7 effective ideas to build a successful team

May 22nd 2018 | Posted by phil scott

7 effective ideas to build a successful team

A team is an ever-changing, constantly evolving group of people.  It’s a combined group of individuals with different personalities, abilities, goals, ambitions and perspectives.

The success of a business rests on the teams that drive it, which makes building a successful team crucially important to organisations and the leaders within them.

There are many simple ideas and techniques that can be used to help build a successful team.  These are easy to implement and can support far-reaching achievements.

Make shared goals

A successful team at work needs to be built on solid foundations.  A key part of this is creating shared goals and making sure every team member understands them and has personally invested in them.

The goal could be a financial target, launching a new project or delivering a new service.  Whatever it may be, setting clear objectives and making sure that everybody taking part (no matter what their role, big or small) believes in the goal and how to get there, is a critical step in creating team success.

Create personal roles

As essential as the whole team supporting shared goals, is each individual understanding their own personal role.

Whatever the team or project is, each person will have their own role and responsibilities.  It’s important to ensure that everybody understands what their job is and what’s expected of them.  Setting clear job roles, with well-defined objectives will show each person how their job fits into the wider goals and team.  They’ll be able to understand just how vital their individual contribution is to success and be as invested as possible in the bigger picture.

Provide the tools

For a team to be successful, the individuals within it need to be able to work to the best of their abilities.  Quite simply, this means giving them the best tools to do the best job.

From a practical perspective, it’s vital to make sure people have access to the systems, technologies and facilities they need.  This also means helping people to keep their skills up to date so they can be effective in their role in the team.  This could be through individual mentoring, group activities or external training.

Encourage communication

Lack of communication is one of the quickest causes of team failure.  Once people feel they’re working in isolation or that their own individual role has no impact on the team success, everything can fall apart.  Communication is the key to ensuring that people work together as a team and helping individuals to realise that their work is one part of the wider goal.

Simple ways to keep open communication and conversations flowing can include team meetings to discuss key points, individual 1 to 1 meetings between people working together and regular announcements from team leaders outlining the team’s progress and re-iterating people’s role within the team.

Create opportunities for fun

For a team to be successful, it can help if they enjoy working together.  A simple way to support this is to create opportunities for fun outside of the work environment.  Away days, team building activities and social events give everybody a chance to make connections and build relationships based on more than just the joint work project.

People can get to know each other and understand each other’s personalities.   Knowing more about somebody could help improve how people approach each other and how they work together to achieve their joint goals.

Lead, not push

Team success also rests on the qualities of the leader.  As well as all of the team building ideas above, a group of people need a leader they trust, believe in and are committed to following.

A leader needs to inspire people and encourage them to succeed.  They need to lead from the front and engage the team to invest in the shared goals.

Show appreciation

It’s as simple as saying thank you. Acknowledging individual and team achievements goes a long way towards building a positive, productive and successful team.  People need appreciation for their hard work so acknowledging their individual contribution has a big impact.

Plus as a group, celebrating accomplishments reinvigorates enthusiasm for the project and gives people a chance to take stock of all that’s been achieved and re-commit to team goals.