The Keys to Building a Highly Effective Team
Executives are recognizing that when employees work together as a team and collaborate, better results are achieved. However, building teams to be highly effective can be difficult. Truly successful team building requires time, strategic planning, and devotion from company executives.
Everyday, executives and other company leaders are recognizing that when employees work together as a team and work in a collaborative environment, better results are achieved. This realization is supported by recent studies, which state that team collaboration leads to an increase in the overall productivity of a company.
However, the unfortunate reality is that teams must be built properly in order to be highly effective. For example, executives can no longer get away with one-off team-building trips and company-wide retreats and expect real change or valuable results. Truly successful team building requires time, strategic planning, and devotion from company executives.
When organizations ignore team building, the overall environment often suffers and leads to lower productivity and performance, as well as various degrees of conflict. However, if leaders decide to foster a fully collaborative environment, employees are more likely to be productive due to higher productivity. So, how do leaders create an effective team? Here are some keys to consider.
Focus on Team Building
While company retreats may no longer be effective, strategic team building is essential to building a high performing team. In fact, 97 per cent of employees believe that a lack of alignment or connection with their team directly impacts the outcome of projects. Team building has the ability to help align goals and build relationships that create a productive connection. These factors are vitally important to success because team members must be able to trust and lean on each other in order to foster a fully collaborative culture.
Put Leadership in Place
Before team-building, or any other policies can be put into action, team leadership must be established. Leaders set the tone on a team and must possess the proper skills and personality traits, such as, empowerment, integrity, and loyalty in order to be a completely effective leader. Managers must also create relationships built on the foundation of trust with the rest of the team. In turn, teams will function more efficiently producing high-quality work, regardless of whether a manager is physically present or not.
Create a Team Roles Document
Once leadership is put in place, specific team roles need to be established so that responsibilities and duties are clear from the start. Roles documents can either outline specific amounts of hours to be put toward different tasks or clients or even just equally divide team responsibilities into the most effective strategy. These types of standard operating procedures also create a level of accountability because not only does every individual know their responsibilities, but the rest of the team also knows what must be completed.
Learn More: 20 Fresh Employee Engagement Ideas for 2020
Build an Open Environment
Why is trust so important in an effective team? When team members trust one another and their leader, an environment centered around openness is created. In turn, this helps to emphasize collaboration and the freedom to express thoughts or ideas. If team members are hesitant to express themselves and speak their minds, the team will suffer. However, if an open environment is established early, more productive conversations will occur and better results will be created.
Establish Ground Rules
The last step in creating a highly effective team is to establish ground rules. Ground rules can include anything from deadlines to mandatory meetings, but the entire team should take part in figuring out exactly what works best for them. This way, team rules and policies are clearly defined and understood by all involved. Not only do ground rules create understanding, but they also have the ability to prevent future conflicts or issues.
Employee productivity is crucial to creating a healthy bottom line in any business and building effective, collaborative teams can help boost productivity. However, it’s important that teams are formed with the five keys in mind. If executives consider team building, ground rules, general environment, and leadership, then the team is bound to be successful and highly functional.
