How To Build An Effective Team In The Workplace: Best Tips And Practices

In today’s article you’re going to learn everything you need to know about how to build an effective team.

With the competitive society that we live in today, team and leadership skills are a must for any business to experience success. In business, nothing great can be done by one person alone (typically) but, with a team, great things can happen. However, the skills of building these highly effective, and efficient teams are hard to come by but they can be learned through proper guidance and implementation

Here we will take a look at various type of methods of to build a successful team, and to manage them effectively so your team members would produce a high work output. We will also give you some tips and tricks to help you become a better leader starting from today!

How To Build An Effective Team In The Workplace:

3 Core principles that every successful team should have

When you think about a successful team, what characteristics come into mind? Great teamwork? Having a great leader to lead the group? Well these characteristics do attribute to a successful team, but when it comes to building a successful team 3 core principles are the factors that plays major role in building a successful team.

Every successful team has to have 3 common core principle that should be set. Without anyone of these core principles missing, you will have a team members will not be cooperative, will be less motivated. However if these 3 core principles are set in place you are in the right path to leading a successful team.

So these 3 core principles of a successful teams are:

Having a clear set of goals: In the bible it is said that “Without a vision people perish”, also scientific research have found that the most motivating factor in a team is moving towards a goal. When the leader sets a clear set of goals for the team. Team is more involved in the task that is in hand in order to meet the goal fast. However if there is no clear set goal in place, people began to slack off and became lazy.

Having Role clarification: Having a role clarification is critical when it comes to team building. Having a clear leader to assign specific task that is required not to order them to do work but working together in one project with similar end goal in mind. By having this kind of order in place, people listen to other people more and become more cooperative.

Too many people mistake this part into believe they should rule over their workers. However this is huge mistake, if you are a team leader, you should treat your teammates as same human being but just have different talent than you. Where you are working together.

Interpersonal relation management: Human being are a social animal where Interpersonal relation are very important. If anyone tells you otherwise they are telling you a lie, or have not organized a successful team before. There must be a set
“system” that allows for a management of this relation, these system would have to take into account of separating people who does not “click”, and putting people together who actually do “click” well.

As someone who wants to build and manage a successful team, i.e. team leader, you must master and innate these core principles to become a part of you. These principles are surprisingly rare in today’s society.

Especially Management of interpersonal relation, when I advise people for building a successful team, it is surprising to see how many people don’t even think about relation within their teammates. These people just few their teammates as workers whom just work for him/her. However with the proper relationship and trust building I’ve seen the productivity of a group go up to 10 folds.

However these 3 core principles are not enough to create an outstanding team in a today’s competitive environment. Where these are the bear minimum that you need. Now let’s get in to more advanced principles that lead to successful team.

Team motivation without carrots and sticks

How would you react if I were to tell you that everything you knew about motivation in human was wrong? What would you think that in human the real motivation does not come from money but feeling of accomplishment?

In a one of the most famous Ted Talk of all time “The puzzle of motivation”, Dan Pink had addressed the myths of motivations in human and address how we should approach this issue. In this talk he issues that we actually lose motivation and creativity in a time crunched matter.

Also we actually lose focus when the prime motivator is money. Have you ever sat in a work just waiting for your “lunch break” without doing anything? This is what exactly he is talking about

Than how should we address this issue of team motivation? The solution of this issue is not to associate primary motivator with money but to associate it with work produced. When you fixate your team motivation with the amount of work done than you will be surprised by how much motivation your team increases to. So that solves the money issue.

However how do we address the time issue? This is where it gets tricky. You, as in team leaders, should completely dismiss the group when the aimed goal has been met. What does this mean? When your workload is completely met, you should allow your team to leave. It’s that simple, but easier said than done

Too many leaders are fixated on time equals money. Allowing people to work for certain amount of hour and pays for hourly worked rates. But when you allow people to leave when the work is done, as well as to pay by the work done, their motivation skyrockets because they have something to look forward to when the “actual work” is finished. Sounds Simple? Yes it is, but it works.

SEE ALSO: How To Delegate Tasks Effectively: Great Strategies for Delegating Better

Leading the tribe. How do you do it?

In the world that we live in today there are many leadership training, and have seen a great leaders in variety of work settings, however as technology advances and as the communication decreased, these great leaders are becoming harder and harder to find.

This is because as I have mentioned earlier, they are missing one of the core principles of team building which is to have interpersonal relation with their teammates. If you got to this far in the reading I will assume that you are not one of these people and have gotten down 3 core principles and motivation down.

So you have teammates that are cooperative, and motivated. How do you lead them to the goals that you have set together? In other words how can you become a successful leader? What are some traits that you need to learn in order to become a successful leader?

