What makes a team perform exceptionally? The answer to that question is broad, ranging from hiring the right talent to investing in professional development to measuring individual performance to making smart decisions. Today, we will unravel some of the best practices for cultivating the best organisational performance in the industry.
Team members perform better and work better together when they trust one another. Develop core values that align to the type of team you want and make them more than something you put on the wall.
Examples of core values that promote team development and effective teams could be honesty, transparency, accountability, excellent customer service and going the extra mile. Live out those values in your daily work and encourage your colleagues to do the same.
Hire and fire by your core values. If someone isn't a fit culturally but has the right skills, it's easy to give them a chance. In the long run, cultural fit matters more than the perfect skill set. Skills can be taught and cultivated, but aligning to core values can't be forced.
We don't get better at things or improve our careers by remaining stagnant. The smartest organisations are team builders by helping each individual further their skills and knowledge base by offering ample opportunities for professional development.
Whether you give new hires a toolkit and training methods for advancing their skill set or let employees drive their continuing education plan, make it a business priority. Better yet, send your team members to relevant trainings and conferences together. Your employees will increase their individual performance and team performance at the same time.
Some people like to work alone, while some professionals prefer to work in a team. Be aware of each of your team members' work style. Don't schedule long, pointless meetings that waste valuable time.
Make sure your meetings have a clear purpose, a defined start and end time that you stick to and a precise agenda. The difference between good meetings and unproductive meetings is that good meetings are well-planned and accomplish specific goals.
The best teams only meet when needed, keep meetings focused on the end goal and have leaders that drive the team with a clear vision and purpose.
Don't measure individual and team performance blindly. Use tools that make it easy for team leaders to assess productivity and performance and manage projects effectively.
For example, Samewave offers social performance management software that helps organisations track performance and increase accountability towards goals and tasks with Promise-Based Management and Social Discipline. Team members create goals and tasks and track their progress towards them in one collaborative, transparent environment.
Teams can create chat streams for robust communication, upload and store files and even generate automatic, custom reports in just a few clicks. Samewave helps companies tackle their biggest projects as a team while measuring performance, and it's free. Sign up today and introduce it to your team.
Some of the best leaders follow the business theory of hiring the right people, making sure they have the right tools and resources they need to do their work, and getting out of the way to let them do it. Give your best teams the power to make the decisions that need to be made to get important work done without micromanaging them.
Making employees have a supervisor sign off on every little decision makes them feel powerless and like you don't trust the team as a whole. Effective teams have leaders that trust them to make the right decisions and know they are good at problem-solving on their own. When team members feel empowered to make the right choices, they are more engaged in their work and invested in the mission of the organisation.
Few things are more frustrating to team members than feeling that only a few powerful people within the organisation make the all the plans and have the final say in all decisions. When this happens, employees feel stifled and fail to contribute new ideas because they expect they won't be heard.
Smart organisations include employees in every level of the organisation in problem-solving and decision-making. That doesn't mean every person needs to be involved in every decision. That would simply become too cumbersome and take too much time.
However, high-performing teams engage employees throughout the entire company and across varying departments to improve team performance. When they are included in important decisions, team members feel their work is more meaningful and that their voices matter.
It’s a long process to create the most effective, powerful team. Whether you are building a new business with a new team or revitalising a stagnant team, these strategies will help drive the business results you want.
Start today by intentionally creating team building opportunities, offering professional development and continuing education avenues, and thoughtfully measuring individual and team performance. Empower your teams to do their best work while supporting them along the way.
Before you know it, you'll be reaping the benefits of a collaborative, productive team with maximum team performance.
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