9 Important Things You Need To Know To Build A Successful Team
As a manager, your top priority needs to be creating an effective team and team environment. Every manager wants an effective team that solves problems and collaborates well to achieve greater results. Great managers understand that having a good team could make or break their success. Building great teams require knowledge and leadership skills.
You can never underestimate the importance of having a good team in place. If your company needs to improve its performance and productivity, building a good team can help you do extraordinary things including, giving you a competitive edge. Look back to a few of the most remarkable things ever done, and you’ll discover a great team was behind those accomplishments. This article will walk through nine things that can help you create an effective team.
What is a team?
A team exists to achieve a common goal. Teams have members who bring different skills, abilities, and perspectives that help them to accomplish the goal. It’s essential to understand what you are trying to achieve before rushing off and building a team. If you don’t know what your goal is, chances are you will fail in building a good team because your team won’t be able to do its job. Causing frustration for everyone. A team must be goal-oriented. So having clarity on the big picture goal and what you are trying to achieve is crucial.
What makes a good team?
If you want to build a good team, you must first understand team performance and what it takes to create a team’s success. Effective teams have a strong sense of their purpose. A good team needs clear roles and responsibilities that everyone can understand. Team building requires much more than finding a group of people who have the right skills to do the job. You also need to select them carefully, set the right expectations, provide the proper training, and ensure that everyone works well together.
As a manager, you need to be aware of the leadership style and type of team member that can help you achieve the goals you want to accomplish. A good team has three key components: a team leader, team members, and team processes.
What is a team leader?
Every team needs a leader. A team leader is one person who has the ability to set the expectations for the whole team and give the team direction and motivation. Team leaders also help inspire other members to meet their goals. Sometimes it is the head of the department, a manager, or a senior organization member. Other times it is someone outside the team, like when a manager creates a task team or committee to take on a project and assigns the team leader. And it can also be a team member with enough legitimate authority to get the job done. Identifying who has authority for direction setting and ensuring that person owns it is the key. A team doesn’t know where it’s going unless a team leader is setting direction.
A good team leader knows how to set the tone for the team, create a positive environment, and work collaboratively with other members of the team. They must communicate effectively, provide guidance when needed, and give clear instructions. Without a clear direction and a sense of purpose, a team tends to spin, lose focus, and fall apart.
Team Members
Team members are essential for a team to be successful. They can be individuals or groups of people, but they need to be able to work together and collaborate to achieve the common goal. A good team has team members with the right skills, abilities, and perspectives to help them accomplish their goals. Selecting the right team members is important for good team building. You need to make sure that everyone on the team understands their role and responsibilities. You also need to set the right expectations and environment for them to do their best work. Most importantly, you need to make sure that everyone works well together.
Core Team Members
A core team member is the backbone of your team and essential to success. They are the core of your team and will be responsible for executing the required tasks. If they are not doing their job well, it will be challenging to achieve your company’s goals.
Extended Team Members
Members of your extended team have skills that complement the core team members. They add value to teams as they can take on additional responsibilities when needed. They can be involved in any activity that requires them to collaborate with others. This is critical as the core team members are focused on completing specific tasks. The extended members can collaborate on projects and tasks, bringing their expertise to help get them completed.
External Team Members
External team members bring in their unique skill set and expertise to teams. These team members can help with planning, strategy, communication, and other needed functions to help your team reach its goals. They may also come from outside of your organization, so you may need to develop relationships with other companies, consultants, or even other organizations to get the assistance you need to reach the finish line.
What is a team process?
In addition to team members and team leaders, teams need processes to accomplish their goals. A team process will ensure that members know the steps necessary to achieve results. A team process should be clear and straightforward, and everyone on the team should follow.
Why is it important to build a strong team?
Even the most innovative entrepreneurs can’t scale from an idea into actualization of success without the assistance of others. As good as a business idea can be, it cannot be a good business without a dynamic team that works together on a common business plan.
Teamwork also helps you accomplish your goals faster and more efficiently than you can alone. You need to work with other people to solve problems and reach your goals.
The characteristics of a successful team
The composition of your team will change over time. Members will join and leave, but here are characteristics you need to retain to remain successful.
Team members should work well together and have the ability to accomplish the tasks assigned to them. They should know their roles within the organization, the responsibilities and limitations of each, how they can assist one another, and how to handle disagreements and conflicts within the team. It is also essential to communicate effectively with other members. As a leader, it is your job to help your employees understand their roles and responsibilities to know what to do and how to do it. Then trust them to manage and complete their jobs. Giving them guidance and support along the way to improve the team’s productivity. Here are nine tips on how to build a good team.
How To Build A Solid Team
Nine Steps To Building a Successful and effective team
1. Don’t Be A Bosshole.
A bosshole is a combination of a boss and an a**hole.
Over the course of our careers, most of us have worked for at least one bad boss. This can be a frustrating and demoralizing experience, but fortunately, you can avoid making the same mistakes. To avoid becoming a bosshole, think about the bossholes you’ve worked with and their behaviors. Write them all down on a piece of paper. Now that you have your list of behaviors don’t do that! Since you didn’t like it, remembered it, and wrote it down, why would you do it to others?
