“We must all hang together, or assuredly, we shall all hang separately” – Benjamin Franklin

As Benjamin Franklin very accurately sums up, a team has to stay, work and find solutions together, or else, the team won’t succeed at doing much.  When each member contributes his or her unique experiences and qualities, that is when you have a stellar team.

What is team building?

As a team leader, and in order to build a team, you need to draw the members together, so they play together towards a common goal. Each has to forsake their identity and think about what the team can do together.

Teams can be built for any purpose in companies. Companies can have quality assurance teams, problem-solving teams or project work teams such as for sales and distribution.

Team building companies will need to go through the following stages to build a successful team.

1. Clarify the goals and values of the team

What is the team created for or why build a team? The goals should be comprehensive. Keep in mind SMART goals when establishing them. Include everything in the goals.

For instance, if the goal of the delivery team at a pizza joint is to deliver pizza within 30 minutes, the goals should also be safe driving and no accidents! It wouldn’t be much use if speedy delivery ultimately resulted in increased accidents.

Don’t miss to establish some values for your team that are the main principles to adhere to your work.

2. Identify issues inhibiting team growth

Is the team being pulled back because of a lack of skills and experience? What are some of the factors that are acting as obstacles in reaching the goals? For instance, you might feel your team is insecure or unmotivated, which is affecting their work.

3. Remove the obstacles for team building

Feel like fear of failure might be an obstacle in the workplace? Encourage employees to engage in new experiments and not be afraid of failure. Each failure teaches us something new and if fear is stopping us from experimenting, we might be missing out on not just high-risk opportunities’ but also the ones with high return.

4. Communicate with team members

Do not forget to announce any news or discuss problems with your colleagues. Always inform your team what is happening in your company and encourage them to ask questions. It builds trust and a friendly environment to work in.

5. Encourage team members to share information

Emphasize the importance of each team member’s contribution and demonstrate how all of their jobs operate together to move the entire team closer to its goal.

6. Encourage listening and brainstorming all together with all members as these are vital team building activities

Encourage your employees to not be afraid to disagree with your opinions and to propose their ideas and problem solutions. Always listen carefully to their suggestions and propositions and accept them or decline them explaining why. Make correct discussions a usual thing in your team and as you build a team.

7. Try to find consensus

In any difficult situations try to find the obvious agreement of all team members. Try to understand each side of the conflict and seek the decision that would meet the requirements of both counterparties. Don’t forget to represent the general interests of your team and take into consideration every member’s opinion.

8. Team Building Activities

Try to establish some regular team building activities in the office as well as outside it. Make it fun and engaging but require teamwork, support, and cooperation. Such events help to understand the strengths of each member and create more friendly relationships. Try to organize different team building events, or you can delegate these tasks to your HR department or special event managers.

So, when you know how to build the dream team for your business, let’s move on and discuss ways how to increase the productivity of your Staff.

It’s an essential task for every owner or manager to aim for this as an increase in productivity will have a positive effect on the company’s profit margin. There are two key strategy areas for managers to help their staff to become more productive: management and motivation.

• Management

Central to managing staff in in this way so that you help them to increase the organization’s productivity is ensuring that they have a clear understanding of your company’s goals and objectives. Look for team building activities that promote this. It will help staff to focus their time more productively and not be side-tracked by additional tasks and processes which, while they may be within the employee’s comfort zone, do not achieve anything useful for the business.

Objectives can be communicated through the company’s formal processes, such as newsletters and emails. But, to involve staff more fully in this process, this needs to be backed-up with team meetings and individual appraisals to agree and to monitor objectives.

In the case of staff who operate on a mobile basis, particularly where they are required to use a company vehicle, a vehicle tracking system can be a vital component in this process. Trackers enable the manager to ensure that individual employees are using their time productively and that the efficiency of the fleet of vehicles as a whole is optimized. A tracker also provides employee safety.

• Motivation

We are all different and are motivated by various factors, including financial reward, job security, and satisfying work. The skillful manager, therefore, needs to have a variety of motivational tools at his or her disposal to help build a team. For example, for those motivated by increasing their earning power, there needs to be a mechanism to reward outstanding performance. Whereas, for the employee who has family or care commitments outside of work, the company should look at what flexibility it can offer to help staff achieve a work/life balance.

Staff cannot operate productively in a vacuum; they must, therefore, be given the information that they need to allow them to do their job effectively and should also be consulted for their views. Good performance should be praised and, when someone falls short of expectations, this should be raised with them, and ways to help them improve should be discussed.

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