Team Development
As an owner or executive, you know your team-building skills are the driving force behind your operational excellence. Employees with a personal commitment to the vision of your business are the key to driving profits in a competitive market.
A highly effective team environment inspires employees to come to work each day and invest in their goals. Learning to foster that team environment and share your vision with your team members is an essential skill for any leader. Your business may have begun with your vision, but it will grow with your people.
When your staff is focused only on their goals and their paycheck, your growth is ultimately stifled. To unlock the immense human potential of your workforce is to guide and encourage that workforce to share your vision and take personal pride in the company’s growth and direction. That sense of ownership comes from effective team development tactics.
The Culture of Inspiration
Sharing the Vision to Pass on the Passion
When developing effective, results-based team development tactics your first goal is to identify the company culture you wish to impart on every level of staff throughout your organization. Management 1.0 is still all around us, and the old model of iron-fisted authoritarian “leadership” is all too easy to fall into. This management style breeds distrust, laziness, and dissatisfaction. If allowed to continue, this management structure will ultimately undermine the growth of your company and your commitment to operational excellence.
A team environment relies on understanding the difference between a boss and a leader. Expressing that difference to staff to form an engaged and effective workforce is crucial. Each business must and will find the core values that will ultimately drive its employees and the company culture they are surrounded by.
While you develop your team structure, consider these three traits of a highly effective workforce.
Transparency
Team development is more than a simple list of year-end goals or a five-year plan for growth. You should clearly communicate to employees where your business is headed and how it plans to get there. When your staff knows not only what they must do, but why they are doing it, this fosters a natural desire to compete and excel on behalf of the company. Transparency is about pulling back the curtain on how the business became effective and what needs to be done to keep it that way.
Transparency does not mean holding seminars for disclosing trade secrets. It’s understood that some aspects of business exist on a need to know basis. Not only might you be reluctant to share some of those details, but doing so will not impart any pertinent information to your team. Transparency is more about connecting the dots for your employees. Express how the weekly goals and daily tasks play into a larger goal that everyone can take pride in.
A transparent workforce leaves employees feeling knowledgeable about what they do, and why it is important to your company, ultimately lending itself to their sense of work ethic. That leads us to the second habit of a highly effective workforce
Work Ethic
Work ethic may seem like a personal trait or one that should come as a given. You’ve gotten where you are because you value your hard work and know the reward it brings you. For most, hard work is its own reward and the professional and personal growth that results are only to be expected.
Remember that for your employees, this is not always the case. Confusion about how daily taks connect to bigger goals causes employees to take less pride in their work. On a long enough timeline, this lack of transparency can lead to burnout. It will also cause a lack of work ethic.
When an employee loses their work ethic, they may become lax on time management and goal completion. An employee with burnout might call in sick more often, or be less productive when they are at work. These staff members aren’t simply poor workers, they are poorly motivated workers. Remember, you didn’t hire duds. You hired a qualified and energetic staff, so, what happened?
Loss of Motivation
Punishing workers for a widespread lack of work ethic fails to address the necessary lack of leadership that led the workforce to lose their motivation in the first place.
Strong team development begins with ensuring engaged and hard-working employees understand what they are accomplishing. They also want to know how it relates to the companies goals. When a leader demonstrates to a team how their successes and their failures affect a larger structure, it naturally motivates good employees to be effective employees.
Highly motivated employees are more invested in the company’s plans for growth. They’re also knowledgeable about their role in the organization. An employee who feels their work matters to the larger structure of the company will naturally feel valued. To preserve that feeling of value, they will work hard to maintain their personal best. This taps into their natural work ethic and the pride of a job well done.
Collaboration
The third habit of a highly effective workforce is collaboration. One hallmark of a good team environment is the ability of that team to collaborate. This helps them to solve problems and meet goals. As a leader, you may sometimes feel that you have all the answers. It can be easy to give direction without any input. While pushback from your staff may feel intrusive or disrespectful but can be a sign of good team development. Don’t underrate the value of their contributions to brainstorming and problem-solving.
When things don’t go as planned, rather than giving commands, try inviting the team to collaborate on a solution. Leading your team in a discussion where the stakes are clear, more often than not, you can lead that team to the conclusion you came to yourself. This allows the team to make clear what is most important to them. They also feel as though they are responding to a call to action rather than obeying an order.
An Example
You discover that your workload is behind, and you will need your team to stay 2-3 hours to make up the work. Some of it can be passed off for a few days, but it must be done this week.
Option A: Inform the team that they must either stay late today or come in on the weekend because there is extra work to be done.
Option B: Express to the team that there is a backlog of work. You explain that this must be done this week, and would be best done today. Ask for suggestions on how to get this backlog done.
With option A, some team members may refuse, citing prior commitments. You have the option to chastise these team members for lack of attendance, but the fact remains, they may refuse outright. The team members who do stay will feel upset and will not be the most productive.
With option B, at least one member of the team and probably more will offer to stay. Those who do not offer to stay may ask if they have permission to come in on the weekend. They may also leave and come back to take care of personal commitments such as picking up a child from school.
Option B leaves you with the same number of work hours gained but with a happier and more engaged workforce. They chose to pitch in as a team rather than accept an order. Which leader would you rather be?
Team Consultation
How To Turn Your Workforce Into A-Team
Knowing the value of a good team structure to a highly effective workforce. You may be wondering how to use your great leadership skills to build a team. This is where Team Consultation comes in. Leading by example is always a great team-building strategy. Be patient with the process.
If you find yourself with a need to transform an existing workforce into a place that focuses on transparency, work ethic, and collaboration, you may require a team development consultation.
Venture Studio offers Team Consultation to examine the team you have and mold it into the team you need with professional team building tools.
As a leader, you know the value of delegation. Venture Studio’s team consultation helps to identify flaws in your workforce culture. You may easily develop an evidence-based effective solution to your team’s needs. When developing your company’s culture or correcting existing failures, you owe it to yourself and your company to invest the same time and money in your team as you would any other essential aspect of your professional growth and development.
Your company’s highly effective workforce drives operational excellence and capacity for growth. For the resources and knowledge you need to create and maintain a team that works for you and with you, Venture Studio’s team consultation has what you need.