Have you ever been on a team building day or management development training session where you've thought "this bears no relation to my work?" You're not alone. Team building exercises are, in general, conceptual, designed to bond your team and make everyone enjoy working together productively. They don't tend to be tailored to specific work goals.
So how do you build a team that works together effectively on a day-to-day basis and achieves what you want? These 5 tips should help you maintain the right mindset to build any group into a functioning team.
1. Accept and appreciate diversity. This does not just refer to obvious differences, such as people needing flexibility for parenting, but to differences in personality, strengths, experience and views. If you appreciate and support these different traits, your team will be more sympathetic and celebratory of each other's differences too. This will lead to a more supportive and open team environment in which staff are not afraid to express opinions or ask for help.
2. Create standards and ensure people are treated equally. Maybe it will seem as if this is contrary to appreciating diversity, but it doesn't have to be. While people might need different types of support, as long as everyone knows they are entitled to the same levels of support, you are creating an equal environment.
3. Be open to new ideas. Never become closed-minded and never value tried and tested processes more than innovation.
4. Never forget how important tried and tested processes are. Again, contradictory, but a manager who is focussed entirely on new ideas but does not maintain processes and standards is useless, as their team will become confused and undisciplined. Similarly, a manager who cares only for maintaining the current processes will be too rigid, and the team will never progress under such a restrictive environment. Strike a balance and your team will follow the rules and processes but their creativity and enthusiasm won't be crushed.
5. Define success, both in terms of individuals and the team. The latter of these is often forgotten, but if the team knows what its collective function is and can form an idea of how to get there they will feel more united. Don't be scared to include them in discussions on these areas and gather their opinions on what they consider success as a team to be. It might be a common business goal, but it might also be successes around communication or co-operation on certain tasks. You can't dictate to them how they should go about becoming a team or force your views on them, it needs to be collaborative.
The tips above do not offer an exhaustive route to effective team management though they do offer a platform from which to develop your own team management style. Ultimately, it is a crucial part of management development training that can sometimes be tricky due to the massive variations in teams in terms of size, purpose, personalities.
Inspire offer a range of business & professional coaching & training courses including management development training in London. Running both on and off site programmes Inspire also offer professional development tools & resources to further improve business processes. For more information on the range of courses run by Inspire visit http://www.inspire-ing.co.uk
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