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As a manger, your success comes from the people you hire and manage. If you hire the wrong people or cannot lead them effectively, you are going to struggle to be successful. Because of this, you have to take the time to make sure you develop a strong team that can work together as one cohesive unit.
If you are a sports fan, you know the importance of a team. You can have all the best players but this doesn’t mean you will win the championship. More often than not, the teams that win it all are the ones that are put together with purpose and who are effectively lead.
Below are 5 tips for you to develop a strong team so you can see results and your team can achieve its goals.
5 Ways To Develop A Strong Team
#1. Do The Grunt Work At The Beginning
When building a team, the most important factor is the people on the team. So when you are hiring a new member for the team, you cannot base your decision solely on their resume or their alma mater. You have to get inside their head and figure out who they are as a person and whether or not they will fit or clash with the team.
To do this, you have to take part in group interviews where other members of the team interview potential candidates. You have to do various personality testing on both your team and the new potential hire to make sure there is a match. This is going to lengthen the hiring process but at the end of the day, the extra work you put in now will pay off in the future.
#2. Teach Success
Many times we throw new hires into the fire and let them learn and fail on their own. While there is something to be said for this technique, you really do have to take the time to teach new hires how to be successful at their job.
Sit them down and explain and show them what success means in this position and to the team as a whole. Once they understand this, they can better allocate their focus and drive to helping the team succeed.
While I am all for letting people learn as they go, you can develop a strong team much faster when each member of the team knows what success looks like. Don’t waste a year of potential grow by having your employees wonder what success looks like in this position. When you do this, you run the risk that during their annual review they are blindsided because they thought they were doing a great job only to find out you view success differently.
#3. Believe In Them
Most managers praise the team when it succeeds. Very few are accepting of failure. To develop a strong team, you have to believe in the team in both times of success and failure. When failure happens – and it will – take the time to review what went wrong. Let everyone learn from the failure so that growth can come about.
It is so important to push your team through a failure. Make it known from the start that failure is seen as a good thing. Through failure you grow and become better at everything you do. When you have an open and accepting culture of failure, you will find more success from your team as they won’t be as afraid to try new things.
#4. Make Then Accountable
You have to make your employees be accountable when you develop a strong team. In their day-to-day duties they can work independently and make decisions based on their understanding of the teams goals. But they need to be held accountable over the long term by you.
This can be achieved a few ways. You could create monthly or annual goals for them to achieve. Or you could have a monthly coaching session with them. It really is up to you how you want to hold employees accountable, so long as you do it. Don’t be like many companies and promise an annual review and then never have one. You have to be accountable just as much as your team does if you want to experience success.
Final Thoughts
When you want to develop a strong team, it all starts at the beginning when hiring new people. You have to take your time to make sure they are going to mesh with the current culture of the team. This isn’t to say there will never be issues or disagreements, as these come with the territory of working together. But the ultimate goal is to put together a team that has a common focus and goal.
From there, you have to instill the values of success in the team and believe in them. When you believe in them, they can believe in you and the goals of the team.
At the end of the day though, developing a strong team starts with you as a leader. When you are at your best, and are open to both success and failure as are passionate about your team and the goals you want to achieve, you can lead a team with a shared vision.
[Photo Credit: Jim Bauer/Flickr]
Jon Dulin is the passionate leader of Unfinished Success, a personal development website that inspires people to take control of their own lives and reach their full potential. His commitment to helping others achieve greatness shines through in everything he does. He’s an unstoppable force with lots of wisdom, creativity, and enthusiasm – all focused on helping others build a better future. Jon enjoys writing articles about productivity, goal setting, self-development, and mindset. He also uses quotes and affirmations to help motivate and inspire himself. You can learn more about him on his About page.