Related: Be A Leader Not A Bosshole
Here are more things you can do to get off to a good start as a great leader.
2. Motivate your team members with positivity
While negativity and criticism may bring some short-term rewards, it usually tends to erode trust, respect, hurt your team and your reputation (see above on bosshole). Great leaders know that one of the most important things to do when working on a team is to be positive and supportive. This helps you to inspire and motivate your team members. It’s also important for them to know they can count and rely on you. When team members understand you are there for them when they need you, you unlock their power to bring their best to work. If they don’t know this, they will not be very motivated. You need to set an example by treating your team well and offering positive reinforcement. When they feel good about themselves, they will do better work. Focus on building trust by keeping your thoughts and communication positive.
3. Embrace diversity
Successful teams include members with a balance of skill sets, work styles, backgrounds, and experience. Every individual doesn’t need to possess strong technical expertise and complementary skills. Still, the team overall needs a healthy balance. The frustrating groupthink common in teams can be avoided with the help of diversity in knowledge, views, experience, perspectives, age, gender, race, and more. Create a diverse and inclusive team and watch your team collaborate and innovate to achieve great success.
4. Create a team culture
Company culture is essential to the success of any organization and team. It is the set of shared company and team values, beliefs, and norms that determines how employees behave and interact with one another. Strong company culture helps create a sense of identity and belonging, encouraging employees to give their best effort. It also helps to promote teamwork and cooperation.
The best way to create a strong company culture is by example. Leaders need to set the tone through their behavior and actions for how employees behave and interact with each other. They should always act to promote the company’s stated values and beliefs. Employees will be more likely to follow the example set by their leaders if they believe that their values are important.
5. Communicate frequently and effectively
When leading a team, an important factor is communicating often and effectively. This helps ensure that everyone on the team is on the same page and knows what is expected. It also helps to prevent any misunderstandings or conflicts. Effective communication also helps to build trust among members.
Make sure your communication is clear, concise, and to the point. Avoid using jargon, acronyms, or technical terms unless everyone on the team understands them.
6. Avoid micromanagement
Let your team complete tasks and make decisions with some autonomy. In other words, avoid micromanaging. Micromanagers feel that they have to control every aspect of a project. This can stifle creativity and prevent people from using and sharing their skills and knowledge.
Give your team the respect and freedom to choose how they accomplish a project while still having set ground rules in place. You can have weekly team meetings to check in to discuss how they are doing meeting deadlines, on their tasks, give feedback. and offer support. This will help you stay updated on their progress while still giving them the freedom to work in their own way toward reaching their goals.
Related: Empower Your Team And Become a Better Leader
7. Set expectations
When employees know what is expected. They can do better work. Setting clear expectations will also help them understand your vision and bring it to life. You can do this by setting SMART goals, which are:
Specific: Goals should be as detailed as possible.
Measurable: You can measure these goals by breaking them into specific tasks and quantifying them.
Achievable: The goal should be something that your team can reasonably achieve.
Relevant: The goal should be relevant to the team’s work.
Time-bound: The goal should have a specific due date.
8. Build strong relationships
Team leaders should build strong relationships with their team members since this leads to greater productivity and overall morale, especially if they take the time to establish trusting relationships. Leaders should also be approachable and open to suggestions from others, so members feel comfortable coming to them with ideas and suggestions on their way to reaching their goals.
9. Celebrate successes and failures often
Celebrating successes, big and small, helps build morale and encourages team members to continue working together towards their goals. Recognition should not come from only the leader, but members should recognize and celebrate each other’s successes together to build relationships and trust. Failure and mistakes are part of the learning process. Team leaders should also encourage learning from mistakes and celebrating efforts and screw-ups along the way. This recognizes we are all human beings and make mistakes. It also shows that the team is willing to take risks and experiment, something that should be encouraged with teams as it is where progress is made.
When you are team building, it is crucial to be aware that your own actions and attitude will influence the morale and productivity of your team. Remember to communicate often with them about what they need to stay focused on. It’s also a good practice not to micromanage their work or decisions but instead give them autonomy while still providing guidance and support. Be sure you set expectations and ground rules for each team member’s behavior. Lastly, don’t forget to celebrate big and small successes since recognition promotes positive behavior among colleagues.
Keep these nine things in mind, and you’ll be well on your way to building a successful team and being a great leader.
I’m cheering you and your team on.
Dr. Rebecca P. Morgan is an award-winning former Disney leader, best-selling author, the founder of Choose Awesome Company, and the creator of The Awesome Leader League.
She has spent the past two decades studying leadership, business, and developing leaders at all levels at Disney University, and trained people and organizations through the Disney Institute.
Based on deep experience and respected research, her practical approach is that the connection between people and profits can transform leaders and their teams to be more creative, resilient, productive, profitable—and happier.