1. Honesty:

During my research, I have found that honesty are the number one factor that teammates are looking for when they are looking for in their leader. Honesty allows to build trust (1), and with trust the relationships are built between two of you. What does this mean?

You build relationship with each other, this goes back to core principle. Just think about it, how can you work with someone who is unreliable? Doesn’t work.

2. Confident:

Well, if you are a leader, you are the one who needs to step up and take big actions. I’ve seen too many leaders who just sit in the back who “thinks” they are allowing everyone to work together.

However this does not always work because if the leader does not step in and take the lead, the direction of the group are going to be all over the place making it very messy. You were assigned to be a leader for a reason which is to lead the thoughts of the group in to common direction. Be confident and take the lead of the group

3. Commitment:

Let’s face it. When you are assigned to be a leader, you job is going to be more burdensome than being a teammate. You are going to have more responsibility when your teammates make mistakes. However being leader means that someone, or team, really believes in your quality. Take full responsibility and work hard on it!

4. Sense of humor:

Going back to core principle of intrapersonal relation, nothing builds better relationship than a good sense of humor. In a strict work setting good sense of humor here and there  allow you to really lighten up the work when needed.

These are the 4 principle traits that every leader should have. You probably have heard of most of these tips, but have not implemented all these tips in your team building regimen. I have counselled many team leaders and the ones that comes out becoming successful are the ones that implement all these tips. I repeat every one of these tips.

At first I would recommend starting to implement 1-2 tips and really making them become yourself and as time goes on, implement all these traits to become a part of you and you will soon to find out that your team will appreciate

Managing team’s stress and conflict

Now that you have successfully built yourself a team as well as became a strong team leader what you need to do is now to manage your team in a way that it goes smoothly without any bumpy road.

No matter how good the team is, and how amazing you are as a leader there are going to be a time where conflict with arise with you team, and things are not going to be pretty during that time. During this time is the time that differentiates from good leaders to a great leader.

No matter what the conflict is with your team, you as a team leader should take responsibility and go directly to the area of conflict. Within the area, listen to the members, and carefully evaluate and analyze what the root of the problem is. If it is easily fixable try to fix it on the spot, but most of the times, it will be difficult for you to fix on the spot hence the conflict and stress arises.

Most of the team leader’s problem is that they are afraid of taking the responsibly of conflict fearing that they will make the problem worse. However if you are have listened to your team members, and have followed above team of having the essential traits as a team leader. You are going to be able to make great decision and will be able to solve the problem. In this spot I strongly recommend you to trust your gut instinct.

You might ask to yourself, “Gut instinct? We are talking about critical decision making over here and all you can recommend to solve the issue is to trust my gut instinct?” Yes, I am.

The reason that I recommend this to all my client is because when it comes to problem solving there are too many things that go into play and a lot of times there are no right or wrong answers.

Therefore the more you think about the issue the more is messes up with your head result in making poor decision. It’s better to just trust your gut instinct and just call it as is. In my experience it created much better results for all my clients.

SEE ALSO: How To Motivate Employees In The Workplace: The Complete Guide

Take it to an action

I have laid out the foundation of a team building and team management. These tips are nothing new and nothing extraordinary, but people simply for some reason do not follow these foundational steps and complain that they cannot form or manage a team that are functional and productive.

Pablo Picasso once said “action is foundational key to all success”. You will not believe how many people that I encounter in my workshop program where they come up to me saying that they know everything that I have laid out but are not getting the result that I describe. And I ask them “Do you practice what you know?” and their answer is “Well… I try…” I hope this is not you.

Read an article over and over again and really allow these tips and tricks to sink into your brain and allow it to be part of you. How can you expect something to happen by just knowing what to do and not do them?

Go to your team and start implementing these tips and traits one by one. If you do not see the results that you like implement more tips and more and soon you will realize that you have implemented all the tips and have created a successful team!

If you have never heard of these tips before I recommend taking things slow, when you try to implement all these tips at once you will soon realize that things get messy, this is not because these traits, and tips do not work but you have not fully internalized all the guidelines and started to take action on them without caution.

Conclusion

Successful team are hard to come by these days. However in competitive world that we live in today (2), they are definitely need. I have complied best and the best tips in this short to the point an article so you can create and manage successful team as well.

With the implementation of the tips and tricks that I have laid I can assure you that you will be able to create and manage your own successful team which will allow you to do great things.

I want to thank you for taking the time to read my article about how to build an effective team. I sincerely hope its contents have been a good help to you.

Przemkas Mosky started Perfect 24 Hours in 2017. He is a Personal Productivity Specialist, blogger and entrepreneur. He also works as a coach assisting people to increase their motivation, social skills or leadership abilities. Read more here