Motivating individuals to create a winning team
What does it take to create a winning team? Is it enough to have skillful employees to get your team to win in every situation? Or does it require something more than just technical skills?
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My personal point of view is that having skillful employees is a must to create a winning team. But, that’s not the only thing. You might have some of the best brains in the business working as part of your team. But unless you can get them to work together towards a single goal — you cannot have a winning team!
So, how do we achieve that? Well, here’s what my personal experience has taught me about the same -
Lay out the rules of the game
You cannot succeed at the game, unless you know what you want to achieve. Each business has a certain set of rules, requirements and expectations from its employees. And, as a leader you need to convey those expectations to the people in your team.
So, the first and foremost thing you ought to do is to lay out the rules of the game. Get them to know about what the business wants to achieve from their skills. Before you even talk about success and winning, you need to define the expectations you and the management have the team.
It can be a one-on-one meeting or a group meeting. But letting everyone know about what you expect from them is the key here.
Team goals before individual achievements
Each individual in the team must have his own goals. But, that does not mean they should focus just on achieving their personal goals. Succeeding as an individual will not count, if the project is a failure. No one is going to notice your personal achievement if the project is gone haywire.
This is why you should always put team goals before individual achievements. You must focus on what the team needs to achieve. If you are able to amalgamate your efforts with that of the team, then the end results are going to take you places!
The feeling of being part of a winning team is far more satisfactory, than being a winner individual whose team has failed to achieve the desirable results.
Build accountability to build a winning team
Leadership is not just about giving orders. It’s about building a team of leaders, where each team member is accountable for his/her efforts. To create a winning you must have team members who are willing to take responsibility. Great leaders are the ones who inspire others to become leaders.
The question is — how do you do it? Well, it’s simple; follow these three steps -
define roles, set expectations and let them work! Team members will deliver better than expectations when they are given the freedom to work the way they want to. And, there’s plethora of evidence to support this fact.
It’s not always about success
Failures are inevitable. You cannot expect success in everything that you. And, that’s the kind of atmosphere you must create within the team. Yes, success is important for business, but so is failure.
Failure teaches us how to become better than what we are right now. And, that’s how you grow as a business and as a team. You must inculcate the habit of analyzing things critically within the team.
If things turned out south in a project, get the team to stick together and discuss what went wrong. Get to know their thoughts on how things things could have been done in a better way. Let them evaluate their performance, so that they don’t repeat the same mistakes in future.
In the end, It’s all about trusting each other
“You cannot build a winning team with team members that don’t trust each other.” Blame games, office gossip, and similar other things can break a business. And, I agree you cannot avoid these things. The key lies is not letting these things impact the team members.
Practice active communication so that no one hesitates in talking to each other in the team. Engage in team building activities. Go for team outings. Let the team members know about each other and create a bond that goes beyond just work.
Friends trust each others; so try to strike the bond of friendship between team members. Even researches have shown that team members who are friends in personal life perform better at work as well.
As a leader, it is your responsibility to create a winning team. And, you’ve got to do what it takes to achieve that! Strategies may vary from team to team and individual to individual. But, in the end it’s all about finding the right combination of things that you can do to motivate your team.
I found mine in the points I’ve mentioned above, and hope you will find these points helpful. If you have some other points or any personal experiences that helped you create a winning team combination, do share them in the comments. I’d love to hear about them.
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Vartika Kashyap is a seasoned marketing professional who is an expert in digital marketing and entrepreneurship. She currently runs the marketing team at ProofHub — a project management software for teams of all sizes. Connect with Vartika on LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter.
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