accomplish anything because the event is being held without any real intent to provide the participants to experience true teambuilding.

If, for example, an entire staff attends a golf outing, and it’s attended as a “getting-to-know your co-workers” teambuilding event, but additional trust was not built, this teambuilding episode was fruitless. If all you’re doing is going through the motions of a teambuilding outing, then it’s silly, says Northwestern’s Arntson. “It’s a nice thing to do as long as you’re doing some deliberate things for teambuilding.” True teambuilding, he adds, is “building ownership in a process of decision making that everyone trusts and that holds everyone mutually accountable.” Otherwise, the group of people isn’t really a team—it’s merely a workgroup. A team must be built, not just thrown together with work divvied up, Arntson says. 

If a task must be accomplished, and you want to delegate things to individual members for implementation just to get something done, this is considered a workgroup. Cooperation and coordination is still necessary, but there isn’t a lot of necessary collaboration, or shared decision making, as is warranted with a team and what teambuilding is composed of.

“One of the most important things about a team versus a workgroup is that team members are selected very strategically,” he says. “You’re looking for people who have complementary skill sets and together you build on them. You’re mobilizing and discovering each others’ gifts.”

Consider this scenario—several ‘A’-level techs decide they want to form a team to address shop production issues. These are all technicians from the same department, with the same skill level, work experience and pretty much the same background. Although they all might have great ideas, together, they would not make a team because they are too similar. “People want to clone each other,” Arntson says. “They are afraid of these differences when these differences can actually cause something to happen.

But it’s these differences that may be the most valuable. “A team is really about divergent thinking,” Arntson says. Having a C-level and an A-level employee coming together can often be a positive step in teambuilding, he says. This can be particularly beneficial when you’re teambuilding in a way that not only employees better acquainted with each other—which ultimately results in a more productive workplace—but when you’re actually having people build a team that will help solve a problem or address an issue. If the C-level person is coming from another industry or area of the workplace and brings a new way of thinking or has new information, then pairing him or her with an A-level person who knows all the inside information, politics and way situations have been handled in the past, this combination can be “very useful,” Arntson says. 

However, it is important to avoid assembling a group with members chosen for purely political reasons. Frequently work groups are put together with people from different segments of a company, and these people who are supposed to be building a team and function like one just merely represent the group from which they came. “They are there more for a political position than a team working together,” Arntson says. This can get in the way of accomplishing the team’s mission because they don’t have a shared vision but are merely defending their turf. Their allegiance to their original group or department may get in the way of accomplishing the team’s mission. “Sometimes you have to bring in a team that has almost no allegiance,” he says. 

When teams go bad
The allegiance issue can sour a team. But so can a lack of autonomy from those with a vested interest. For example, if a shop owner or manager gives the go-ahead to form a taskforce or team to address an issue, then it needs to be up to a team leader to select the team members. However, if that same shop owner or manager who OK’d the formation of a team insists on picking its members and then on staying with the group because he or she wants to be able to veto ideas at any time, no matter how hard you try, a team concept won’t work. “Usually when the...head honcho wants to stay in the group or team, it’s because he or she believes he or she knows the right answer,” Arntson says. In this case, he says, the group isn’t really a team, especially not the top-level manager. He or she just wants to be able to veto what he or she feels are “bad answers,” Arntson adds. People have gotten sour on teams because of this, he says. 

“When someone has to be in there that is always reporting back to the head honcho with the idea that we don’t want people to waste time coming up with the things that won’t get approval, that’s not a team. If it’s just a political activity.” If the “team” is only allowed to come up with or implement ideas “that the top folks would approve of,” then there isn’t a true team. “You’re just reinventing the status quo,” Arntson says, adding that innovative and atypical ideas that are brought together and jointly evaluated are part of the whole value of a team.

Bitterness toward teams has also developed in some cases because the required resources to keep a team going are not provided. If the upper management thinks a team should be formed to work on an issue, but it’s not willing to put together the necessary resources, then the management is just giving rhetoric. “They may say we want to have a team, but if they aren’t willing to put resources behind it, how important is that team really?” he says. Perry adds that it’s a moot point to form a team unless there is commitment to finish what is being started and to embark on the journey together. “You have to be prepared for the long haul,” Perry says. The long haul is more than just being given resources to work with, though. It also means knowing that you won’t see instantaneous change and that setbacks will occur—and you must be prepared for them. However, treat them as a learning experience. “Every setback is an opportunity to learn something,” Perry says. “If you are really going to build a team, you have to come up with a team solution if things get off track. You have to make the best of a bad situation and correct it jointly. The team starts to disintegrate if you correct it separately.” 

The team essentials
Although there is no denying the importance of teams to accomplish tasks and increase workplace productivity, if the aforementioned is the case, a team might not be the best option. “A high-performance team is one that has extraordinary levels of trust,” Arntson says. This comes through communication, making it paramount to beginning the teambuilding process. “There is no better way to build trust than through communication—whether in a marriage or at work,” Arntson says. 
The fundamentals of a successful team are communication, shared vision, a process for having argument and dialectical discussions and solving them within the group, and most importantly, team accountability and shared decision-making.

Together, the group must establish itself, build trust amongst its members and build ownership in a process of decision making that everyone trusts and that holds people mutually accountable. The parameters can be laid out, but the process cannot be dictated. It must be decided upon jointly. Before moving to a team concept at your company or collision repair facility, Perry advises that you identify the positions or job descriptions of each person that would play a role. “The goalie on a hockey team doesn’t take the puck down the ice,” he says. “He has a specific job to do. Have there been goalies that have scored goals? Of course. Sometimes you pitch in on other positions, but each person has his or her own job.” Organization is essential to having an effective team, Perry adds. 

“I think that teambuilding is an inevitability of good companies,” Perry says. “It’s a complex process that’s not achieved rapidly. Even when you start having a team come together, it’s a process that continues—more of a journey than a destination. But successful teambuilding can take a company from very good to great.”