Building strong and fully functional teams in any organisation is a challenging endeavour. Without having strong teams, it is not possible to build a successful organisation. Here are five important tips for building strong teams.
#One – Learn to give constructive feedback
Many of us are of the impression that if we were to build a cooperative team, we should not point out mistakes to the team members or else the members will sulk and become less cooperative.
If you are going to take on to the above approach then, you are making one of the biggest team building follies. Instead of totally staying away from giving feedback, you should learn to give constructive feedback. You may have to do a lot of homework to prep your team well so that they take your feedback in a good spirit. This takes us to the next important area and that is cultivating the habit of appreciating generously.
#Two – Cultivate the habit of appreciating generously
If all that you do is to find fault and if you are totally blind to the efforts your team members are making towards achieving the organisation’s goals and the extra bit that they are putting forward for the success of your team, then your team members will not only become under motivated over a period but they will also not be able to take even genuine feedback and that will make things increasingly challenging for you as a team leader. This will eventually result in blame game.
Cultivating the habit of appreciating your team members generously for the good things that they are doing will elicit unbelievable results. You will be able to create a highly productive and a cheerful team. To know more on how this work, you could order my book Change on the Fly – From a Whining Team to a Winning Team.
#Three – Delegate tasks prudently based on individual’s strengths and capabilities
Do not think that you should do everything by yourself. One of the biggest advantages of a team is that you could share the responsibilities so that you or any other single individual is not overly burdened.
Delegation is an art and in order to make delegation work for you, as a team leader, you must have a good understanding of your team members. You should know the strengths of each member and based on their basic skillset you need to delegate tasks and responsibilities.
#Four – Be ready to listen to new ideas from the team members
Two minds are better than one. Good ideas could come from anyone and when they do come from your team members, welcome them open-heartedly. Just because it is not your idea, it need not necessarily be a bad one.
Have a listening ear when your team members come with new ideas. Not all ideas could be executed but definitely you will be able to execute at least some of the ideas. Do not hesitate to implement executable ideas that comes from your team members. This will boost the motivation level and the morale of the entire team.
#Five – Use clear communications and let them know your expectations
Often teams fail for the want of clear communication. When the team leaders fail to set the boundaries clearly and when they do not let the team members know what are the expectations, the team will lack direction and this will affect the overall productivity of the team.
The rule of thumb for building a highly effective and successful team is communicate clearly and ensure that your message or your communication has reached correctly every member. Be succinct in all your communications.