Team Building Lessons for UKIP and Nigel Farage

LONDON - May 28, 2014 - PRLog -- Following their recent success what team building lessons are there for UKIP and Nigel Farage to ensure they don’t ‘internally combust’ before the general election next year.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage said he was "over the moon" about the European election results and hailed his new place as leader of the third party in British politics. UKIP has now got at least 23 MEPs, the Tories and Labour have 18 each, while the Liberal Democrats lost 10 MEPs leaving them with just one. (Not including the Northern Ireland results).

For months, the prime minister and other senior Conservatives have tried to avoid mentioning UKIP, after realising Cameron's portrayal of the party as a bunch of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists" badly backfired.

Farage said the victory put his party in a good position to win seats at the general election if UKIP could build up "clusters" of support and broaden its top team beyond the one-man-band of himself. Farage said he planned to take some time out of the spotlight over the summer in order to build his new team of MEPs into a stronger frontbench of spokespersons.

This is an extremely difficult time for Farage when looking to build on this success and take the party into the genral election with a coherent manifesto whilst keeping his more outspoken supporters on message.

He’s been very successful so far in bringing togther a disparit group of individuals to form a consensus on a  single issue – Europe. But as he’s identified, the challenge now is to broaden the top team beyond his one-man band and build a team of effective , credible frontbench spokespeople.

5 Stages of Team Development

So where are UKIP in the traditional 5 stages of team development which are:-

• Forming – orientation, breaking the ice

• Storming – Conflict, disagreement

• Norming – Establishing order, cohesion

• Performing – Cooperation, problem solving

• Adjourning – Task completion

Given the successful outcome of the European elections it can be argued UKIP has gone through the 5 stages. However in seeking to broaden the consensus on a wider range of issues such as the economy, health and education for a General Election the danger is they will slip back to the ‘storming’ phase where there will be considerable conflict and disagreement. As Nigel Farage has acknowledged this will be a challenge when looking to build a team of strong frontbench representatives.

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Causes of Team Conflict

So in seeking to meet this challenge head on what are the causes of team conflict that need to be avoided. These are:-

Competition – For status, earnings or resources

Difference in Values –Different morality, ideals & quality standards

Goal Differences – Conflicting goals, outputs & objectives

Job Definition – Unclear job boundaries & responsibilities

Communication Breakdown – Poor listening, misconceptions, lack of perspective

Poor Management – Indecision, inequalities, partiality, favouritism

It can be seen that there are many obstacles to overcome in seeking to overcome these possible causes of team conflict. With such a disparite group of individuals brought togther to fight on one principle issue – Europe it will be extremely diffciult to broaden this concensus withotu encountering differences in values, goals and aspirations.

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Cohesive Teams

So how do you avoid tension and conflict within the team. There are 3 main lessons:-

Team Interaction – The more time spent together the more cohesive the team. This is difficult given the speed of growth of Ukip and the fact there is only a year to the next General Election

Shared Goals – The more agreement of goals the more cohesive the team. This may present problems for UKIP in terms of diluting their manifesto policies or pandering to the more extreme members of the party

Values – The more aligned attitudes and backgrounds can be the more members will enjoy being togther

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