Research on The World Bank looking at team effectiveness here demonstrated that diversity within their teams significantly contributed to its success.
Knowing how to build and lead your team in person or remotely is essential. All of the steps below should be followed in order to create high performing, cohesive, highly productive, and happier teams.
Have a clearly defined team goal
This should be clearly understood by each and every single team member. If you ask them to write down what the team goal is on a piece of paper, would all the responses read the same?
You may need to sit down and do a group session around setting a team goal. Understanding this and really knowing this will ensure that when the going gets tough the team look towards the goal as something to aspire to. Therefore it should have an emotional attachment such as feeling proud or being inspired.
Even for smaller teams, this can help motivate individual team members and remember why they are there.
Ensure all of your team members have clearly defined roles and responsibilities
If every single team member knows exactly what they’re supposed to be doing then this will ensure efficiency and effectiveness. Clear roles and responsibilities also ensures little or no duplication of efforts or conflicts within the teams.
Ensure all of your team members love what they do and know how to do it
This goes without saying in many cases, but we often force people to do things that they hate within their current roles. As a junior sometimes yes you do have to learn to do the jobs which might be a little bit annoying. If we can ideally give every single person a job that they absolutely love, then they’ll enjoy coming to work. The higher for passion for the role that these people are doing and the closer you will be to moving towards creating a high performing and happy team.
Ensure all of your team members know what each other does and how they should interact together
Knowing what each other does within the organisation and particularly within your team is important. Having a good understanding of where each other’s roles and responsibilities are, how you can collaborate together and leverage on each other’s strengths ensures a high performing team. The emphasis for the team should be on collaboration and support. Not on competition with each other.
Ensure great communication flow
Of high importance is creating good communication flow and process. This ensures that if there is a change for the team they’re all informed as quickly as possible, therefore clearly understanding what the changes are, why the changes are occurring and then how to react. Understanding and implementing great communication flow is essential for those internal to the team and you also need to think about communication flow from the team to external systems and divisions they might work with.
All of the points above will help you ensure that your team works at its most effective with each other internally and also with internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, and all of the different departments within the organisation.
Start implementing these today!
Caroline Langston is the Co-Founder of Successful Consultants Ltd, an Executive, Personal and Career Development Coaching company in Hong Kong and New York. She is also the Founder of recruitersgiveback.org a nonprofit providing free information and coaching to people who are unemployed. Caroline is dedicated to coaching people for success and happiness in their careers and lives. She is degree qualified with a Certificate in Professional Coaching Mastery from the ICF, Certificate in Team Coaching from the EMCC. Also further certifications in Neuro Linguistic Programming at Master Practitioner and Coach level. www.successCL.com www.recruitersgiveback.org