Team building isn’t a day’s job. It demands consistent efforts, understanding people, management of egos, and a lot of patience to build a good team. The same fundamental is applicable to team building in sports, workplace, or even for a volunteer work. In fact, team management is a complete art in itself which can only be learned through experience and experiment.
History has endless examples of world-class business leaders who created great teams with their competencies and skills. For instance, the late John Wooden can never be forgotten when it comes to coaches. With his extraordinary skills, he led UCLA to 10 NCAA national basketball championships in a time period of 12 years. Coming to the business world, we have people like Warren Buffett who has his own ways of leading a team of 300,000 employees.
The sole purpose of building a team is to generate profits for your business and take it to new heights of success. But today leaders want quick profits and thus they ignore the importance of a team. The result is demotivated employees and unsustainable team at workplace. Hire and fire policy may be able to fetch you instant success. But it fails to build your accountability and credibility in the long run. This is the reason why most managers fail to become leaders and experience the pinnacle of leadership success.
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So, if you have to build a stable team which works with the same level of dedication and commitment as yours then you have to follow a unique strategy for the same. In this article, you will read about ways to build successful teams that last in your organization.
Table of Contents
Evaluate your Leadership Style
You can only lead a team if your team members approve of your leadership style. For this, you must evaluate your leadership styles to find whether they are really effective or not. This will also help you identify your weak areas and find ways to improve upon it.
Evaluating your leadership style will help you modify your approach if required and ensure you are leading your team into the right direction. Remember, everyone has a unique style of leadership which needs to be identified and kindled. You don’t have to copy somebody else in order to become a successful leader. For instance, people with a charismatic leadership style are easily accepted by many but that doesn’t mean that introvert leaders have no place. An introvert person can be a good leader through his own silent ways.
Know your Team
Once you are aware of your leadership style and techniques, it’s time to know the people whom you will leading. Spend good time with your team to know more about them. You can organize group activities, team building games or casual meetups at your workplace. Having an open discussion or periodical meetups are a great opportunity to break free the communication barriers at workplace. This will help you to understand them and identify their strengths and weaknesses. Being aware of the skills and talents of your team members gives you a clarity about who is fit for which position. Knowing your team also helps you embrace their differences. Moreover, team members also feel valued and cared for when you spend time in knowing them.
Be Specific about Roles & Responsibilities
So, by now you are clear about the skills and talents every individual in your team possesses. This will help you to clearly specify the roles and responsibilities to your team members. But this isn’t an easy step. Sometimes, it really get tough to fit the individuals into the right role. This is because workplace isn’t like a football game where everyone irrespective of their skills will kick the ball towards the goal. In the real workfield, everyone works according to his own pace and mindset.
Moreover, every team member is dependent on the other one for getting his work done. For instance, the marketing team cannot do anything without the content team. And till the time the marketing team doesn’t provide keywords to the content team the latter cannot work. The whole idea is to allocate tasks in a way that the whole team is able to work with each other as a united force.
Communicate with Feedback
Feedback is a powerful communication mode which helps you to communicate in real with your team members. Many managers ignore the importance of consistent feedback at the workplace. Instead, they keep on postponing it till the problem becomes too difficult to handle. So, it is important to provide constant feedback whenever you find that your employees are working off the track.
Create a flexible system of giving feedback which makes them feel that is authenticated and also leaves an impact over them. But make sure you are proactive when it comes to providing feedback to your employees. When you give constructive criticism to your employees then they cannot deny it. You can even use some good technological tools to share your feedback with your employees. At times, when sharing feedback directly isn’t possible as in case of remote teams then a technological platform can help you out. Also, in some cases, it is not directly suitable to share the feedback as it may not be liked by the employee. Using a technological platform is a safe way to speak to your employees in a cultured manner.
Shower Rewards
Human beings love to be acknowledged, respected, and appreciated. So, providing only feedback to your employees isn’t enough to sustain them for a longer time in your company. You must ensure that you don’t miss out even a little achievement made by any member of your team. But rewards aren’t always restricted to words of appreciation. At times, you will have to take them out for a lunch or provide incentives as well.
This encourages people to work with more dedication and commitment. As a leader, you should be genuine and unbiased in appreciating your team members. This will help you gain their loyalty and trust towards you. Rewards hold a value over everything else because they are a powerful reason for your employees to stay back every time they want to leave your organization.
Along with rewards, you can also make celebration a part of your office culture. Celebration is an opportunity for everyone in the team to come together and interact with each other. This helps team members to know about each other in a better way. Also, it gives you a chance to connect with your team and develop a stronger bond. Don’t wait for a big success to happen. Develop a habit of celebrating every moment with your team members. This creates a light and friendly environment at the workplace where everyone is self-motivated to work and contribute.
Conclusion
Whether you are heading a large team or a group of 3-4 individuals, you must put in your 100% efforts to lead them in the right direction. They must be able to contribute and grow in the right direction. Lead them in a way that they feel valued about their work and contribution towards the organization.
