As a business owner, one of the best investments of your time is building a foundation for teamwork.  A strong team allows you to focus on growth and the future of your business, while a weak or inexperienced team can keep you mired in day-to-day operations.

Team’s don’t just happen. Not every employee you hire will know how to collaborate and communicate.  Some staff may have worked alone in previous positions.  Your role as a leader is to inspire your team to adopt your vision of success and then provide them with the tools, training and work environment that will enable them to work together to achieve your vision.

At ActionCOACH we follow 6 keys to effective team building:

  1. Strong Leadership

As the business owner you need to practice open communication with your team.  Be transparent so they know that they can speak to you about anything.  By doing this you provide clarity within the team and show you care.  Make sure to offer feedback every couple of months so you keep your team working towards goals but also give your team a chance to let you know how they are feeling about their role.

  1. Common Goals

For a team to be successful they need to know what is important and what isn’t.  Setting daily/weekly/monthly/yearly goals will allow your team to aim for the best and keep motivated.  Make sure you align values, vision and mission with business objectives to send a clear, consistent message to your employees.

  1. Rules of the Game

Make sure that your employees understand their roles and responsibilities within your business.  You can do this by providing a clear list on what each role does whilst also providing articulate and detailed expectations within that role.

  1. Action Plans

Creating action plans gives your team an opportunity to keep motivated whilst also learning how you would like the business to develop. Detailing out a roadmap that they can follow gives everyone a chance to impact the business one way or another.

  1. Support Risk Taking

Motivate your team to contribute new ideas for the business.  Make sure each team member knows that no idea is too big or too small and that you praise them on ideas to help grow the business.  Allow them to also understand that mistakes offer learning opportunities, inform the person of the mistake and provide them with feedback on how to move forward.

  1. 100% Involvement and Inclusion

For a team to really excel make sure that you give everyone a voice. Understand that some characters will be bolder than others and invite participation whenever you see fit.  This will help build the team together whilst also showing that you listen and value everyone’s feedback.

If you want to learn more about how to create a high performance team you can download our paper on Creating a Dream Team HERE which includes practical guidance and tips to intentionally attract and build dream teams.