How to: Build An Effective Team

What does this look like?

Managers who build effective teams:

• have a clear vision and plan for the team
• create a strong team spirit
• foster a sense of belonging in the team
• define and celebrate success in terms of the whole team
• encourage open dialogue.

How can I do this?

1.    Establish a shared vision and plan

It’s important your team has a vision and common sense of direction. Develop a shared understanding of what you’re trying to achieve and what it would look like if you achieved it. Involve your team in setting the vision.

Include some checkpoints that allow you to chart your progress.

Make the plan visible and refer to it regularly.

2.    Inspire your team

Keep encouraging your team and inspiring them to do their best work.

• Remind people that what they do is important.
• Recognise and reward hard work and achievements.
• Celebrate successes including small wins.
• Be quick to offer support.
• Surprise people with enriching, varied and challenging assignments.
• Have fun!

3.    Foster a team spirit

Encourage your staff to think of themselves as a team. You can do this by:

• talking about common goals, priorities and problems
• encouraging everyone to participate and have their say
• celebrating team accomplishments
• using ‘we’ and ‘us’
• encouraging your team to cover for each other
• advocating on behalf of your team.

4.    Respect and value differences

One of the strengths and challenges of teams is that they bring together a group of people with different skills, mindsets, values and ways of working. Although you certainly won’t agree all the time, help your staff to respect different perspectives and to work at understanding each other.

Acknowledge the unique contribution each person makes. Consider people’s strengths. Do they excel in:

• thinking roles—understanding problems and coming up with ideas and options?
• people roles—connecting with others within and outside the team?
• action roles—keeping people on track and getting things done?

When allocating work, take advantage of individual strengths and try to avoid unnecessarily exposing weaknesses.

5.    Encourage innovation and experimentation

• Rigidly specifying how everything needs to be done will dampen motivation and quash creativity and innovation. Instead, set clear goals and outcomes but give people freedom in how they achieve them. Studies show that people work harder and are more effective when they have a sense of ownership and some choice in how they work.
• Encourage people to try new things and take some risks. Treat mistakes as an opportunity to learn.

6.    Keep virtual teams motivated

When teams work together virtually, try to keep them motivated and connected with regular conference calls and opportunities to collaborate online. Try using different communication platforms like Microsoft Teams, video conferencing and groupware.

7.    Consider engaging a team coach

At times it can be useful to have an outsider help your team work together. An external coach can help you solve problems and can give some feedback about how you’re operating as a team. This could be for example:

• a Human Resources partner
• a Values in Action representative to work on building team culture
• an external professional who specialises in coaching.

You may find this challenging if you…

• prefer working alone
• find it hard to motivate others
• tend to manage individuals rather than whole teams
• think in terms of individual achievements not achievements of a team
• don’t think about creating a common mindset
• prefer not to have team meetings or to work on building the team
• don’t try to create synergies but are happy for people to work on their own projects
• like to tightly control what people are doing.

You may be too team focused if you…

• don’t treat people as unique individuals
• involve everyone in everything to the point where you hamper progress
• try to get everyone to agree all the time and don’t take charge when you need to.