Building effective teams

As we know effective teamwork adds increased returns to any business.  In today’s economic climate those teams that work together effectively are proving more able to cope with the present demands businesses are facing.  So read on to find out the best way to create effective teams….

Sometimes businesses themselves can stop their teams from performing as effectively as they might.  This may be because incentive schemes cause individuals to focus on their own, not their team’s, objectives; perhaps the performance review does not concentrate enough on someone’s contribution to their team.  However, if the culture of teamwork is led and supported by senior management, teams will be very successful in achieving their objectives and more.

• One way of doing this is to ensure teams are not weighed down by policy, procedure and processes that take up unnecessary amounts of time and cause them to not be able to use their knowledge and skills effectively for the good of your business.
• All teams must know why they exist and how they fit into the overall business – what impact do they have on the business as a whole and on other teams?
• HR180 can help you make sure all your HR processes reflect the importance your business places on teams and teamwork.  Positive feedback is as important for teams as it is for individuals.  The sharing of best practice between teams will help your business continuously improve – you need to ensure your managers allow time for this to happen.
• When selecting new team members involve existing team members in the interviews.  Ensure those selected will add value to, complement and challenge the team as well as the business.
• Team Leaders must understand the importance of their role in getting their team to work as effectively as possible.  Management should not under-estimate the power and influence Team Leaders have in the success or failure of a team.  One of the most stated reasons for someone leaving a job is their poor relationship with their immediate manager.  Carefully consider who you promote into Team Leader roles – just because someone can do their job well doesn’t mean they will be good at managing a team.
• Identify potential Team Leaders from those working within teams so you can start to develop them for the future – have a succession plan.  One way to do this is to involve all specialist team members (rather than just the Team Leader) at meetings where their specialist knowledge is relevant – this will raise their profile and develop their skills.  Another way is to allow team members to experience all parts of your business so they can see where their role fits and its effect on the business as a whole.
• Allow teams to have time building and maintaining their team.  Where possible agree to ‘away days’ (with a work agenda), or support social activities that will help the team members to get to know each other better, both of which will strengthen relationships and improve morale.
• Involve all the team in producing and agreeing their own objectives.  This also means they must know what the business’ objectives are including the budget which will affect what they can do.  The commitment towards achieving objectives you have been involved in producing is much greater than if you have just been told what you have to do.
• Encourage your team(s) to regularly evaluate and review their achievements – you will need to allow time for this to happen.  They should evaluate good and bad performance so they can build on the good performance, and identify what caused the poor performance (what caused it, not who may have been at fault) so they can improve and learn from what went wrong.  All such evaluations and reviews should end up with action plans so that teams take responsibility for keeping up-to-date, managing change and their continuous improvement.