My clients often ask me,"How big should our team be?"

My answer is typically...it depends.

It depends on the purpose of the team.

The challenge on many teams is a lack of clarity about a team's true purpose. In most cases, team's don't even know that they don't know their purpose.

This is usually a bigger issue at the senior leadership team level, where a CEO, VP, or Director leads a
team of other leaders.

Well, I am back after taking a few weeks off from my normal blogging routine. I hope you have enjoyed the summer as much as I have.

So, I thought I would jump back in with a concept I introduced in a webinar I conducted last week on The 4 Costliest Mistakes Senior Leadership Teams Make. It's a concept I call "getting stuck in always having to be right."

The concept of "team building" means different things to different people. Over the past 9 years I have spent a ton of time with hundreds of clients and thousands of people creating successful team building programs. Our shorter programs may span only four to eight hours in duration, and our programs focused on helping teams make a significant shift in how they collaborate may last over 9 months.

Regardless of how long the program is, I have always defined team building in three ways:

1. It is a tool to help accelerate team formation.