The creation and development of effective teams is one of the key tasks of a company interested in profit growth. Still, it is not enough to bring a group of talented people together and set tasks for them. To develop the effectiveness of teams, managers and HR specialists need to know what is included in this concept and how to evaluate it.

What is “team effectiveness”?

Teams are often identified with workgroups. Still in fact, these are different concepts.

A team in a collective body is a group of employees consisting of three or more people who work under the same leadership, have a common goal and share joint successes and failures.

There must be some degree of interdependence of employees from each other in order to achieve joint success. Thus a working group represents a real team.

Team effectiveness is the degree of employee productivity, which shows how close they are to achieving a common goal.

When is it necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of teams?

Evaluating the effectiveness of teams is necessary when:

• there are signs of inefficiency in the company (decreased in employee performance, labour productivity and profits, increased frequency of conflicts, regular quits, etc.);
• there is a need to increase the efficiency of an already formed team, new global goals are set (for example, innovation and increased profit growth);
• transformation is planned (changes in manufactured products or services, numerous personnel changes, staff reductions, transition to an anti-crisis mode of operation, etc.)
• regular team appraisal is required.

In all these cases, evaluation of teams helps to identify problems at an early stage, the causes of their occurrence for operational management decision-making. This, in turn, makes it possible to implement necessary developmental and corrective measures in a timely manner and prevent negative consequences.

Advantages of team diagnostics

The evaluation of teams reveals the following indicators:

• strengths and weaknesses of both each participant and the entire team;
• development zones and team destructors affecting the reduction of labour productivity;
• behavioural trends affecting teamwork, including in situations of stress and working on new complex tasks;
• potential of each employee, which contributes to increasing the productivity of the team;
• emotional intelligence of each team member (empathy, benevolence, stress tolerance, optimism, etc.);
• decision-making style of the team members;
• team roles (assessment helps to see the distribution of roles, and how they correspond to the tasks set);
• the culture of the team (shared values, motives, preferences, priorities).

In addition, team diagnostics is also a method of development. With its help, the company can predict the success of solving some business problems and identify suitable training practices. Based on the evaluation results, it is possible to create new development programs in which employees will reconsider their own attitudes, behaviour, motivation and become more productive.

Important report

The 4 colors team report is designed to improve teamwork. It helps in problem solving, improves communication and helps in conflict resolution. The report provides a clear overview of the strengths of the team and is useful for managers. The report answers such questions:

• How does your team function?
• What are the best ways to work together?
• How can we improve?

This report is a practical tool designed to help you gain a clearer understanding of the dynamics of your team. It combines the capabilities of your team.

To create a team report, each team member first takes their own individual test. The test results of all team members are then used to create a team report.

The experience of working with personality test for team building shows that with the proper level of understanding of the theoretical foundations of this technique, the test is a powerful and unique means of studying a person’s personality and capabilities for teamwork, and not a toy for salon entertainment.