Employees fear lack of communication because it causes confusion and stress. Throughout interviewing more than 500 leaders for Corner Office, I asked everyone about the art of fostering a strong sense of teamwork. Building a successful team is more than finding a group of people with the right mix of professional skills. To create a strong sense of group commitment in their team, they need to spend some time together to build a relationship.
Their ideas can help you lay the foundation for a highly productive team that can communicate, cooperate and innovate in an environment of mutual trust and respect. The most important thing is that the team or company is governed by their stated values, rather than simply following the instructions of the exercise, and that people get promotions even though their behavior goes directly against established traffic regulations. Once you have a simple plan, you'll need to keep reminding your team of priorities, even if it may seem repetitive. However, because the team's objective is clear and there is an external marker to track progress, the feeling of “us” in the team is greater than the dynamic of “us” and “them”, which can often divide coworkers in companies.
Mapping your tasks and action items with a powerful set of organizational tools such as Fellow will become a visual reminder of your progress and will motivate your team to continue setting milestones towards the final and collective goal. Use Fellow's Shared Streams feature to collaborate on team goals and create a sense of transparency across the company. When your team understands the scope of their peers' work, they can support each other and hold each other accountable. Remember that the most effective team leaders build their relationships based on trust and loyalty, rather than on fear or the power of their positions.
Difficult discussions aren't fun for anyone, but they're necessary to lead a successful team. There are six main factors that drive the creation of a strong culture of teamwork: the things that, if done well, have an enormous impact. In order to foster an environment of respectful communication for successful teamwork, people must feel comfortable expressing their thoughts, opinions, and points of view with the rest of the group. And that means that if they have an original idea for the team, they can think twice before sharing it, for fear that they will discard it.
