Never underestimate the potential of team. If they are given everything they need to thrive they can move mountains for your business.
If you’ve started your own business, you might struggle to let go and let your team do what you need them to do. Or perhaps you expect them to love your business the way you do, and to work exceedingly hard simply on the basis that they want to see the business succeed.
That just isn’t how things work.
In this article, we’ll give you tried and tested advice on creating high performing teams.
Employ the right people
You’d be surprised how much this does not happen, especially when businesses are small and medium sized. For a long time, you might have relied on people who weren’t quite right for the job, but they got it done at the time.
Every business has unique requirements for good employee fit, and good employees must be developed as well as sought out.
This might involve paying more than you paid before. As the adage goes, ‘you get what you pay for’. If you’re looking to recruit a manager for your team, choose someone who costs a little more but has a wealth of experience managing teams just like yours over someone less experienced with lower salary requirements.
Don’t underestimate the importance of leaders. They bring out the best in your staff and, if you get it right, will increase productivity.
Look for people who have key leadership traits
If you’re looking for a great team leader, you should look for someone who has key leadership traits. Leadership traits are a very particular set of skills essential to good leadership practice. They are:
- strong ethics and moral standards,
- great self-organizational skills,
- efficient at learning,
- the ability to nurture growth in employees,
- knows how to foster connection and belonging.
Some of these key leadership traits come naturally to some individuals, whilst others are acquired through years of experience. You can teach good leadership skills, but some of the best leaders claim that they’ve always had the ability to apply the above traits to all aspects of their lives.
You should ask interviewees to give tangible examples of the above traits.
Now that you have the right leader in place, you can set about helping them build a high performing team.
Improving underperforming team members
Singling out underperforming team members can deteriorate performance if it causes other team members to feel at risk and alienated.
Sir Richard Branson is quoted as saying ‘train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough, so they don’t want to’.
Investing in training, resources and support for your staff members is a great way to improve your team performance without firing people or bringing in new staff members.
To identify underperforming team members, leaders should be measuring team performance through a series of metrics. That brings us to our next piece of advice.
Monitor team performance and take the time for 1-on-1s
Keynote speaker Jeff Hayden has said: “measuring is important but measuring what you need to measure and measuring it the right way is critical.”
Leaders must take the time to monitor their team, as well as individual performance, but in a way that is fair and makes sense.
Aside from identifying and monitoring business and team level key performance indicators, regular one-to-ones are a great way to identify strengths and weaknesses in staff members. They’ll also have other advantages.
Leaders must both drive and inspire
Though research by Forbes states leaders who both drive and inspire are the most effective – and it should be noted that most leaders say they do both equally – staff members most commonly assess their leaders as drivers rather than inspirers.
It is important that leaders can do both.
Don’t just drive your teams to do something, make sure you are making it clear why it is important that they do that ‘something’. What will your staff members get in return? Incentives are important and should be seriously considered. Promotions, pay raises, references, experience, and increased skills are all motivators that employers can leverage.
Creating a give-and-take environment for your team
Dr John Behr, an executive coach with 25 years of experience coaching leaders, says:
“To create high-performing teams, a leader must facilitate and cultivate a give-and-take environment, around trust. This way, you get a bi-directional exchange around accountability, ownership, and individual empowerment.
As an industrial/organizational psychologist, I like to look at team performance using the lens of giving-and-taking.
I will often ask the leader to consider: ‘How do you feel about your team, and how does your team feel about you?’ It’s about putting yourself in their chair to really understand their challenges.
It’s important for leaders to be as authentic as possible and apply their heart and head to the issue. We must remember that everyone on the team can be inspired. Putting yourself in their chair puts you (literally) in the best position to understand what matters to them most.”
Have you got a question about employee development?
Leaders can use the LeaderBridge platform to ask questions about the challenges you might face as a leader. We have various leaders from different industries and regions on the platform, from senior level to management and supervisors, willing to engage to help other leaders overcome challenges and gain fresh perspectives.
Go ahead, ask your question about team and employee development.
