Improving team effectiveness and performance plays a crucial role in increasing the success of a company. It is important to constantly re-evaluate how well a team is working, and how you can work to better it. There are many ways of doing this, but there are some powerful ways that you can improve teamwork between not only your employees, but between managers and employees too.
What Role Does Teamwork Play?
Good teamwork can improve how efficiently tasks can be completed, and also the quality of the work as well. When a collaborative effort is encouraged within a company, rather than a competitive one, you will get the most out of your staff members. It is also better for the well-being of employees, which can also contribute to the overall performance of a company.
- Plan And Set Goals
Taking time to set goals and incentivise reaching them can drastically improve how a team works. It is important to set team goals to allow employees to understand how their role fits in with the overall success of a project; they can more easily engage with their tasks in their commitment to achieving a team goal. Making meaningful goals, rather than just for the sake of setting them, and recognising progress can help to motivate employees and subsequently improve their performance.
- Clarify Roles
This may seem simple but it can often be an overlooked aspect of the effectiveness of a team. Individuals should understand exactly what their day-to-day roles should be to avoid people doing unnecessary work and wasting time wondering what they need to be doing. Each employee should understand their individual goals when performing their task so they know how they are contributing to the team goal. It is also important to give employees the time to understand the roles of other team members, and even people in unrelated departments because it can give them a holistic understanding of the company.
- Diversify Your Team
Whilst it may feel easier to surround yourself with like-minded individuals, having team members that all think the same way is going to limit the effectiveness of a team because there are not people to challenge and bounce ideas off. Studies have shown that diversifying a team can increase productivity by 35%, which is likely because employees do not become passive in things like performing their tasks and generating ideas. Having a team of people from various backgrounds with a range of knowledge can allow fresh and innovative proposals to come to the table; this is often the driving factor in moving a company forward to stop the company from becoming stagnant in its success.
- Work On Communication
It’s a tale as old as time, but communication really is the key to success in the workplace. Ensure that employees have different means to communicate with each other, such as an instant messaging channel. Make sure you are listening to employees and understanding them by having frequent one on one meetings, and also providing an anonymous suggestions box. Building up trust between everyone is important to make sure they always feel comfortable discussing things; this can be improved through something as simple as team building exercises.
Overall, you should always be working on team effectiveness and performance. One of the most powerful ways of improving teamwork is by setting individual and team goals, and making sure that employees understand their roles and how their tasks contribute to the success of the company. Diversifying your team can also improve how effectively ideas can be generated and achieved, and good communication is needed to accomplish almost every task and goal within the company.
