Whether you are C-suite employees, an executive or simply a manager, it is your duty to ensure teamwork in the teams which come under you.
Developing a highly-efficient team is more than just having a bunch of people who can perform different tasks. Teams with great teamwork will outperform any team with poor teamwork at any given day.
Before you begin, you must have a plan and a goal. Hiring the best workers in your industry is not sufficient. You need to nurture them. Managing a team is a much difficult and complicated task than it seems.
So, let’s dive into our main topic: How leaders can build remarkable teams.
Create a Clear Map
Leaders are to their teams, what kids are to their parents. Do you remember what you used to ask your parents before setting out on an itinerary or a trip? Where are we going and how are we going to reach there.
Teams have a similar question in their minds, they want to know where they are headed. And, how they are going to reach that point.
In simple words: what is the goal you want them to achieve and how you are going to measure how close they are to the goal?
This might sound something easy or simple but numerous organizations have a hard time aligning their teams with the same goal.
Jim Collins, a renowned author of management books says — when leaders set more than three priorities, teams have trouble focusing. Now, what priorities you have can differ depending on the type of your industry, your vision and your business goals.
When your teams have clear goals, every effort they make reflects the overall goals and vision.
Create the culture
Every great team in this world has some values, even if they are not discussed quite often. There are some behaviors which are promoted and some are not allowed at all.
Make a team and assign them a task — they will create a culture on their own.
As a leader, you can set values and guidelines to which each team member must adhere. The most crucial thing for any team is to align with the values set by leaders.
- Don’t make a long list of things. People cannot remember numerous things. They have other things to do as well. So, keep your guidelines simple, concise and easy to remember.
- Don’t leave any gaps for ambiguity. Ambiguity leads to uncertainty and uncertainty kills. Keep the values/guidelines specific. If you use heavy words like integrity and excellence, make sure you define them explicitly, so your employees know what do you mean. The issue with words like integrity, courage and respect is that everyone has their own way of interpreting their meanings. So, be specific.
Have a Shared Scoreboard
When your team members will commit to a vision/goal, you will have two remarkable advantages:
- They will have clarity
- They will buy-in
When your team is working on common goals, it will move forward making timely decisions with complete buy-in from each member.
Let’s take a football team to better understand this. You will find various subgroups within a football team such as defence, offence, linemen, receivers and much more. However, because each player in the team is playing for the same goal, they look at the scoreboard to look at the collaborative performance of the team.
Patrick Lencioni — the author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, defined this as inattention to results. When teams focus on collective results, teamwork is enhanced because everyone wants the team to win. It does not matter how exceptional an individual performs, if the shared scoreboard shows bad results, individual scores don’t matter because eventually, the team would lose.
If you have a company where teams don’t have a collective scoreboard and each member of the team focuses on his/her individual performance, you will see illogical, destructive and incessant arguments among your team members. And, all they will be worried about is how can they keep their score at the top. That’s very counterproductive.
You can set an online performance management tools to keep a track of how teams are performing.
These are the three things any leader can do to build remarkable teams. Implement these things at your organization today and you will see extraordinary results.
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller
