Top 10 Tips for Building a Great Team

The danger of writing this is that I infer we are brilliant at this, we are not, and we don't have everything below fully nailed down... yet, but we will :)

However we are good at it, and more importantly we have a passion for getting this right. The fundamental route to success in the times we live in are strong, diverse, dynamic teams. Teams will always outperform the individual and can achieve great things, and solve complex problems.

However, HOW you create a great team is rarely talked about within most organisations and fewer people are trained in the fundamentals, or helped to develop the right behaviours to make it work.

From all of our experience and research, and from all of the client teams we have worked with across all sectors and across many different countries here are our top 10 tips:

1.      Culture

Its a terrible cliche but; 'Culture eats strategy for breakfast.'

Why?

Everyone needs a strategy, but as Mike Tyson famously quoted, 'Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.' Your culture will define how a team responds when the strategy falls apart. It will underpin your ability to adapt and overcome. It will help the team pull together or fall apart.

Deliberately choosing and building a culture is a challenge but the below will help.

2.      Purpose

No matter how aligned a team is, we are all motivated by different things. We will all have a different purpose in life and we will define what purpose means in different ways. So there needs to be a team/organisational purpose that clearly defines what that organisation's purpose is, and then individuals decide if that purpose is the right vehicle for achieving their own goals.

Getting this right isn't easy, but getting it right will unleash great drive and energy from a group united in their direction of travel.

3.      Values

Your values need to be clear simple and a true reflection of who you are, and what you as a group truly value. You then need to ensure they are inbuilt into everything you do, your business approach, your policies and behaviours, how you make decisions.

Our values are Professionalism, Honesty and Teamwork, and we live these every day.

4.      Empathy, you have to care

If I could do one thing I would rip up every management training programme and get everyone to start with truly understanding and opening up to empathy and compassion. You could know nothing about leadership, but if those around you know that you truly care for what happens to them, they will listen.

There are of course a myriad of other skills required to manage and lead a great team, but if it is built on empathy and compassion you won't go far wrong.

5.      Trust

If you feel trusted, you will trust those around you. The value of this is that it allows a team to honestly and openly discuss mistakes, frustrations and how to improve. Trust allows for vulnerability, and this allows for true team bonding along with deep learning and development.

Build trust and your team will be strong.?

6.      Honesty

Honesty sits hand in hand with trust. A team that truly trusts each other will allow all members to be completely honest, deeply honest. This allows the team to operate effectively, plan for the future, learn grow and most importantly build great resilience and flexibility.

7.      Culture of learning / embrace mistakes

This one is simple. The world is changing quicker than ever, therefore we must be constantly learning. We learn quickest through making mistakes, BUT, only if we feel safe to make those mistakes and to discuss what we have learnt.

Embrace mistakes, learn quicker, succeed faster.

8.      Constant transparent communication

Communicate constantly. Great teams are sharing all the time, they are passing around ideas, leanings, observations, anything that helps the group move forward. This becomes even more important the faster you are growing. Create a system through which the team can communicate easily and often.

This is one of the critical tools through which the group can outperform the individual by an order of magnitude.

9.      It’s all about the team.

Hire people who understand that the team comes first, who understand that if the team succeeds everyone succeeds. This is not a sacrifice on the part of the individual, rather the opposite. If the team is built as per above then by putting the team first the individual will succeed far beyond where they could have done otherwise. Your values must support behaviours that allow a diverse group to work as a unit, this doesn't mean everyone has to be friends, but there has to be trust, respect, honesty and close communication.

10.  Integrity - What you do speaks infinitely louder than your words.

None of this list can be done artificially. Any hint of insincerity, any inconsistency, any broken promises, any breaking of agreed values, will risk shattering team cohesion.

However no one has to be perfect, you and others will make mistakes, will have bad days, will sincerely make promises you later realise you cannot keep, but if done with integrity, within a culture of trust, then it won't be a problem, everyone will learn and move forward.

I hope this helps, and I'm always happy to talk and share ideas.

Good luck!