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There is so much guff about effective teamwork! The following straightforward approach works well for both new teams striving to find the best way forward and established teams that need rejuvenating.

1. Set aside at least a day, preferably away from the office and invite as many members of the team as possible. You must get junior and senior colleagues and different roles together.
2. Seven days or so before the event ask all team members to list at least six things they are concerned about, or that they think are hindering the team. Use an external facilitator to collect and analyse this information and assure participants that their responses are confidential.
3. Begin the event explaining its purpose and with an exercise to encourage, and show the need for, being completely open.
4. Follow this with a short (30 minute) open discussion session on what makes a good team.
5. Then ask the whole group to identify the top six things that are or could hinder the team doing even better. Form two or three smaller groups and give each a hindrance, instructing them to give recommendations on how to overcome that hindrance. Allow 20 minutes then re-group.
6. Group One gives their results and these are then discussed for practicality by the whole team. After 20 minutes or so a facilitator records the AGREED actions on a flipchart. The facilitator should probe if actions are not clear. Do the same for the Groups Two and Three.
7. Spend the rest of the day doing this!!! By the end of it you'll have found solutions to at least eight or nine issues that are hindering the team.
8. The team then appoints an "internal chaser" who is charged with reminding "us" every two weeks to close-out actions and to report back to the whole group with a short report on progress.
9. Set a half-day follow-up three months ahead to evaluate progress and raise more actions.

Have you spotted the long-term value in this approach?

In addition to hard actions, the real benefit comes from the mutual understanding and support that arises from detailed discussions of one another's difficulties, pressures and needs. After a day of this, people begin to realise that they can solve most of their problems straightforwardly.

The approach looks simplistic, but try it and you'll see how powerful it is.

Variations

• An evening meal.
• A two day event with some social activity such as quad bikes, clay pigeon shooting or go-carts.
• A 90-minute session on effective communication for difficult-people situations.

Avoid these three massive time-wasters like the plague!

1. Outdoor challenge activities or indoor problem-solving tasks which are supposed to "bring home" the importance of leadership and team work. Translating the experiences into valuable lessons hardly ever happens and it wastes time. Additionally, some people may enjoy the fun (many hate it) but it does little to build a team.

2. Silly games where teams compete and people must pretend to be enjoying themselves and be supportive to colleagues making fools of themselves.

3. Spending hours psychologically analysing what "colour" the team members are or what kind of team-player they are. The results of these tests are irrelevant -the principles of effective team working are the same for everybody.