Did you know that hiring employees does not automatically build an effective team? What defines an effective team? In business circles, the many tasks needed to achieve the main goals and steer the company to achieve its vision needs the organization of employees into collaborative units that are productive to carry out their mandate tasks. Just hiring workers therefore won’t cut it as you need them to be part of high functioning teams.
Any team is made up of at least two participants collaborating to achieve a common goal. The team spirit allows them to overcome obstacles and solve complex problems while still carrying out individual tasks and interests. As a result, it goes without saying that one of the most important responsibilities of a business leader is to form an effective team and push it to better performance. There are many challenges to creating such an effective team. However, with a few tips and steps, you can create the best teams.
While hiring well is part of the process, it is not enough as you will need to ensure that your team has the right team spirit and remains focused on the right priorities. It means that you need a keen understanding of the people and their strengths and interests as well as learning how to manage egos and getting them excited to work with others that is, mastering the “art of people.” To help you create the best teams, here are top ten tips, steps and practices that lead to a strong high-functioning long-lasting teams:
1. Be Clear on What Makes a Great Teams
As mentioned earlier, great teamwork is not something that happens out of the blue as it is born out of conscious efforts from all the individuals involved and the ream leader. If you understand what a great team is, then you will be able to steer your chosen employees to tick off on the various requirements.
A great team must have the following:
Clear objectives- This is a prerogative for every team because all members need to be aware of the larger activity and how each particular activity ties in with it. Having a purpose in mind will make tasks meaningful and make the members focused on the goals.
Clear Roles – Every member must have a clear understanding not only of the team as a whole but also of their role within that team.
Clear Communication- The team must have an easy open way of communicating among themselves such that they can easily and simply communicate their ideas, challenges or questions for flawless communication.
2. Cooperation and Individual Achievements
While the goal of a team is not to get individual achievements but about group accomplishments, every individual however, should be able to maintain their authentic voice and feel motivated towards collaboration as a means to achieve the set goals.
3. Strong Leadership
Besides knowing and understanding the key indicators of an effective team, another way to ensure you create and manage a high-functioning effective team is to establish strong leadership. Leadership is influential and helps push the team work effectively on team and individual activities. This means that the leader must guide the team to the big picture vision, communicate clear goals, delegate responsibilities and tasks effectively and be honest and friendly while still showing authority.
4. Foster the Connection Between Team Members
Building connection between your team members will help them work with each other more effectively and hence, improve their productivity and efficiency because this builds their confidence and trust in one another. You can foster this connection through encouraging them to collaborating and team-building exercises among others. This also means that you need to be aware of misunderstandings and help solve them amicably. In fact, having a monthly outing or an offsite socialization experience can be a great way to have the team members appreciate each other beyond the jobs they do which in turn, fosters cooperation.
5. Encourage Productive Hobbies
Hobbies are a great way to bond as a team and can also be extremely beneficial to the business. Productive hobbies are entertaining and influence the effectiveness of your team for example sharing favourite books, volunteering, yoga, video games and even managing the business’s non-formal blog.
6. Provide Reviews and Feedback
When developing a great team, you need evaluation techniques and feedback. Being proactive with feedback will reassure your team as well as help them improve daily rather than giving feedback as a result of problems.
7. Reward and Acknowledge
Other than proactive feedback, acknowledging and rewarding your team’s effort. Give accolades where they deserve and this recognition for groups and even individual efforts will go a long way in building loyalty and trust. Recognizing and rewarding great ideas and investing in bringing them to fruition will make your team feel trusted and spur them to work harder.
8. Celebrate Successes and Failure
A key to managing a successful team is celebrating successes and milestones and also taking time after failure to redirect your efforts instead of engaging in a blame game as this helps to foster team collaboration and determination.
9. Create your Team’s Culture
Another way to build a successful team is to create your team’s culture. This can be done in a laissez-faire approach or by sharing guidelines that will help them work together. When your team learns to live by the stated values this makes them feel like they belong and fosters cooperation.
10. Have Conversations
Finally, having conversations is an important part of building an effective team. Instead of back and forth email, having conversations often will help bring out a cohesive approach and iron out misunderstandings and disagreements.
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