Somebody asked me the other day what I meant when I said ‘team’ – did I mean the leader’s direct reports, or the whole team? What if the person was responsible for hundreds of people – would that be the team? What if the team meant the whole organisation?

He wanted me to put a number on it, just as you can do with a sports team.  Well, that’s an interesting one in itself.  If I ask you how many members are in a football team, you’ll give me a number (granted, the number will depend on where you are and what you call football, but that’s for another day). What’s the number?  The number of people who play on the field? That’s not the whole team. You have the subs, coaches, manager, physio, water carriers and probably lots more people I haven’t even thought of. So what’s the real number? Who knows? Who cares?

The point is, the size of the team doesn’t matter. Think about it another way – what are you trying to achieve and who do you need to help you achieve it? There’s your team, however big or small. So when you think about team building, developing or communicating, think about everyone involved. Sure, you may do certain things with subteams and maybe everyone doesn’t need to know everything all of the time, but make sure you know who’s contributing in any way to your achieving your goals and make them feel part of the team in whatever way suits your organisation or situation.

This might mean you run regular meetings/away-days/offsites for key team members and you issue regular communications to the broader team. It may mean that you have a HUGE event once in the year for the whole organisation and then include people in different ways for the remainder of the year. Whatever suits, do it, but forget the numbers.