What is one strategy for building a successful team?
To help business leaders build successful teams, we asked experienced managers and business owners this question for their best insights. From embracing an agile mindset to hiring people with like-minded values, there are several strategies that may help you build a successful team for your business.
Here are 11 strategies to build a successful team:
- Embrace An Agile Mindset
- Fill Potholes
- Emotional Intelligence
- Cultivate a Culture of Resilience
- Facilitate Employee Development
- Establish Goals and Expectations
- Openness to Learning
- Hire People With Like-Minded Values
- Ensure the Mission is the Central Focus
- Encourage Ownership
- Enable Two-way Feedback
Embrace An Agile Mindset
The Agile mindset allows for increased improvement through collaboration and iterative change. Successful teams collaborate well in spite of such conflicts, talking face-to-face during sprint planning, daily scrums, retrospectives, and other Agile meetings to resolve any issues that arise. Build a team whose members are willing to try to understand each other even in the face of disagreements and respond to change in an agile nature. Implementing this mindset will help you build a truly successful team that can take on anything thrown at them.
Debra Hildebrand, Hildebrand Solutions, LLC
Fill Potholes
Before building a team, the best leaders will take stock of their skills and preferences and align those factors to what is objectively needed in the organization. They can then double down on their strengths while unashamedly highlighting potholes. Those holes become the target hiring criteria whether internal fills or external placements. As the team is sourced, the potholes disappear. Done right, the individual strengths can complement the leader’s and provide a healthy system of checks and balances that enable diversity of thought and action.
Tim Toterhi, Plotline Leadership
Emotional Intelligence
Being in the management position for the past three years, I have realized that the most effective strategy for building a successful team is to practice emotional intelligence while dealing with people and resolving their conflicts. Be good at adapting your people management skills to different situations, different people, and different environments. Treat people’s individual differences as an asset, not an obstacle.
To understand what truly motivates your team, be emotionally present and aware. Only then you can help boost employee morale and improve employee performance. Try to understand each person in your team and provide full support to them.
Communicate openly to build strong relationships with your employees, win their trust, and create positive attitudes among your staff. Always encourage others to share their ideas freely with you and ensure to provide a safe environment where employees are not afraid to speak up their minds.
Hamna Amjad, Physicians Thrive
Cultivate a Culture of Resilience
Your team may be talented, efficient, and hard-working but if they aren’t resilient in the face of adversity, progress will ultimately come to a standstill. On the other hand, employees that are resilient will be more flexible in their approach and find innovative solutions to overcome obstacles without feeling overwhelmed or frustrated. This is an invaluable skill in successful teams since it enables team members to reach their full potential and even exceed their own expectations.
Harry Morton, Lower Street
Facilitate Employee Development
A team should be led by a leader who can establish leadership and facilitate employee development with each team member. This is the first rule of team building. Rather than being motivated by fear or power, effective team leaders build relationships based on trust and loyalty.
A team also tends to perform best when each member has a specific contribution to make through their individual role. When team members have clearly defined roles, they can concentrate on completing their tasks and following specific processes rather than struggling to identify their place within the organization. Team members can, for example, be assigned responsibilities such as leading different experimentations of a project while others might be assigned to conduct research, perform analysis, or recommend solutions.
Nick Shackelford, Structured Agency
Establish Goals and Expectations
Before you assemble your team, sit down and outline the goals you want it to achieve. Which roles are necessary to get across the finish line, and which can wait? This knowledge will serve you well as you build up a team around pre-established goals rather than the other way around. You’ll also be able to have more reasonable expectations against which you can judge results.
Henry Babicheknko, Stomadent
Openness to Learning
To build a successful team, you have to be open to constant learning. First, learn what your team members are like and what their expertise is but also learn if they have any hidden talent that could benefit the team. Next, learn to optimize the processes within the team to shorten the timeframe for specific tasks. Last, learn how you can improve as a leader.
Salman Aslam, Omnicore
Hire People With Like-Minded Values
Make sure that those whom you hire seem like their values align with the values of the company and the company workplace. While credentials play a part in the hiring process, personalities are also very important. Consider how your new employees will fit in at your workplace and if you could see them working well with their managers and co-workers. When your employees get along with one another, this helps a lot with the company morale.
Matt Woods, SOLD.com
Ensure the Mission is the Central Focus
The central focus of your team is not simply how they work together, but what they are working toward. After all, the mission is the reason your team exists to begin with. When children and families are both counting on you, there isn’t a second to waste on other matters. Keeping your team focused on the organization’s mission is how you’ll achieve great things together.
Ashleigh Wilkes, A World For Children
Encourage Ownership
We foster innovation by putting trust in our team members and giving them the freedom to take on challenges. It’s the responsibility of every leader to promote the professional development of their team. Allowing employees a level of autonomy in their work encourages ownership and motivates them to perform at their best. This action-oriented mindset boosts involvement and gives workers a higher sense of purpose. Innovation is based on trust. It’s about letting go of the reins a bit and giving people control when and where they need it.
Tyler Rybacki, Jot
Enable Two-way Feedback
While there are several team-building strategies, what I find most crucial is efficient two-way communication between employer and employees. When you give your workers the opportunity to suggest ways to improve your leadership, point out problems they face at work, or ask for any resources that could facilitate their jobs, and make sure to act upon their feedback promptly, you automatically enhance your team’s productivity.
Moreover, it is equally essential for the boss to provide feedback on ongoing work on a regular basis. As the head of my recruiting firm, I have learned that both positive feedback for a job well done and constructive criticism wherever there’s room for improvement work well in ensuring my team’s success long-term. If you can go the extra mile, I recommend using DirectSuggest, an anonymous suggestion box app that increases the chances of your team’s introverts coming forward due to the anonymity it provides.
Anjela Mangrum, Mangrum Career Solutions
