Building A Great Team by Ros Jay
Book Summary Review
"Build A Great Team" is by Ros Jay and my comments are based on the BusinessSummaries summary of the book.
From the Ros Jay's point of view, I suspect that BusinessSummaries may have done too good a job of the book as it is so a comprehensive summary for all except those with a deep interest in team-building or a serious team related problem.
In my quick overview I will outline what's included in the summary and book:
Chapter 1: The Team Functions
Mainly covers the 9 team roles the type of characters that you need to bring together to form an effective team.
In a football team you can't have all forwards and no defenders and it's the same in a business team. Too many ideas people and ideas become increasingly extravagant as they bounce off each other but nothing gets done. Too many people trying to coordinate and there are power struggles.
I'm sure you get the idea.
The strength of a team comes from the different, complementary strengthens of its members but if too many team members have the same attributes, the team itself may be weakened.
Chapter 2: Motivation
A good summary of how to motivate the team in terms of individual and team rewards, a section on leadership and techniques to build team spirit.
I particularly liked the fact that the summary also included people often forgotten - part time workers, temporary staff and teams that are never together.
Chapter 3: People problems
Unfortunately people bring personal problems to work and it affects their performance so you have to be able to respond appropriately. The summary gives guidelines on how to deal with these situations.
This section also looks at the symptoms of stress and causes of stress since the company may be causing its own staff problems.
Chapter 4: Problem people
Good people can have problems but some people are problems.
While you can't change someone's personality, you can make sure that their behaviour is appropriate at work. The summary looks at various types of people (the control freak, the moaner, the manipulator etc) and how you can help deal with the issues.
Chapter 5: Working together
The true test of the team is how well the team functions as a unit so the book summary gives some guidelines on how to make teams work better together.
It also has describes the symptoms and treatment for team stress if the team isn't functioning as it should.
Chapter 6: Interviews and team meetings
Some good tips on interviewing and team meetings.
The one criticism that I have of the summary (and as it is only 13 pages the "How To Build A Great Team" book may cover it) is that as well as briefing the team during meetings, it's best if the team can work together on improvement issues.
One of the key lessons that came from the Total Quality work in the 70s, 80s and 90s was that the cause of problems is usually in the systems and processes rather than from the majority of people employed. And no one knows the systems and policies and what is wrong with them better than the team who actually work in the process.
Chapter 7: Difficult situations
Some good tips for dealing with difficult situations including keeping everyone informed as much as possible and keeping a sense of humour.
Chapter 8: Where to go from here
This section looks at helping teams to work together.
Conclusion
The Business Summaries report on "Build A Great Team" by Ros Jay is excellent and will certainly form part of my ongoing notes for teamwork.
In fact the summary feature of the Business Summary is one of the big advantages for me because when I read a business book, I try to actively read it by either taking notes (and then having them typed up) or highlighting sections in the book.
Now it's all done for me and that's why for some of the books I am very happy to have both the full book and the summary. The summaries are an easy source if I just want a memory jogger while the book is there if I need to delve deeper into a particular topic.
If you want a good book on teamwork then "Build a Great Team" by Ros Jay looks like a good one to get and I have put links to Amazon UK and USA.
Otherwise I would recommend that you take a look at Business Summaries.
I rate this a 3 Star Business Brief. I am very glad to have read the summary but I don't intend to buy the book.
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