Learning how to build stronger teams at work is a great way to increase innovation, morale, and performance. Teams that operate under these umbrellas tend to experience fewer distractions such as conflict, high turnover rates, and costly legal dilemmas.
How to Build Stronger Teams at Work?
Having a strong team is beneficial across the board, from productivity and output to customer service and retention. Stronger teams make work a more pleasant experience for everyone involved, as well as strengthening the bottom line. But strong teams don’t just appear. From sports teams to retail teams to corporate teams and everything in between, the one thing strong teams have in common are strong leaders. So if you’re a leader wanting to learn how to build stronger teams at work, here are some places to start:
Be Clear About Your Goal
What is the team’s goal? Whether the team is newly developing, you’re new to leading it, of you are just reconceptualizing the direction in which it is moving, you might want to get clear about your main mission for the team. What are the business objectives of this team and what are the dynamics you believe would be most supportive in service to them?
Hire with Intention
Hiring the right people is a great place to begin cultivating a strong team. Since you’ve gotten clear about the goal and direction of the team you’re hoping to strengthen, it should be easier to identify the qualities you’re looking for in new members. It’s important to select people who share common values, goals, and ideas but who also offer enough diversity for innovation and creativity to remain possible.
Establish Expectations Early
New employees are blank slates and are often open to influences early on. They will seek cues for how to assimilate into the company so the sooner you can be the one to provide these cues, the more likely you will capture their motivation. Be engaging and actively participate in the company culture you wish to create. Communicate and model the values you wish to see in the work environment and allow employees new and established to have a clear understanding of how feedback and communication about needs work.
Demonstrate Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in a positive, or even a neutral way. This includes communicating effectively, applying empathy to other people, and overcoming challenges, including resolving organizational conflict. This typically begins with awareness of self, including communication styles, emotional triggers, reaction patterns, what coping skills are typically effective for managing reactivity, and the ability to apply reactivity management when provoked. Modeling this is important as a leader for several reasons, one of which is building rapport and trust with your team. This can help employees feel safe opening up and coming to you when they need support. It will also help model this behavior for others so they can apply their own emotional intelligence, creating a more communicative, respectful team.
Motivate Smarter Not Harder
When managers think about ways to motivate or inspire their employees, many get creative and come up with out-of-the-box ideas they hope will energize and produce engagement. They may get upset if those creative ideas don’t produce those results but it may be because they missed an important point. Individuals do not experience motivation in the same way. While one employee may feel energized by social engagement, another may feel motivated by time left alone. So managers would be encouraged to first gather more information about the individuals on their team and what they find rewarding or encouraging before they develop a plan to do so.
Ramp Up Your Communication Skills
Communication skills are necessary for a good leader and they’ll be great for you to model and share with your team. Strong teams are able to communicate effectively with each other with minor instances of assumptions or misunderstandings. And in cases of assumptions or misunderstandings, good communicators can catch the issue and address them quickly.
Be Clear About Roles and Responsibilities
Be sure each team member is clear about what’s expected of them. Without this, employees can lack mutual accountability and develop stress around role ambiguity. These things can create individual stress and interpersonal tensions which can result in burnout and conflict. Having clearly defined roles and responsibilities allows teams to strengthen through collaboration. Knowing how to work together and utilize each other’s assets and responsibilities and then being able to hold each other accountable allows for success and mutual trust. This will also help employees know who’s ultimately responsible for making decisions, resolving issues, and providing resources.
Still wondering how to build stronger teams at work? Get hands-on insights from those with the experience and expertise you need. Contact Pollack Peacebuilding Systems today to get the right solutions for your team.
