3 things successful teams don’t do
Being part of a great team or managing it is a great feeling. You don’t dread team meetings, you enjoy spending time with your colleagues and most importantly, you are more productive. Today we will share three things with you which great teams don’t do.
3 things successful teams don’t do
They don’t avoid accountability
Accountability is a word which has lost its meaning because it has been used so often especially in media and politics. When we talk about teamwork, it is a trait which encourages team members to hold themselves accountable for performance and behaviour that might hurt others or organization.
Similarly, your team members should be able to call their peers on bad performance or behaviour. Employees are reluctant to tolerate the discomfort which comes with confrontation and difficult conversation. They think they will maintain a healthy relationship with their peers by not calling them out. But what actually happens is that they resent each other and the relationship gets damaged as they are not able to live up to each others’ expectations. This may sound counter-intuitive but peer pressure is important for high performance. Great teams are able to withstand this pressure. They can carry out difficult conversations with their peers
A great way to achieve good accountability is publicly acknowledge what every team members need to achieve. You should also set some standards and rules which every employee must follow. This will eradicate any ambiguity that stands in the way of accountability. Moreover, you can also conduct regular reviews on behaviour and performance. Employees should actively communicate about the performance of their peers in writing or verbally.
They don’t avoid constructive conflicts and debates
All professional relationships need constructive conflicts in order to grow. In organizations, people consider conflicts a taboo, especially at the top management level. People don’t want to hurt each other so they avoid debates and conflicts. What they don’t realise is that they are letting resentment develop between their relation by not allowing conflicts. One thing to note is that we are talking about productive debates and conflicts, not those redundant meaningless arguments. Personal and personality focused argument can ruin any great team.
The purpose of constructive conflicts is to attain great outcomes in less time. Plenty of time is saved by clearing any ambiguity and making sure that everyone is aware of all the things. When teams avoid conflicts, they give birth to artificial harmony which shows that team members don’t trust each other.
Teams which have long and constructive conflicts are able to form a lot of new ideas, solve issues quickly, save a lot of time, reduce politics and be more productive.
They focus on collective Results
Teams fail when they focus on individual results. Think of it as a scorecard in a sports game. All the players in a soccer match focus on the collective results. It does not matter how many individual goals they score, if their team loses, they lose too. An unrelenting focus on collective results and some KPIs is required to achieve great teamwork
Financial measures such as profits and revenues are not the only KPIs to be tracked. Although many companies ultimately measure their success based on these results, we are talking about an array of different results. Companies make certain what goals they need to achieve in a given period. So, even most companies focus on profits and revenue, these goals and objectives are more specific for teams.
For some employees, it is enough that they are a part of the company or part of the team. They may desire to get great results, but they won’t sacrifice or face any inconvenience to get it. Enhancing their own statuses, some employees only focus on the individual result even of these come at the expense of their team results. All humans have a natural tendency to self-preserve and to make themselves more important. However, the members of a good team should be able to against this natural tendency and to put the collective results of the team before their own.
Summary
Practising these tips can help you enhance teamwork at your workplace. Teamwork is something which cannot be achieved overnight. So, implement these tips by working with your executives and other top management employees. Top management plays a crucial role in enhancing teamwork since they overlook all the employees. So, it is important that you have executives at your company who promote teamwork. You can easily find an executive search firm in UAE to help you recruit executives who can enhance teamwork at the workplace by training your employees.
