Going for gold: supporting great teamwork

Going for gold: how to support great teamwork in summary:

• There are several strategies businesses can adopt to encourage great teamwork. These include regularly revisiting and updating team goals to ensure they remain clear, relevant, and aligned with overall objectives. This helps foster a sense of direction and purpose within a team.
• For people professionals and line managers, adopt a deep understanding of each team member’s role and contributions to enhance collaboration, self-awareness, and accountability. This ensure everyone knows their responsibilities and how they fit into the bigger picture.
• Promote an open, supportive team atmosphere that encourages knowledge sharing and provides opportunities for rotating leadership roles, which helps maintain dynamic teamwork, and leverages diverse skills and perspectives.

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On your marks! The 26^th July sees the start one of the world’s most revered sporting events: the Olympics.

Taking place in the beautiful French capital city of Paris, this year’s games will see some of the world’s greatest athletes contesting in some of the toughest feats of endurance and athleticism. But, it’s not just individual feats of strength and power that’ll be on display.

With a plethora of team sports also taking place, you’ll have the chance to witness exhilarating events filled with competitive spirit, strategy, and unforgettable moments of teamwork.

And that element of teamwork is something businesses can certainly learn from. After all, as the old saying goes, ‘teamwork makes the dream work’. And, whilst it may be a little bit of a cheesy cliché, it’s a principle that holds true… and not just in the sporting world. In the corporate world – where collaboration and synergy can drive innovation, productivity, and success – teamwork can make or break a business.

So, what can you do as an HR professional to get teams in your business working together at an Olympic-standard? These top tips will help you support great teamwork in your business, and encourage your people to ‘go for gold’:

Set out your gameplan

Teams usually kick things off with a solid game plan, knowing exactly what they want to achieve and when. But, as time goes on, those plans can get a bit blurry. It’s like when you’re trying to remember why you walked into a room (or in my case, opened the fridge) —suddenly, your original purpose isn’t so clear anymore!

To keep everyone on track, it’s a good idea to encourage your line managers to have regular check ins to ‘check in’ on their team’s goals. Make sure they still make sense and give everyone a little reminder of what they’re all working towards. It’s kind of like hitting the refresh button to keep everyone focused and motivated.

Understand team roles

Research by Belbin suggests that people within teams seek out certain roles that feel ‘natural’ for them. Some people are ‘co-ordinators’ or ‘implementers’ for example, while others are ‘specialists’ or ‘shapers’.  It’s worth helping your people develop an understanding of which of the nine commonly accepted team roles they fall into and the implications this has for the way they interact with others.

People who are clear about their role and purpose in the team are generally more self-aware and better able to build effective teams and great working relationships.

Think in terms of opportunities… not barriers

Sometimes, teams find it difficult to complete projects or meet targets because there are obstacles standing in their way. These are not always necessarily big things, either. It could be a small procedural issue, or a simple lack of awareness among colleagues that’s inhibiting progress.

To prevent that from happening, don’t let your teams get stuck in a rut of complaining about what’s getting in the way, but not doing anything about it. Encourage your people to identify the barriers to progress, and support your line managers in helping your teams find creative ways to get round them.

Encourage knowledge sharing

Often, a workforce can be so busy with the day-to-day tasks that they either forget or don’t have time to share information that might be of value to their peers.

People often have a ‘knowledge is power’ attitude and can be deliberately protective about what they know. Your line managers can help prevent this by ensuring there are regular occasions where teams can get together with the specific aim of sharing contacts, data, useful insights and lessons learned.

That isn’t just supportive of great teamwork, but it ensures vital knowledge circulates throughout your business and isn’t lost forever should key personnel decide to leave.

Foster an open atmosphere

Great teamwork will be easier to accomplish in an environment where feedback is encouraged and issues are shared openly. It’s important people feel listened to when they tell you or their line managers things are not working as well as they should. So, look to create a supportive environment where any concerns or problems can be raised ‘safely’ and where everyone pulls together to find a solution.

Research highlighted recently in the Harvard Business Review shows that high performing teams generally possess high levels of group EI (emotional intelligence). They’re able to collaborate and co-operate more effectively because members trust one another, have a strong sense of group identity and confidence in their effectiveness as a team.

Offer team building and learning opportunities

New teams can benefit greatly from the opportunity to learn how to work well together – not simply be ‘thrown in at the deep end’ and be expected to gel immediately. On the other hand, existing teams will find it useful to refresh their collaborative skills and develop a deeper understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

There’s a wide array of team-building activities out there that can help do that: ranging from ‘outdoor’ type challenges to more conventional workshops. But, teams can of course develop learning opportunities themselves – they just may need a little guidance.

Get your employees to think about the kind of development they would find most effective and challenge them to find creative ways of meeting their own learning needs. A modern HR system that includes an integrated Learning Management System is one way to ensure your company is able to tailor training and development opportunities to the unique needs of your people.

Rotate team leadership

A change of team leader can sometimes help to refresh or accelerate great teamwork. This isn’t, of course, appropriate in all scenarios – but it’s worth considering, particularly with teams working on defined projects.

Different stages of a project may require different styles of leadership. So, take a good look at the skills and qualities of your team members and assess whether there may be value in moving the leadership role around.

Reward great teamwork!

Lastly, acknowledge your employees for consistently working brilliantly in their teams and going above the call of duty.

However, there’s an argument to say that if you want a team to work well together and generate great results, you need to reward them as a team. Incentive programmes that reward individual performance may actually have a negative effect on teamwork. So, review your reward mechanisms to make sure they reflect the kind of behaviours you want to encourage that are supportive of great teamwork.