Collective high morale of the
team is the greatest contributor to the habits of winning. Any team can’t think
of wining without the collective readiness for the winning. Creating great teamwork
is a challenging process. Referring to a collection of people as a team doesn’t
make any team winning. A group is typically a collection of people who are
collected headed by the leader where member works on their own most of the time
with little or no dependence on other member of the group. But the team shares
the leadership, people in the team are interdependent, they have collective
sense of responsibility not just ‘My Work or Your Work’. The goal of the team
is more prominent than their individual goals. Individualism is the prime
character of a group whereas a team plays on collaborations.
It is easier to decide on change
than to get people to change. People and teams are creature of habits and changing
habits are much harder than changing structures and systems. Whose responsibility
is it to create a good team; the leader or individuals? A leader is seen as the
owner a team but in this age of quick and exhaustive information, leaders can’t
only be considered as the full source of information to lead the team. Though,
there is a leader of each team but situational leadership is required where
each individual has to lead in different situations.
Positive team spirit and sportsmanship
attitude are required. A robust culture is the result of nurturing individual
and team spirit. There are numerous absolutes of team building but a few
are indispensable, they not only build the team spirit but also integrate the
individuals to pursue for a common goal. Some of the TeamSpiritBuilders are as
follows.
TeamSpiritBuilder #1, Seamless Communication
Communication is the blood of any
team, it carries the information and ideas to be shared with the team.
Communication is not limited to mastering any language and usage of
contemporary phrases and expressions, it is an intention to let your ideas
flow. Good communication is all about inner readiness to share what you think.
The main objective of communication to put everyone of same page. Honest and transparent
mind-set allows good communication to happen. Aim toward two-way interaction,
exchange of ideas, and developing new insights in regular communication.
TeamSpiritBuilder #2, Togetherness
All corporations, big or small,
are running many events in their organizations to promote inclusion at all
levels. It main objective is ‘Togetherness’. When people come together in an
informal arena their bonding grows, their understanding about each other grows,
truth strengthens and stress bursts. Create times for people to laugh together
and loosen up. This will also stimulate creativity. Consider some of these
ideas: start a meeting with a relevant joke or funny story, show a clip of a
comedy video tape that pertains to a current challenge. But, on the other side
when people do not participate with their wish and are forced to participate,
it works in other direction. This has to be ‘Very Intentional’. But what if
individuals are not ready to come for these activities? then we are picking the
wrong chord first. We need to fix another chord.
TeamSpiritBuilder #3, Empower for Ownership
Ownership provides confidence
among individuals. Control-obsessed culture often broods escapism. Giving
ownership does not means throwing the responsibilities to the individuals but
it should be supplemented by resources. Encourage opinions on important
decisions affecting the business. Give a voice to each individual so that
everyone shares the context that they are able to contribute to the success of
the team. When people feel like they’re being heard, it will go a long way
toward enriching relationships, fostering collaboration, and heightening
engagement. No team can grow when people
are afraid of taking the responsibility.
TeamSpiritBuilder #4, Higher Mood State
The mood elevator; the higher
mood state or lower mood state determines the morale of the team. The higher
mood states are; curious, flexible, sense of humour, understanding, appreciative,
optimistic resourceful, creative, insightful and grateful. On the other hand,
the lower mood states are; impatient, irritated, worried, defensive, judgmental,
burned-out, angry and depressed. The feelings on mood elevator are nothing more
than product of our thinking. Inability to cope up with stress leads to lower
mood states. Stressed team cannot be a winner team. The leader should have a
sense to measure the stress of the team and take steps to de-stress the team. This
should be the first step in the journey to be a great team. In an atmosphere of
high expectation from the customer it is next to impossible to stop the stress from
the source but individuals should be made capable of managing the stress. And
this has to be taught. How? This can’t be done by repeatedly saying that ‘ you
should learn stress management’ but provide training to fight the situating.
They should learn how to prioritize, how to organize, how to seek help and most
importantly, how to negotiate. Healthy state of mind creates healthy culture.
TeamSpiritBuilder #5, Trust
Trust is the foundation of
healthy team and trust builds in an environment of transparency. Trust helps in
accepting deepening relationships and removes politics and silos from the work
place, creating an organization within which people feel safe. A team without
trust isn't really a team; they may not share information, they might battle
over rights and responsibilities, and they may not cooperate with one another. It
doesn't matter how capable or talented people are, they may never reach their
full potential if trust isn't present in the culture of the team. How to build trust? Trust can’t be built by
preaching about trust, that many organization does. Open communication is
essential for building trust. Everyone in the team should be talking to one
another in an honest, meaningful way. And that can be done when everybody is
clear about what he/she is doing and how it is contributing to the common goal.
Know each other by meet regularly, share personal stories or experiences and
respect differences.
TeamSpiritBuilder #6, Learning, not just preaching
Fast changing dynamics of
businesses requires people to learn things quickly and implement them into the
job. The success of the team largely depends on how responsive the team is
towards change and readiness to learn. Leaders who only inflicts fear find it
difficult to motivate the team. Leader are facing a lot of problems when they
assume people should understand by themselves. Even the smallest issue may
require training. Training is about learning the new way of doing any job. Corporate
trainings are of two types; technical trainings and soft-skills trainings. It
is easy to get the people work on any new tool but often difficulty to convince
that their email response time is more than expected. Simplify the
process. Don’t exhaust employees through complexity and
buzz-words. People seek direction that is too the point. People are
inspired when given the opportunity to learn how to do new things.
TeamSpiritBuilder #7, Encourage Networking
Ability to network with people
outside the team means to expand our orbit of resources. Not a single process
or skill can be excelled in isolation, we are required to work in
collaborations. To be comfortable among ‘not friends’ forces you to learn a lot
of new social skills. Networking is about people enjoying other
people, communicating passions and connecting with others who
share those passions. It’s about listening, figuring out what others
need and connecting them with people you think can help, without any designs
for personal gain. Each team members should understand the need of healthy
networking.
TeamSpiritBuilder #8, Measure performance
You can’t improve what you can’t
measure. Prepare team profile on the basis of above seven TeamSpiritBuilders and
rate your team from 1-10. Set realistic goals weeks by weeks. Prioritize needs.
Focus, where you require more development for ex. if your team is poor in
communicating ideas then it should be given top priority. Communicate the
performance result to the team and ask their suggestions for improvement for
the next cycle. Involve team in goal-setting and planning. Two-way
communication get the individuals connect with the requirement.
Winning culture creates winning
teams. Culture is defined and created from the top down, but it comes to life
from the bottom up. You really can’t change the culture without changing the
behaviour of the individuals in that culture.
