A good team isn’t build in a fortnight. I still remember the days when my company was in the initial stages of its inception. Those were the times when I myself use to work tirelessly to get positive results. As my company took off the first flight to success, we started growing and hiring people.
During all those years, I worked with a number of fresh graduates and dynamic professionals who were quite dedicated and supportive. We even started making great profits which led to overall growth and development of the company. Results, profits, figures etc., of course excited me, but I found that for my employees it was nothing more than a 9 to 6 job.
I found that every employee in the company had skills, talents, and everything needed for a particular job role. They were best as individuals, but nowhere as a team. Since I could foresee the amount of work coming in for our company, I had a desire to build a team and not just hire and fire people. I wanted to achieve something bigger and I knew it wasn’t possible without a team.
This was the time I started working on team building and collaboration, rather than simply hunting for talent every now and then. I nurtured my employees with enthusiasm and motivation. I appreciated the good in them and worked with them to help them overcome their shortcomings.
I wanted a team where everyone would work to uplift each other and work together even in a challenging situation.
Here’s a quick brief of my untiring efforts and ways with which I could foster a healthy collaboration in my office. The following points will give you a deep insight about how I could inculcate leadership skills, build a strong team and how we made it to more than 85,000 happy customers within the first few years of our business.
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1. Shift the Paradigm from Individual to Team
Happy employees lead to satisfied customers. If you keep your employees happy at work and make them feel valued you will reap the benefits in the form of happy customers. Also, this will boost your customer retention rate.
But, this is possible only if you shift your focus from individual accomplishments to team success. This is the first thing I did, I shifted my focus from solely individual gains to collective success. That’s the point I started building up a collaborated team.
Tip: The most important part of team collaboration is defining roles and responsibilities within the team. This will promote purposeful collaboration where resources are dedicated to a common goal.
2. Build a Creative Atmosphere
Many business owners have the notion that a tough and strict office environment is the only way to get the work done from the employees. But this is not the real case.
Yes, you can get results by creating work pressure over employees, but you definitely can’t build a strong team with that. For fostering team collaboration, you will have to build a creative atmosphere in your office which gives your team members a good opportunity to make the best of their skills and abilities. A creative atmosphere also imparts a sense of personal growth and learning amongst your team.
Tip: Leadership trainings are a great way to nurture a ‘Can Do’ attitude in your employees. Such trainings are a great way for skill and character development in your employees.
3. Healthy Communication Fosters Collaboration
One of the most important leadership qualities is to be able to involve your employees while setting quarterly goals, planning a team lunch or designing a new company policy.
Facilitate a smooth communication bridge between the employees and the company. In fact, at times it has been seen that when people work together as a team, they find better ways to handle a project or goals. A collaborated team can overcome even the biggest hurdles.
Tip: Encourage employee participation in every meeting, plan group activities, and interactive sessions for fostering collaboration. If your team size is too large, prefer using online collaboration tools like ProofHub to make sure everyone has a say.
4. Work Together, Celebrate Together
Recall the school days when birthday celebrations and picnics fostered friendships and built bondings that study hours could never do. The same applies here as well. Team lunches, random weekend celebrations, and get-togethers can build strong bonds among the employees.
Tip: Make celebrations a part of your workplace. Even celebrating the successful completion of a project will keep them motivated and bonded with each other.
5. Keep your Employees Stress-Free
Deadlines and big goals will lead to stress and anxiety in your employees. Flexible work policies and organizing parties would not alone be able to beat that. Meetings, project goals, and personal goals create a lot of clutter in the minds of everyone including your employees. Just as we need dental and physical hygiene, so do we need mental hygiene.
Motivation lectures or goodie words have a temporary effect on the mind. If you really want to help your employees combat stress then meditation is the real key. Spare a few minutes during office hours for a group meditation session. This will not just kick off stress but will lead to sharpening of intellect thereby improving overall productivity of the employee.
Tip: You can play some soulful music or a short guided meditation and ask everyone to sit with eyes closed and be with the instructions. Alternatively, you can also plan some aerobic or chair yoga activity at your workplace.
Years of education and experience has taught me one of the most important team leader skills i.e. a human resource if nurtured and trained can create miracles and achieve the impossible. It doesn’t matter whether you have hired someone from a top institute in the country or from an average college.
All that matters is the efforts you put in to collaborate them as a team which will eventually take your business to the pinnacle of success. As the famous quote by Michael Jordan goes as,” Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships”.
I hope the above points would help you to build a great team full of enthusiasm and dedication.
