The first rule of team building is to establish your leadership with each team member. Remember that the most effective team leaders build their relationships of trust and loyalty, rather than fear or the power of their positions.
I would like to share a few elements regarding this.
- Make sure that you have a clear idea of what you need to accomplish. Setting your standards of success fosters clear time frames with team members and helps them understand their responsibilities.
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Use consensus
Set objectives, solve problems, and plan for action. While it takes much longer to establish consensus, this method ultimately provides better decisions and greater productivity because it secures every employee’s commitment in all the phases of work.
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Establish leadership
If your employees trust your judgment, they will work effectively even when you’re not around. Before you can start team building, you need to develop the right kind of leadership skills. This doesn’t mean asserting authority, instead, try to foster trust through honesty and transparency. Especially in larger organizations, leaders can’t be everywhere at once, but if your employees trust your judgment they will work effectively even when you’re not around.
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Build relationships between employees
As your team starts to cooperate more, examine the way they work together and take steps to improve communication, cooperation and trust among the team members. If there are any conflicts, try to resolve them amicably. Listen to both sides of the argument and act as a mediator. One way to do this is to brainstorm solutions, which helps to empower your employees and may lead to new solutions to the problem.
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Foster teamwork
Once you have established relations with and between the employees, it’s time to help them work together effectively. Encourage the team to share information, among themselves and within the wider organisation. Also, try to communicate more with the team. This goes beyond simply holding meetings, and includes things like being open to suggestions and concerns, asking about each team member’s work and offer assistance where necessary and doing everything you can do to communicate clear and honest with your team.
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Set ground rules for the team
Clearing the above goals, you can begin establishing your team by creating team values and goals, as well as evaluating team performance along with individual performance. Be sure to include your team in this process, so they know what’s required and agree with it.
Team building is one of the most important responsibilities a manager has and isn’t something that can be achieved in a short time. It is an ongoing organic process that you will have to facilitate and guide. As this process unfolds, however, your team members will begin to trust and support one another and share their skill sets and put-in the extra effort to effectively complete your organisation’s goals.
As a result, we get enhanced performance, a better team environment, and highly motivated employees.
Written by P. Devi Prasad,
DGM Optometry, Somajiguda branch.