by Jodi McCoy
In their quest to boost service and product quality, to foster corporation as well as the overall company performance, a significant number of organizations have put their trust in the concept of team building. In an era where attention is primarily focused on making customers happy, it is quite common for organizations to forget about their employees, who are arguably their most valued asset. Studies have proven that team building especially planned company activities not only enhances the success of your business, but it can equally boost the morale of your workers. Overall, team building in the workplace has been proven to boost better communication, enhances productivity and is also key to building lasting relationships with the workers.
The prospect of creating a successful team that performs its duties perfectly is a significant challenge to a number of firms. Perhaps this is because very few companies understand and know what it takes to develop an efficient team in a workplace. Being part of a team, in its broadest context, can be defined as the result of feeling part of something larger than yourself. Experts agree that it has a lot to do with one’s understanding of the objectives of his/her organization. In a team-oriented work environment, you collaborate with fellow members to achieve the expected company results. Simply put, you contribute to the overall success of your organization. Even though you are assigned a specific job and belong to a particular department, you are unified by other employees to accomplish the overall objectives.
It is common knowledge that it takes a unique of a leader with great competencies as well as skills to successfully create great teams in companies. So today in this post, we want to give you four proven tips for building a successful team.
Encourage team collaboration
It is apparent that employees will be much happier and motivated if they can get along with each other. Research has shown that there are many people out there who are performance-oriented but are self-directed and can’t work with other people. This implies that as the manager, it is your duty to encourage your employees to work together. To achieve this feat, you must motivate your employees to collaborate. In every organization, there is always a whole bunch of diverse skills and capabilities. Every organization must ensure that these different skill sets are used and thoroughly exhausted in the right way. Equally, you must ensure that every member is aware of the ongoing projects and encourage them to feel free to jump in and contribute whatever one feels he/she can bring value to an ongoing project. Perhaps a collaborative task management tool can help facilitate this particular process by sharing all the organization tasks with every team member.
Communication is vital
The basis of a collaborative, effective and productive team is excellent communication. This implies that every organization that intends to create productive teamwork must design a working environment where company leaders are free to provide timely, constructive and honest feedback to the other employees. Equally, every organization must encourage its employees to feel free and confident to voice their concerns to the management team and to also communicate with one another without any restrictions. For organizations with some of its members working remotely, you can take advantage of Google Hangouts, an application which offers an ideal way to ensure that face-to-face communication takes place.
Always provide meaningful feedback
Arguably, providing valuable feedback is the best way organizations can encourage their employees to develop both personally and professionally. It is true that feedback can be difficult to provide but is an integral part of effective team management. If you are finding a conversation nerve-wracking, it is essential to know that your primary reason for providing the feedback is to help your employees to achieve their departmental objectives, grow and succeed. It is true that feedback conversations can be tough to facilitate especially in non-hierarchical companies, but they are crucial and necessary for the success of your organization and the development of a successful team within an organization.
Acknowledge and reward
Research has shown that when a person is acknowledged and appreciated, his/her work brings him/her greater satisfaction and self-belief. Perhaps this is because people love to be recognized and are most appreciative of respect. This implies that as a team leader, it is your mandate to give your employees proper accolades when they deserve. Most team managers always take individual team performance for granted perhaps because they don’t believe individual performances should be rewarded. If you want to create an effective working team, then you must be a thoughtful leader who reassures his team members that you are paying attention to their efforts. By acknowledging and rewarding your employees, you’ll not only be building trust and loyalty among them, but you’ll be igniting that extra effort in them!
These are four proven and practical team building approaches that can potentially help organizations to achieve their dreams of building successful teams. In addition, you can apply team collaboration tools like TruEdit and Google Document to build a team and increase team cohesion. Following this formula can be your first step to build a strong team.
