Being able to work productively with a team is a critical aspect to success in business.
It’s important for sustaining creativity in the workplace, improving work quality, and cultivating healthy and productive employee relationships.
Teams can accomplish more work more quickly and effectively than people taking on work on their own and collaborating also keeps employees accountable to each other, resulting in increased motivation.
There are certain jobs that require individual focus and attention, but the vast majority of big pieces of work will only benefit from the assembling of a team to tackle them together.
Employees that have can work together usually serve a company’s needs better. After establishing the importance of team-work in your office, what if you still have some team members who don’t want to work together or clash?
Define Goals for Everyone
One of the problems with achieving goals in teams is that sometimes the spread of work is unclear and certain goals and objectives fall through the cracks.
The members of your team should know what role they are playing in working toward the end goal and understand how their role is critical to meeting collective goals.
Everyone wants to feel like they have something important to accomplish When you’re dividing the work, make sure it is organized into clearly segregated roles with tangible directives and goals.
Don’t Micromanage team members
You want your team to have a clear sense of exactly what they need to accomplish, you also want to give them autonomy to approach things and complete them the way that they work best.
You don’t want to send your team emails every day asking about their progress and you don’t want to treat them like they’re not capable of finishing their own tasks.
An important factor associated with happiness in the workplace is work autonomy, a happy employee is a relatively autonomous and productive one!
Give your team members the benefit of the doubt and see what they can do without strict or direct supervision. You will likely be impressed by what they achieve!
Meet often
One of the best parts of working on a team is that you get to get feedback and insight from others, not to mention that it can be really fun!
Schedule weekly or fortnightly meet-ups to let people gather and talk about what they’re doing – this gives people the chance to ask questions or ask for help if they need to.
Members of your team can also share their experience of what they are working on – things that might be working well or not working at all (blockers).
A team leader can adjustment accordingly and help the team or its members clear hurdles.
Feedback
Whether working independently or alone, staff need to get positive feedback on their work.
No one likes slaving away only to have their work get ignored, and this is something to be especially aware of with a team where hard work of certain members is more likely to get overlooked.
Make sure you are keeping track of what every member of your team is doing and find a way to say thank you or offer recognition.
If you’re not happy with the work of a certain member, seek out different ways to incentivize them or think of ways to give them better feedback on their performance in a constructive way that will make them eager to work hard.
Credits : 21 Career Choices that will Change Your Life : By Damon J. Smith
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