The Importance of Team Development

This article is especially designed to bring out the best in teams as well as develop total team players for your organization. I trust our national leaders will take some time out to read as it will help them also.

Effective leaders who are genuinely concerned with team member efficiency, productivity, and happiness, realize that training and personal development are absolute necessities. Some leaders, of course, work to avoid training team members because they fear that eventually a team member will replace them at the helm of the organization. You should choose to look on this possibility as an incredible benefit. If you have no one prepared to take your place, you are destined to stay just where you are!

Most leaders avoid training because they believe trainees will advance past them. Leaders and managers who feel plagued by insecurity and fear of training should remember that they have not yet reached the ultimate limit for earning and advancement. Friend, if you want to move up the organizational ladder, you must develop others to take your place. Your job is not to perpetuate the status quo; your job as a leader is to teach, coach, and encourage team members to develop their innate potential for achievement. As a leader or a manager know that training yourself and organization is an ongoing responsibility.

On a team every member has a gift and must therefore be given the opportunity to exercise that gift. Your organization is not a spectator. The spectator is one who watches but in an organization we all participate. Friend, if the future is to be achieved for your organization it will depend on what the vision looks like.

It is important to understand that a great team possesses a common goal (vision), diverse skills and contribution and a strong coaching and communication. Every team must have a vision and how they are going to get there and if your organization is to achieve its dreams it ought to know this. It is important to also know that leaders exist to serve the needs. If there were no needs there will be no leaders. Friend, let me ask you this: What are the needs that leaders are serving in your organization or in this country?

The foundation of a successful team is relationship. People go “the first mile” because of a sense of duty. If they should go “the second mile” it will be because of relationship. There is also the Connection Principle which states that leaders always touch a heart before they ask for a hand. Friend, we cannot ask from our people until they know we care about them. Are leaders in your organization caring or are our national leaders caring?

To become an effective team leaders must know and practice what is Important. This has to do with the Issue of priority. Liberia MUST be prioritized. Fellow Liberians, what are our priorities in this country? Do we Liberians including our leaders know and act on what is important for the people and country? Look at our laws on the books, the masses and our abundant natural resources. What has become of them?

Your organization will not make progress if the leaders don’t have a vision that is bigger than self.  And if Liberia or your organization should make progress its leaders must grow. It is the leader’s growth that determines the organization’s growth. Leaders need to grow because life and society are constantly changing and they must be able to meet up with these changes. Know this; a leader cannot lead a follower beyond where they have personally grown. They must improve in order for them to stay in front. And for your organization to make progress her leaders must stay on the same page.

Are our national leaders growing together? Are they on the same page? Do they have a chemistry that fits? Friend, there is a need to carry on constant evaluation so as to be able to flow together because in a chemical reaction if the elements or chemicals don’t correspond, you will have an explosion, the same is with leadership. And there surely will be an explosion when we do not keep evaluating our leadership team. This is the truth in a nutshell: Individualism wins trophies, but teamwork wins championships.

Our leaders will have to place Liberia’s interest above their own if they love this country and want to see it prosper. But do they know exactly where they stand as a team? Of course every team should know where it stands because there is a scoreboard that everyone can see. Players glance at the scoreboard continually during a game. When the game is over, at least they know if they have won or lost. Do our leaders know what the scoreboard is? The economy, security, health, employment are just a few.

In building a great team, players should pay the price. There is no success without sacrifice. If you succeed without sacrifice, then it is because someone who went before you made the sacrifice. If you sacrifice and do not see success, then someone who follows will reap success from your sacrifice. Friend, Liberia our country needs quality leadership and a team to take her to her dreams. While it is true that Liberia has never had visionary leaders, I believe investing in education, leadership development and team building should be her priority.

(Chealy Brown Dennis is a motivational speaker and offers training in leadership and organizational development; strategic planning and team building and management and offers on-location and train-the-trainer formats. He can be contacted through email at: dennisbc2011@yahoo.com or on phone at: 0886-264-611)