Why Teamwork is Important for Your Business
Tips to Bring your Team Together
Define the need. What is the large, desired outcome? What do you want to improve? Eliminate? Change?
Recruit the right people. Find the talent that is willing to commit to your vision. Choose members who represent a wide range of backgrounds, skills and abilities, and a wide mix of cultural and professional viewpoints.
Shared values. Not only must team members embrace your mission, they must share your values. Effective teams demand close collaboration, trust, honesty, passion and genuine appreciation for each member’s contributions.
Develop common goals. Winning teams thrive in an environment where they can unite behind a common and compelling purpose, such as a cause everyone can understand, identify with and commit to.
Set ground rules. Make sure team members understand why the team exists and know the roles each member plays. They need to know how decisions will be made, how to deal with conflict, how to communicate and how results will be measured.
Communicate. Ensure that team members communicate openly and honestly, refrain from personal assaults and stay focused on the task.
Promote curiosity. Curiosity, and the search for new solutions, fuels every great group. Members are engaged in a process of discovery that serves as its own reward.
Keep score. A team must be committed to constant improvement, which means you have to measure performance.
Reward. Acknowledge individual achievement during group meetings and compliment the team as a whole on working well together. Highlight interim successes with mini-celebrations. People repeat performance that garners reward and recognition.
Back off. If you’ve implemented the above steps correctly, then get out of the way. Trust the team process, even if you think you know better. Nothing undermines a team faster than for their moves to be trumped.
All content (c) 2007 Kelly Services (Australia) Ltd. Reprinted with permission from the original article at www.smartmanager.com.au