Co-Founder of Success Pacific
Team building is a vital part of any company. While it can be easy to hire individual employees for their skills, attaining enough synchronicity among a set of employees with a variety of skills to accomplish a larger goal can be more difficult. However, it certainly can be done! Here are ten strategies you can use to build a cohesive and productive team:
- Encourage commitment. Ask each employee to commit to the project and the team.
- Share your skills. Have every employee list their skills as they pertain to the project and share that information with the rest of the team.
- Set milestones. Giving a team a long-term goal is fine, but if people have to work together to roll out a project over a period of months or even years, they need to be able to celebrate smaller accomplishments along the way.
- Set up a line of communication. Two things that can harm a team is no communication or communication that interrupts actual work. Find the right way for your team to communicate that allows everyone to know what is going on overall, but doesn’t upset the day-to-day work flow.
- Ask for suggestions. The reason you formed a team of smart, effective individuals is because of their expertise and productivity. Use their skills, knowledge, and experience to your advantage by asking if there is a better way to accomplish a task. You may be surprised with what your team comes up with!
- Don’t force your team to get together outside of work hours. While many companies have company-wide events that invite employees and family to attend, things can get difficult if leadership asks teams to meet outside of work every week or even a few times a week to socialize. While this may seem like a great way to get your team to connect on a deeper level, it may also disturb their personal lives and create resentment within the team. A better way to get your team socializing is to host breakfast or lunch for them, during work hours.
- Keep the team lead motivated. Your team lead is the person that will set the tone for the entire team. As a company executive, it is your job to make sure to keep him or her motivated and excited about the project.
- Allow team members to say where they went wrong without reprisal. While there are certainly fireable offenses, making a mistake, discovering it and then working to get back on the right track is rarely such an offense. Make sure the team understands that such mistakes need to be revealed so they can be fixed as soon as possible. While it can be embarrassing to admit a mistake, it’s much worse for the team to miss such a lapse and fail to fix it.
- Make sure your team understands the big picture. In larger projects, it’s easy to get each team focused on only one aspect of the big picture. However, it is important to keep your team’s eyes on the prize. Whether you have multiple teams or you simply have a very long-term project, brief your team periodically both on the larger picture and the affect their work has had on achieving that ambition.
- Provide rewards for work well done. It is always important to reward exceptional work. Some teams make a fun game out of meeting or beating their targeted completion dates, with rewards waiting for them at the end. Others may have a party when a large aspect of the project, or the entire project, is complete. No matter how you choose to set your rewards, be sure to let your team know when they have done a great job.
Here at the Business Success Consulting Group, we coach executives on hiring for, organizing, and managing their teams. Contact us today and let us know your situation. We are here to assist you.
