We all have been part of teams that are charged up on Monday mornings. Ready to make the best use of the day, turn it productive with the positive energy and encourage each other to accomplish common goals.
On the other hand, maybe, you have been part of a team where you see and hear conflicts and disagreements on an everyday basis. An environment that makes the team members afraid of speaking up and feels exhausted even on a Friday evening.
Be it any case, what ultimately gets affected is how employees perform and it consequently affects how the company performs. Teams are a fundamental unit of every company like a cell to a human body. The success rate of any company is based purely on how it’s teams perform. Thus it becomes imperative to have teams that work in an integrated, and cohesive manner similar to how the human body works.
Leading and being part of several teams over the years, I feel that building and developing self-motivated teams is a mandate to be a successful leader. A great team is one of the key parameters that yield great results and the task does not end by just picking skilled individuals. Rather, it is just the beginning.
As you read through you will understand some critical components on ‘How to build high performance and self-motivated teams’.
1. Invisible Diversity
Diversity is not just what you see in the form of physical attributes like gender, age or culture. The real diversity is found on meeting tables, in the middle of brainstorming sessions, ideation corner and many such places in the form of ‘diversity of thoughts’.
A great team is an amalgamation of different thought processes that comes in the form of different personalities, their life stories, personal interests, and passions. They are intrinsic characteristics that every employee bring with him/her that equips the team with the ability to take on more challenges.
As a leader you should play the cementing role and bring them all together and leave them to create magic. You will be surprised on how they all will work cohesively.
2. Alignment of skills
Bricks of different sizes and shapes make it to one big beautiful building. Each brick plays an important role in fitting itself well in that one corner to make the building stand tall. Similarly, when it comes to delivering great outputs and executing award-winning projects, it demands a team of different skills sets to complement each other and come together to deliver it right.
You cannot expect a team with similar skill sets to win the race. A team of all leaders will lead to conflicts or a team of all technical skill sets will lack creativity.
To be able to stand tall and for long, make a team where every individual has something unique to offer. A team where every individual has a different eye to look for details. I have seen first hand on how people with completely different skills come together to deliver award winning projects for me this year. So it is important to align them and show them their goal or objectives you want achieved from them.
3. Trust
“I’ll be there for you” is one statement I never underestimate when I work with a team. I constantly make sure that all my associates have a clear understanding that we all are there for each other and back each other unsaid. Because the moment any of the associates begin to doubt the team, stop trusting the leads or colleagues, that is the moment where the team looses it alignment and naturally the team loses its productivity.
It is important to develop a culture of openness and honesty in the work place and within individuals where we spend maximum time apart our families. The best way to do that is to personify the qualities of every individual in your team and the role they play is critical for the teams performance. The successful leaders build positive relationships with their employees to increase trust. They are transparent in their approach and communication.
Teams turns out to be highly proficient in a happy and healthy environment where they can trust each other and enjoy working with each other. People prefer job satisfaction and peace over money. I personally learnt this lesson very recently, so yes focus on building trust and friendship.
4. Empowerment
The frustration of not being able to make decisions is one of the key reasons for the poor productivity of our employees. Recently someone taught me a lesson ‘ don’t micromanage’. Yes it is true we tend to damage the morale of our associates if we over do this. I learnt this the hard way and hope this lesson sticks with me. It becomes extremely important for a leader to identify the skill sets of each team member and empower them to make decisions accordingly.
This additional responsibility many times acts as a motivator for the team and the performance is automatically boosted.
Final Word
For fostering high-performance teams, finding the right people is just the beginning. It is also important to step up and foster a culture along with an environment that encourages the team to trust and back each other. It is imperative to build an ecosystem with tools and the right performance indicators to guide them towards growth. Hope these insights will help you when you are managing your team.
Vijay
P.S. Original articles Published on October 19, 2019 on linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-build-high-performance-teams-vijay-verghis-/