How to Breed Teamwork and Motivate Employees
Successful corporations and businesses confess that teamwork is one of the major factors that fuels success. Growing businesses have no option but to emulate such companies in order to achieve their set goals and objectives. One of the major benefits of teamwork is that it facilitates completion of projects in time as well as foster growth and development of each employee. Various research studies have proved that employees feel more confident and appreciated when working in environments that foster team work. Hence, managers should strive to ensure that their team members are always motivated to ensure that all tasks assigned to them progress efficiently.
Below are some strategies on how to develop motivation and team building guidelines;
Know your goal and mission:
The goals should be achievable, realistic and specific. When setting the goals, it is advisable to give the members a chance to express their personal views so as to avoid any disagreements down the road. As a leader, you should be available to distribute the goals in writing and answer any queries that they may be having. One of the sure ways of doing this is by scheduling a goal meeting in your office at least once every week to assess progress and respond to any concerns. All these initiatives will help establish a consensus and direct the team on one direction, success.
Have communication systems:
Communication is crucial to the success of any business. Establish communication rules for each team meeting to avert unnecessary disagreements and time wastage. Decide how to handle team discussions and individual contributions. For example, you can decide to be using conference calls, emails or telephone calls depending on the specific needs and available infrastructure in your workplace. Also, it is important to clearly define the terminologies and language to be used during team meetings. For example, you can unanimously agree to be using acronyms. Team members from different sections or departments should be given a chance to ask questions or clarification about any expression that may be unclear.
Establish clear roles and structures:
This helps to disseminate different tasks to different members based on their personal skills and expertise. Take time to develop a task list that details all the roles and plans for each member in writing. It is advisable to rotate the roles so as to create a favorable teambuilding environment and increase team work. This is based on the fact that team members gain new skills and appreciate their colleagues when working on tasks that were previously assigned to a different person. Be sure to set a deadline for each role so as to avoid wastage of time.
Encourage collaboration:
The main essence of teambuilding is to foster collaboration between all members. Strive to inspire the members to work together by pairing them so that they can learn various lessons and skills from each other. For example, if you establish small groups, assign group meetings and presentations to different persons every week.
Minimize competition:
Healthy competition helps to yield success. However, that’s not always the case. It may result in bitter rivalry between team members and this may compromise overall performance of the organizations by hampering attainment of set goals. To avoid such scenes, it is wise to reward group effort and minimize excessive highlighting of individuals. Group incentives can also help to counter individual competition. Social activities such as sporting activities can significantly increase motivation.
Problem solving mechanisms:
It is impossible to successfully complete a project without encountering some problems along the way. How you respond to these problems determines the level of success to be achieved in the long run. Establishing problem solving mechanisms will ensure that you amicably solve arising problems and eliminate any stumbling blocks that may hamper progress in future.
Teambuilding is a uniting force that can help bring all employees together for one common cause.
