by Charlotte Gurney
An effective team can make a big difference to outcomes, whether that’s in a work environment or any other. If you’re in a role where it’s up to you to build a successful team then there are a number of steps you can take to ensure that you’re providing the right kind of leadership and giving your team plenty of opportunities to collaborate, support and guide each other to success. These are our tips on how to build a successful team in any environment.
● Make space for everyone’s ideas. It’s important that everyone in the team feels like they can always share their thoughts and ideas are never dismissed. Sometimes innovation and creativity can come from the most unexpected places.
● Set an example and be open with your communication and your feelings. Unspoken resentments, difficulties and conflicts can cause huge problems within a team so it’s important that everyone sees how much more constructive it is to have a voice. Also, effective communication between the team and company has proven to generate 4.5 times higher talent retention.
● Delegate problem-solving tasks. It’s vital to give the team the chance to work together on finding solutions.
● Be clear when you communicate with your team. That’s especially so when it comes to allocating work, delegating or communicating directives.
● Nurture relationships that are trusting and supportive. The way that the team interacts together will, ultimately, determine how successful it can be. Look for ways to help improve trust and support within the team so that they can get closer. After all, motivated workers out perform those with low engagement by 202% - (Business2Community, 2021)
● Established shared values and goals. Get clear on what the shared values are for everyone in the team - what really matters to the team, what does success look like in these circumstances and what’s required to be successful? Check in with everyone individually when it comes to goals, both in terms of how they feel about shared goals as well as their own objectives.
● Make sure that you’re clear about your own expectations. That means clearly communicating everything, from what you expect the team to be able to accomplish to the time you expect that to take.
● Employ a collaborative decision-making process. Yes, it will usually take longer to involve everyone in setting objectives, solving problems and creating an action plan. However, this will also create a stronger team, more used to collaborating, and tends to result in higher team engagement and greater productivity as a result.
● Create some very clear ground rules for the team. This could be something as simple as ensuring that everyone is one time for meetings. Or you could set broader parameters, such as everyone in the team has the right to make a contribution and have it respectfully heard.
● Encourage everyone to speak up. Implement listening and brainstorming sessions where it’s common for everyone to make contributions so that those employees who fear this can start to get more used to it. Encourage more debate and your team will be more successful, creative and work better together. Highly engaged business units will a 41% reduction in absenteeism and achieve 59% less employee turnover, (Right Culture study, Gallup 2019)
These are just some of the ways that you can build a successful team and help everyone in it to thrive.
Volt can provide your business with an MSP (Managed Service Partner) solution. When it comes to facilitating new working styles and sourcing the right team, please visit our ‘Services & Solutions’ page on our website for more information.