7 effective rules to creating a winning team
MUSCAT: Times are changing, and so are people’s thoughts. Nowadays, jobs involve a lot of passion, ownership, and drive.
I have always believed that, a happy and cheerful workplace triggers creativity, innovation, builds trust, commitments, and solidifies togetherness in within a team. All these factors are reflected only when you have a great team to work with. In addition, a great team can only be built when you as a leader take the charge to build the team!
Repeatedly leaders from big organisations have been emphasising on investments on manpower along with innovation and technology. With the change in dynamics of the market (which is quite challenging often), we need to identify the ground realities, ensure that processes and systems are executed smoothly by the workforce, so that the goals of the organisation are met by the optimisation of processes and systems.
During my regular interactions with industry professionals, I have observed, that, one of the major reasons they wish to make a change in their careers, is because they crave for appreciation, recognition and empowerment. Surprisingly, quite often, monetary benefits no longer take the front seat in their demand list!
So, I decided to pen down this article for all the professionals and leaders, who are leading their teams and aim to achieve optimisation and reach their goals by practising these basic rules.
These simple seven rules will always help you emerge as a lovable leader. Empowerment: Empowering your team will always yield you great results and amazing confidence to control your business. Empowerment solidifies your control on business, as that gives you that extra time on thinking big & out of the box. Identify the day-today tasks, which are taking 80% of your day’s schedule. Assign those controls to the team and supervise once a week. In case the team fails, give them a second chance to improve and identify the flaws in their approach. Learn the art of delegation: Delegation & empowerment go hand-in-hand. Have short & specific meetings to identify roles and responsibilities of team members and give them all deadlines to chase. Supervise the deadlines and help the team surpass hurdles. I have always witnessed, the immense happiness the team feels, when their performance is measurable and is time bound. It always increases their sense of commitment and builds confidence within the team.
Build trust in the team: As the team feels empowered and gets clarity on their progressions, the trust builds on. Once the team builds the trust amongst each other, delivering positive results is never too far. Trust I feel, is one of the key drivers towards achieving a team goal. Trust on the team and its leadership. Trust can be built with a regular practice of one on one session on problem solving, hand holding as well as delivering personal ambitions & goals for the team. Trust Building takes time. Nevertheless, once it is built, it becomes an indispensable tool towards goal setting. Freedom of speech & thoughts: Every team member in within the team should feel equally important and part of the organisation. This is where the role of the leader comes in picture, so that, he can project every one as an equally, contributing stakeholder. When the team is confident that his thoughts and ideas will be appreciated and recognised, he/she shall take ownership in everything they do.
As leaders, we should always give the freedom of feedback based process development. When the team builds that faith on his leader, process innovation becomes more dynamic and frequent. Recognise, appreciate & reward: According to me, this is a magic tool! Appreciating the deserving & recognising the work of the candidate will always generate competitiveness, boost confidence, trust and create a positive work culture. One of the biggest mistakes managers and leaders commit is pulling people up on their mistakes and taking credits for their accomplishments.
As leaders, we should always appreciate the team member who performs. Appreciating any team member, senior or junior in front of his colleagues, shall yield you multiple bounds of positive vibes within team and will increase the sense of competition amongst peers in order to feel appreciated in the future.
I follow a simple rule of APAP …… Appreciate in Public & Apprehend in Private! Practice this tool and earn reward points from your team members. Focused career growth: As time passes by, people lay focus on clarity of thoughts and expectations. Career growth is always one of the key factors of creating a winning team. More clarity and unbiasedness, more trust you establish on yourself by your team. The team exhibits confidence in your goal setting plans and business objectives. In addition, if your team trusts you, as a leader your vision becomes a reality. Set short-term & long term career progressions which should involve empowerment, additional responsibilities, recognitions and fringe benefits along with monetary growth Goal setting: Just imagine a football match without goal posts, or a house without an address! Who will win the match? Where shall you go back at the end of the day! If you really visualise these two points, you can imagine the amount of confusion it generates in your mind! Likewise, any operation is meaningless if it does not have a goal. Retail companies chase revenues/ profits, production company chases production of the month or day, transport companies run on a dedicated track with time schedule etc.
As leaders, we need to identify our main goal. Once the goal is set, identify and achieve goals from year to year. The writer Shubhojit Mahalanobis is the general manager of Danube Home.