intersect

When the word “Intersect” comes to your mind, it is likely you relate its meaning to a division originated by passing across any determined event. Indeed, this idea is not out of reality since relates to the semantic structure of the word. But, what is true about Intersect? and how does it relate to our personal and professional life? Answering these questions relies on understanding the art of building stronger team relationships and fostering teamwork productivity.

One of the benefits of intersecting personal and professional goals pass through the need of building strong relationships with people surrounding you. Whether these connections are created within a personal environment or a professional network, the need of constructing adequate environments were to perform our day-to-day activities requires learning the components of effective teamwork and identifying factors that diminish the existence of healthy environments. Building effective team relationship requires the analysis of Tuckman’s theory (1965; 1975), which identifies a total of five stages within the process of building strong relationships. These stages include forming a team, storming to analyze conflicts, norming to share interests, performing to evaluate effectiveness, and adjourning to facilitate individual growth among team members. Similarly, the idea of identifying factors that may lessen the formation of strong relationships goes through the conviction of dealing with resistance factors explained by Katzenbanch & Smith (1999), focusing on personal discomfort and risk, lack if conviction, and weak organization performance ethics. By identifying the stages of a team formation and characterize its resistance detriments, the goal of building strong relationships can be accomplished successfully.

The other benefit of intersecting personal and professional experiences relies on fostering productivity among the team members. This feature helps to obtain results once the team is properly organized and formed. But these results will be effective as long as the relationships built are successfully intersected by each of the members within the organization. If achieved, this goal will facilitate the process of solving problems that may require the participation of the entire team. For instance, during the seminar our team was required, without any previous hint, to design and build a catapult with some of the elements chosen by all the group members. Dealing with this issue helped us to understand that good results come from a path of communication, decision-making, plan of action, execution of the plan, evaluation and analysis, and continue improvement after these results are reviewed. All these steps are necessary to achieve productivity with effectiveness within a team and organization, and that is the value of intersect as a characteristic of team development. Consequently, building relationships entails the construction of strong connections among all team members by understanding the stage of team formation, and natural resistance process of interaction within team. Moreover, building relationships require the presence of results, which come as a consequence of an effective path from the existence of a problem to the improvement of the solution.