What makes a successful team?

What makes a team successful? There are many things you can do to be a good team, but how do you take it to the next level and become an excellent and successful team?

In this article, we provide the framework for you to help you team become successful.

What is good teamwork?

Individual team members come with different personalities, skills, strengths, and weaknesses. Uniting these different characters and harnessing those skills to help your team move forward and complete any given task, is essential for success.

Good teamwork maximises everyone’s strengths and brings out the best in them.

The top 5 elements of a successful team

If you are a team member or manager looking to get the most out of your team, consider implementing the below five elements of a successful team:

Communication – To be a successful team member and ultimately a great team, all team members must be able to communicate effectively, especially when it comes to listening, and sharing opinions. This also includes challenging ideas and resolving disagreements. It helps to never assume that everyone has the same information as you, so update the team on the information you must ensure an even level of understating. Finally, be sure to offer praise and encouragement often.

Delegation – We don’t mean passing on the work you don’t want to do, or that you find boring, but sharing the workload between all team members. Use the strengths of each team member to get the best out of the work. Allocating specific tasks to the most suitable people within the team, helps you to cultivate a successful team.

Efficiency – You will find it much easier to complete tasks on time if you collaborate efficiently with all members of the team. By working together, you can all play to each other’s strengths to complete tasks on time.

Ideation – Creative thinking and productive brainstorming will be positive by-products of having a team focused on generating ideas. To do this effectivity, your team members must feel comfortable, valued, and respected.

Support – A great team is like a family unit. Yes, there will be differences of opinions, disagreements, and challenges but your team needs to be able to support each other throughout these times. Trust also plays a large part of support, so be sure your team fully trust each other to develop a team fully supportive of each other.

Teamwork qualities that an employer would look for

In almost every job you apply for, you’re going to be assessed to see how you would fit in with the current team. To help you feel more prepared for future interviews, we have outlined 6 characteristics of a successful team. If you can demonstrate these qualities in your interview, you will be able to show that you are a team player, capable of quickly becoming a valid and valued member of the team.

• Understand and focused on the vision
• Listen and learn
• Value trust and authenticity
• Happy to disagree and challenge
• Embrace change and learning
• Celebrate success

What are the strengths of working in a team?

While there are many benefits to working as part of a team, we feel the below demonstrate some of the most important benefits:

• Collaborative thoughts generate outstanding ideas
• Diverse perspectives help develop winning innovations
• Increased happiness
• Individual growth
• Reduction of employee burnout
• Increase in individual skills
• Improved productivity
• Reduction of stress
• A boost in creativity

How to build a good team

Developing a high-performing team is not something that just happens – it must be worked on and cultured, usually under the supervision of a Team Leader or Manager.

Below we have listed 7 ways you can build and develop a good team:

Diversify – Different backgrounds, opinions, ages, and experiences all help to make a successful team. Aim to cover any blind spots in your team by hiring for a position that is missing within the business.

Establish expectations right away – New team members tend to be open to who things are managed in the new company. They will watch to see how others act and start to change their behaviour accordingly. This may be either positive or negative, so it’s best to set the expectations of the team and organisation from the start.  

Respect team members – It’s important to remember that your team members are individuals, and you need to respect as an individual as well as a team member. Praise individual team members for their performance and for the different skills they bring to the team.

Motivate with positivity – We all respond well to positivity and it’s the same with motivating your team. Shape the behaviour of individuals with positive reinforcement, rather than anger, disappointment, or criticism.    

Communicate – This is not the first-time communication has been mentioned in this article, but it is a vital part of team success. It’s important to speak with each other, listen to what colleagues have to say, and help fill knowledge gaps by adding any extra information on a project you may have.  

Build trust – Encourage your team members to trust each other and be ambassadors for your organisation. Empower your team to make sound business and leadership decisions on their own.

Reward good work – Finally, be quick to reward good work! Think about what you and your organisation consider a reward to be, and then put a plan in place to offer rewards for outstanding work. This could be someone outing in extra work and going above and beyond, or if the team complete a project early, or way under budget. There are other ways you can show appreciation, it doesn’t just have to be financial. Sometimes just saying you really pleased with their performance and that you acknowledge they went above and beyond their daily responsibilities.

If you would like to train towards a new career or promotion at work, our Course Consultants are available to discuss your career goals and advise which courses would be best for your future. Contact us on +44 (0) 20 3198 7700 to get started.