This Trainer’s Tool Kit will help you to define important team qualities and provide a tool for measuring team effectiveness. Effective teams are “top driven,” getting their focus from supervisory staff. It is important that directors, managers and supervisors lead by example if they expect a collaborative team effort from the store staff. This information and measuring tool is a good way to facilitate discussion about the staff as a team. Use this tool as an exercise during a supervisory staff meeting to allow store management to gain insight into their strengths and areas that can be improved upon as a team. They, in turn, may want to use the tool to help department staff measure their team commitment.

Have you ever worked in an environment where you didn’t understand how your job fit into the goals of the company? Have you felt like nobody ever tells you what’s going on? Can you remember working in a job where your co-workers were not willing to help you and really didn’t care if you were successful or not? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you know what it’s like to work in situations where there is a complete lack of team cooperation.

Why is the team and its effectiveness so important? Employees on an effective team take more pride in their work, are more productive, provide higher levels of customer service, better quality and less waste when compared to employees that work without a team structure. In a nutshell, a good store or department team fosters happier employees who get more accomplished. This is significant when you consider today’s labor environment. With the majority of markets experiencing a shortage of available labor, the recruiting and retention of employees at all levels has become paramount. It has been proven time and again that wages are typically not the reason employees leave jobs. Feeling appreciated and being a valued part of the team go a long way toward job satisfaction. This being said, effective teams will not only mean better, more consistent customer service and productivity, they can also help increase the retention of department employees.

People don’t just start working together and become a team. Though the camaraderie among department staff members may come naturally, the team leader still needs to establish some very specific guidelines. Victoria Hoevemeyer describes effective teams in Training & Development Magazine as teams that have a mission, stress goal achievement, empower team members, have open and honest communication, and have positive roles and norms. Let’s take a closer look at what factors comprise a good team and then measure the team’s effectiveness.

Team mission. Every team needs to have a mission. By definition, it is their reason for existing. You may have an exceptional company mission statement, but if the team itself does not have its own expressed mission it is likely that team members will not understand how their work contributes to the company’s mission. The team or departmental mission should support the company mission.

Goal Achievement. Members of the team need to be committed to establishing goals, and to measuring their progress toward attaining those goals. Everyone wants to know how they and the department are performing, so setting and measuring goals keeps the team focused and provides immediate feedback. Remember, goals should be specific. A goal of “increased productivity compared to last month” is not very helpful. How is the productivity measured? What was the productivity for last month? A better goal would be to achieve a total department sales figure for the month or to attain a productivity level of a specific dollar per sales hour per employee. Employees need to understand that if you can’t measure it, you can’t grow it! Goals should also be attainable, yet high enough to “stretch” performance. They should also have a time frame or deadline.

Empowerment. This refers to giving employees the authority, responsibility and accountability necessary for them to perform their jobs effectively. The team leader should remove as many obstacles as possible. If you hear employees say something like, “I’m pretty sure that I can do that, but I’ve got to get an OK from my boss first,” your employees are not empowered to handle routine problems. Give them the knowledge and authority to handle routine problems independently.

Open, honest communication. Open communication must exist between team members and the department supervisor(s) if the team is to remain effective. The team cannot grow and maximize its effectiveness if people are not open and truthful. Remember, communication is a two-way street. Team members should be expected to not only share opinions and ideas, but also be open to feedback.

Positive roles and norms. Cooperation among employees is necessary for the team to be successful. Effective teams take advantage of the strengths of each team member. Work can be assigned based on the strengths of each employee. It is also important that team members help each other work on their individual weaknesses. Team morale increases when employees realize how their roles contribute to the overall effectiveness of the team.

The most effective teams are the ones that excel in all five of these areas. So, based on these criteria, how does your team rate? This is the question that this tool is designed to answer.

Team Effectiveness Scoring Sheet

The Five Effectiveness Areas	Ratings on Numbered Inventory Items	Team Ratings	Team Leader Ratings	Consensus Rating
Team Mission	1 6 11 16
Average of team members’ ratings	__+ __+ __+ __=	______	______	______
Team leader’s ratings	__+ __+ __+ __=
Goal Achievement	2 7 12 17
Average of team members’ ratings	__+ __+ __+ __=	______	______	______
Team leader’s ratings	__+ __+ __+ __=
Empowerment	3 8 13 18
Average of team members’ ratings	__+ __+ __+ __=	______	______	______
Team leader’s ratings	__+ __+ __+ __=
Open, Honest Communication	4 9 14 19
Average of team members’ ratings	__+ __+ __+ __=	______	______	______
Team leader’s ratings	__+ __+ __+ __=
Positive Roles and Norms	5 10 15 20
Average of team members’ ratings	__+ __+ __+ __=	______	______	______
Team leader’s ratings	__+ __+ __+ __=
Total Team Effectiveness Rating

Using the tool

The Team Inventory is designed to help the team measure its own effectiveness based on the five effectiveness areas we have previously described. Using Figure 1, have the team leader and each member individually rate the team on 20 items. After everyone has finished the inventory, average the team member answers to each question. Don’t include the team leader’s answers in the average, hold them out as separate measures for later comparisons of perceptions of team effectiveness.

The numbers in the Ratings on Numbered Inventory Items column of the Scoring Sheet (Figure 2) represent the numbers of the questions asked on the Team Inventory (Figure 1). Keeping this in mind, record the team members’ average score for each question on the scoring sheet then total across and write in the Team Ratings box. Next, total the entire Team Ratings column. The team leader’s scores should also be transferred to the scoring sheet and added up using the Team Leader Ratings column. Comparing the team members’ perceptions to the team leader’s perceptions will provide two different perspectives of the team’s effectiveness. If the members and team leader scored an effectiveness area the same, record the rating in the Consensus Rating column on the chart. If differences exist, everyone on the team, including the team leader, will want to discuss the reasons for those differences, citing specific examples to support their ratings. Through this discussion, try to come to a group consensus on one score. This may result in a revision in the total team effectiveness rating, which would then be recorded in the Consensus Rating column.

The highest possible point total for the team effectiveness rating is 100 – which represents 100% effectiveness. Remember, your team must realize that this is virtually impossible to achieve. An effectiveness rating of 95% would be a highly effective team. Your team’s goal should be to become and maintain itself as highly effective. If your original score does not establish the team as highly effective, facilitate discussion of what actions can be taken to achieve this rating, set goals based on these actions and measure intermittently, using the Team Effectiveness Inventory and Scoring Sheet. It is this process of (1) taking the inventory, (2) working on issues, and (3) re-taking the inventory that will allow you to track the team’s progress and maximize its effectiveness.

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