How to Get Your Team Working Together
Workplaces depend on everyone working together – but that’s often not as easy as it sounds. While everyone knows how important teamwork is, actually achieving effective teamwork still remains out of reach for many.
Getting your team to work in full synergy takes effort and understanding. With everyone on the same page, productivity (naturally) increases, while resources can be more effectively managed, employees end up happier, and teams find themselves better placed to adapt to new situations and challenges.
The value of having multiple perspectives on a problem can’t be overlooked. One of the key points of Level 10 meetings is to get every key member of your team to give their take on important issues and opportunities, and getting that culture in place for your day-to-day operations can make a serious difference.
Again, getting your team to work effectively can pose a serious challenge, and there’s not necessarily a single simple solution. Different teams work in different ways, and will respond to different forms of motivation. This blog explores some of your options for improving company-wide cooperation and communication – and how they can benefit your business.
Setting Clear Roles and Expectations
When team members don’t have a clear, designated role, it creates confusion throughout your team. Effective teamwork requires explicitly setting roles, expectations and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for each individual employee.
This is vital at any scale. For smaller companies, assigning responsibilities means ensuring that tasks are handled, and that everyone understands who to go to when problems arise. Without clear roles, you can end up in a situation where everyone is working individually, not as a productive, unified team.
In larger businesses, without clear, set roles, it’s not uncommon to end up with employees in conflict about their tasks, attempting to accomplish projects without a unified final goal. This can cause conflict and damage your results. As an example, imagine two architects working without set roles – you end up with a house with two roofs, but no windows.
Make roles for each and every one of your employees clear. Set expectations and objectives, and make sure that they’re fully understood.
Encourage Socialization
Do your team really know each other? While they may spend 8 hours a day in the same building, that doesn’t necessarily mean the answer’s yes. Conversely, even if your team is international or working from home, the answer doesn’t have to be no.
Encourage your team to bond. We take some time at the beginning of each of our Level 10 meetings to talk through all our personal achievements from the week, whether they’re hobbies or milestones.
In some cases, setting up social hangouts outside the workplace can be a great way to build those bonds, though they require some thought. Demanding that your staff meet up on the weekend for an activity that no one particularly wants to do isn’t going to improve your teamwork – it will just build resentment across your team.
Create Smooth Communication
Healthy, effective communication is one of the most commonly-missing essentials for effective business operations. Without that communication, teamwork is ultimately doomed to fail, with departments working against each other, and individual employees finding themselves undervalued.
If you’ve ever finished a task only to realize that someone else has already done the same thing, you’ll understand just how frustrating a lack of communication is.
Having good and honest communication, encouraging members to express their feelings, and listening to what everyone has to say is an absolute must if you want your business to perform as well as it should.
Celebrate Every Win
Accomplishing a goal should be a fulfilling achievement, and that sense of achievement can dramatically improve teamwork – when you achieve a goal together with other people, you end up bonding with them.
However, there’s one problem. An achievement that goes unnoticed isn’t fulfilling, it’s frustrating. No one wants to think that their work is going unnoticed and unappreciated. When employees are ignored, they underperform. They can’t work as an effective team.
Take the time to celebrate your team’s achievements, whether your full team is hitting key milestones or your employees are achieving their individual goals. Make sure your staff know how critical and appreciated their work is – don’t just ignore what they put into the business.