Building Powerful, Connected Team
- September 11, 2024
- Posted by: Anuj
- Category: Blog
Leaders in every organization talk about building the team, working as a team, and “my” team. Yet few understand how to build and create a strong, supportive business team.
Why is this?
Because most skilled company executives and managers are exploring ways to improve business results and rightfully so, view team-based organization structures as the best design for involving employees in creating business success.
No matter what you call your team-building efforts – whether it is continuous improvement, total quality, or lean manufacturing – you are striving to improve results for customers.
Unfortunately, few organizations are pleased with the results their team efforts produce. If this describes your organization, then you will gain a tremendous edge by learning what our experience has shown in helping organizations across North America and Europe to build and create strong, supportive teams.
We call these “truths” because they have stood the test of time.
These truths of creating strong, supportive teams in the workplace continue to re-occur across time, genders, industry verticals, and national boundaries. The Six Truths to Creating a Strong, Supportive Team are:
- Truth One: A Sense of Commitment
- Truth Two: Showing Appreciation
- Truth Three: Sharing Positive Communication
- Truth Four: Spending Off-Line Time Together
- Truth Five: Shared Values
- Truth Six: Cope with the Unexpected
Truth One: A Sense of Commitment
A commitment is a promise. Applied to a workplace team, it is a sense of responsibility or duty that allows team members to override temporary conflicts that often surface in organizations. Members of strong teams take this commitment seriously. For them it is conscious, unwavering and unconditional.
Truth Two: Showing Appreciation
Strong, supportive teams share in common the ability to show appreciation to each other on a consistent basis. In showing appreciation, team members are essentially expressing that their fellow teammates are appreciated
Truth Three: Sharing Positive Communication
Strong, supportive teams spend a great deal of time talking to one another. This “talk” is both about trivial issues as well as important issues. Clearly, communicating on a continual basis makes team members feel connected and this feeling of connection allows team members to feel free to exchange information and ideas. Why is this important? Because teams who share positive communications are teams who are good at solving problems. Teams that do this well take the time to set aside the time to talk. When they do they focus on the team’s progress and team’s behavior
Truth Four: Spending Off-Line Time Together
Strong, supportive teams make a conscious effort to spend off-line time together. They know that this type of time helps build relationships and helps to create a feeling of team identity. Off-line time together can involve eating meals together, participating in community events, celebrating special events, holidays, or just plain “hanging out.”
Truth Five: Shared Values
One characteristic of strong, supportive teams is a shared belief in a set of values that guides ethical behavior. These shared beliefs in values help to create a bond between the team members as a way of working, interacting, and behaving together. Shared values serve to connect team members at a core level and this serves to validate and strengthen the team.
Truth Six: Cope with the Unexpected
All teams experience challenges of some type at a time of crisis. Strong, supportive teams have the ability to pull together and draw on each other’s strengths when they are faced with the stress of a crisis. They are able to pool their resources, work together, get help from outside support systems, keep communications open in the face of strong emotions and most importantly draw on their shared beliefs from their team values.
To know more about how to ease the transition to work from office, write to us on connect@fourthquadrant.in