While business leaders have talked about the importance of teamwork for years, teams, in many organizations, have only recently been empowered to make decisions independently of management. Today's teams are expected to decide what needs to be done and then find a way to do it. The work usually

But, often the positives outweigh the negatives. Employees who participate on teams may become motivated by the experience to find ways to improve company systems and processes, solve problems or plan for opportunities.

There are a variety of ways to energize employees through the use of teams and the team process:

Fostering Team Spirit: It takes more to create a team than designating team members and giving them an assignment. Successful teams are infused with an energizing spirit that draws the participants together into a cohesive unit and has everyone pulling together to reach a common goal. There are many ways to help instill a sense of teamwork in a team, including group challenges, team-building exercises and the promotion of team culture.

Managers can enhance team spirit by communicating their personal vision of what teamwork means to them. Nancy Singer, president and CEO of the Retail Credit Services Division of First of America Bank Corp. based in Kalamazoo, Mich., took the step of developing a teamwork acronym, which appears on all memos and other internal correspondence: Together Everyone Achieves More With Organization Recognition and Knowledge.

Encouraging team suggestions: Although suggestions from individuals are important to an organization, teams of employees have the potential to take on much larger problems. At First Tennessee National, a bank holding company located in Memphis, a group of seven employees responsible for producing 1,400 monthly customer statements said they needed an occasional day off to take care of errands and other personal business, Knowing that they were more effective earlier in the month, the employees proposed a work schedule that exchanged a few 11-hour days in the beginning of each month for one day off later in the month. Management agreed and the plan was implemented. As a result, the time needed to issue monthly statements was reduced from eight days to four, and both customer satisfaction and employee morale climbed.

Promoting self-managed work teams: A workplace with self-managed work teams is one where all employees manage themselves. A place where everyone does his or her job without the need for supervisors--where workers take responsibility for carrying out their duties efficiently and on time, setting their own schedules, hiring and firing coworkers, and determining their own pay. A place where employees are energized by the freedom of working as though the business belonged to them. This is the atmosphere at First Union Brokerage Services of Charlotte, N.C., where employees participate in their own recognition committee. The committee, which has no management involvement, has its own budget. Employees organize ways to recognize each other's accomplishments throughout the year, and each year new committee members--energized by the experience of managing their own program--are responsible for submitting a business plan for the following year's program.

Recognizing teams: When a team of employees achieves its goal, the entire team needs to be recognized. If only the manager or highest performer of a group is recognized, the group is apt to lose motivation. At First Chicago in Chicago, the Service Products Group Performance Award was designed to develop teamwork by recognizing high-performing groups of employees each month. The award includes a group outing--dinner, theater, a sports event--as well as a group plaque.

As these suggestions illustrate, when looking for ways to energize your teams, make sure your plans address one or more of eight basic human desires: activity, ownership, power, affiliation, competence, achievement, recognition or meaning.

Bob Nelson, Ph.D., is president of Nelson Motivation, Inc., San Diego, Calif., and author of numerous books an motivating and energizing employees. You can telephone him at (800) 575-5521 or e-mail him at BobRewards@aol.com. You can visit his website at www.nelson-motivation.com.