If you want to make your business successful, then dedicated focus needs to be put on building your Super Team. Teams, especially Super Teams, do not just happen. It takes innovation, collaboration, positive energy and a lot of hard work to build, develop and maintain a team.
What is a Super Team?
A team is a group of people working as one towards a common goal. Whilst this is a great thing, the team members may still have an individual focus – for example, they may make decisions based on what is best for their individual promotion rather than team promotion.
A Super Team is a team that works together effectively and can move through changes with flexibility and cohesion. A Super Team works as one to complete tasks, look for improvements, solve problems and overcome obstacles. They are high performing and their focus is on what is best for the team at all times. Super Teams continually work on developing themselves and ensure that all members are supported along the way. This ensures that trust is high, loyalty is high and maximum performance and output is achieved.
Why are Super Teams Needed?
The workforce is going through a major shift with the retirement of the Baby Boomer generation and a higher population of Millennials entering the workplace. This sees a shift from the “live to work” philosophy to the “work to live” philosophy. Millennials want a role to be more than just a job. They want to be a part of something great, they want to enjoy what they are doing and if they don’t like something, they will move on to the next role.
By building Super Teams, not only does it assist the organisation to achieve its goals, but at the same time it improves workplace culture and employee engagement levels, which is crucial to retaining your employees and reducing turnover costs.
With this in mind, how do you build yourself a Super Team?
Tips for Building a Super Team
Here are some simple tips to help you build Super Teams:
Develop a Team Purpose, Vision and Goals: Every successful Super Team in business, enterprise or sports create their own team purpose and vision and set their own goals. This should be done as a group activity as this is a great way to begin building and developing your team. Your team purpose, vision and goals should be aligned to the organisation and should identify how your team will assist the larger organisation to achieve their vision and mission. The team goals will give your team something to aim for, assist you in measuring the team’s progress and help drive the business forward. Through meeting these goals and achieving positive results, the team will gain positive recognition.
Employ the Right People for the Team: The people you have in the team can have a major impact on the success of the team, it is therefore imperative to ensure that you choose the right people! While we all know that a lot of the time, teams are inherited and you can’t change this, what you can change is any new additions to the team. You need to ensure that you hire the right employee. Someone that will contribute to the success of the team and ultimately the organisation. I have seen first-hand how many organisations only hire or promote based on task performance. What good is task performance if the person is not a team player? Ensuring that the new recruit is going to fit into the current team culture is an important step of building your Super Team.
Build Trust: To achieve team success there must be transparency in everything that is done. This helps to build trust and confidence within your team. Trust is an essential element of relationship building and Super Teams must be able to trust each other completely.
Encourage Open Communication: Following on from building trust, it is important to encourage open communication. This aids in the transparency and relationship building processes. If you look at an organisation’s employee engagement survey, chances are there will be comments about a lack of communication. I have never heard anyone complain that they get too much communication. If you want to improve the workplace culture of an organisation or the way a team works together, improving communication is always a key step. Employees want to feel like they are being provided with the necessary information to do their jobs, they want to understand why they are doing something, they want to feel listened to and they want cross-communication between departments.
Resolve Conflict Immediately: Should conflict arise in a team, it is important to deal with it immediately and bring it to a resolution. Conflict that is not dealt with can fester, having a negative impact on team relationships and attitudes. By providing team members with the tools and facilities to air any grievances in an open and blame-free manner and work together to come to a resolution, this assists to prevent future conflict.
Motivate and Engage Your Team Members: As a leader of a Super Team, you should always aim to motivate, engage and inspire your team to achieve success. Publicly providing team members with feedback, reward and recognition when they successfully accomplish something is a great way to do this. It is also important to find out what motivates each individual team member as this will be different for everyone. Once you know their motivations then you can use these to encourage and reward team members.
Respect Each Member of Your Team: Respect is an essential element of any successful working relationship and it is imperative for a leader to establish a mutual respect with each member of the team. Even in a Super Team, each member should be respected individually, taking into account their thoughts, feelings, experience and skills.
Continually Develop and Challenge Your Team: Super teams need to be continually developed and challenged. Shared learning and team problem solving can help to strengthen team bonds and ensure that teams are prepared for any future obstacles that might come their way.
Conduct Regular Team Building Activities: Regular team building activities are required to keep the team glued together. These help team members to strengthen bonds, open up communication, solve problems, overcome obstacles and work together effectively to complete tasks.
About PDI Solutions
PDI Solutions can work with organisations to develop and deliver training solutions tailored to your particular organisation around leadership, team building or any other professional development. Contact us today for a free consultation at info@pdisolutions.com.au or visit our website at pdisolutions.com.au
