Welcome to yet another article in Effective Leadership Series. In our previous article, we saw details about different roles in teams. In this article, we will see the importance of developing teamwork. Any task can be easily accomplished with the help of teamwork. In one of the previous articles, we saw about setting goals. Goals are very important for a team to function without any confusion. There are different types of roles based on which work happens inside a team. A leader should be able to effectively manage the team understanding all the roles and responsibilities. The thought process inside the team should always be alike. If the team members are aligned with the same goals they will be able to provide a quality output as a team effort.

The complete efficiency of the team can be obtained only if every individual inside the team is given equal importance to share their views and thoughts. Though a leader will frequently be observing the staff members and their skills, it is always good to facilitate them with opportunities to prove how good they are. There can be a huge difference in the perspectives. So it is good to hear from their own mouth. A leader should make the team feel more comfortable and should project the activities done by the team whenever they get an opportunity. Though it is definitely going to be a collective team effort, every individual counts. It is good to have an individual meeting with the staff members if possible to know what they feel about the team and what they think will be the future of this team. This will help in calibrating how successful the team efforts will be.

Developing the leadership skills of the team

• It is the responsibility of a leader to prepare a future leader for the team by giving proper assistance and training. A leader should be capable of mentoring the staff members to develop leadership qualities inside them. In the process of enhancing the leadership qualities inside the team, a leader should be able to do the following:
• Make sure members of the team are aware of their agreed and shared objectives and they work as a team to accomplish the goals.
• Constructive criticism is very important in the team. A staff member should be informed about both strengths as well as developmental areas. A leader should keenly observe the staff members and provide feedback then and there. Both praising and finding faults should happen at the same time and should be reported to the staff members properly.
• Have frequent interaction with the team members to monitor their activities frequently to get an idea about their work.
• Always be open to new ideas and suggestions from the team members. A great idea sometimes emerges from the staff members. The idea can be just an improvement to the standard operating procedures of the team or for the organization.
• Speak to them a lot about maintaining high standards and delivering high-quality product or service.
• Always look for an opportunity to train the staff members on skills that will be required either as an individual or for the team. The team can also be strengthened by any additional recruitment if required.

Importance of Multi-Skilling

In an ideal world, the team's efficiency will be great if every team member is assigned a particular task and asked to do only that and nothing else. But the system is changing nowadays. Instead of working in a completely tasked manner, more flexibility is expected where multi-skilling is given more importance. A team can really do a great job if every team member understands the job of the other team members. This will not be very easy. A leader should be able to facilitate training session and workshops to spread the knowledge from individual to other team members. This will also require time allocation where there will be a necessity for one team member to work with other team members. A staff member can be given an opportunity to work with another staff member whose role is completely different. By doing this the staff member will get a great exposure and different perspective to the way things are worked out. This will increase the change of teamwork to a greater extent and it will also help in enhancing the skills of the staff members.

Points to remember during teamwork

There are few points to be kept in mind while promoting teamwork. In order to build a strong team, standard operating procedures should be communicated properly to the team members. Traning should be organized wherever required. The multi-skilled staff members of the team can be used during the training to transfer the knowledge to the other staff members of the team.

• A leader should always encourage competitions between ideas and not between individuals.
• A role should be assigned based on the personality instead of fitting someone who is not suitable for a specific role.
• If the number of members in the team is limited, a leader can look forward to making some staff members play multiple roles. This is to ensure the team's operations are fully covered.
• When the roles are assigned to the team members, have a meeting with the team members to plan how the teamwork will be executed.
• Along with the tasks being assigned to each team member, the deadline should also be clearly communicated along with full details about their responsibilities.
• There should be frequent team meetings to track the progress and performance of the team.
• The team should focus completely towards the collective achievement.
• Even though there will be individual contributions, it should be dealt with only in the team perspective.

A reader should be on top of all the things mentioned above and should be able to train the members whenever possible to make them get new skills. Apart from the work-related items, there should also be interactions within the team to maintain good rapport with inside the team. In order to keep the team motivated towards the work they do, frequent reward programs will be highly necessary. We will see the reward programs in our next article.

Image Source:

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Hope you had an interesting read. Share your views on this topic in the comments section.

 
My previous articles in this series:

Effective Leadership #1 - An Introduction
Effective Leadership #2 - Focusing on Quality
Effective Leadership #3 - Learning From Others
Effective Leadership #4 - Gaining Experience
Effective Leadership #5 - Comparing Leaders and Managers
Effective Leadership #6 - Developing Strengths in General
Effective Leadership #7 - Building Personal Strengths
Effective Leadership #8 - Mastering Roles
Effective Leadership #9 - Evaluating Key Leadership Roles
Effective Leadership #10 - Preparing to Lead
Effective Leadership #11 - Staff member recruitment
Effective Leadership #12 - Forming the team
Effective Leadership #13 - Exercising Authority
Effective Leadership #14 - Delegating Tasks
Effective Leadership #15 - Process of Delegation
Effective Leadership #16 - Effective and clear communication
Effective Leadership #17 - Dynamizing Groups
Effective Leadership #18 - Leadership Types
Effective Leadership #19 - Military Leadership Model
Effective Leadership #20 - Collegiate Leadership Model
Effective Leadership # 21 - Decision Making
Effective Leadership #22 - Goal Setting
Effective Leadership #23 - Different Roles in a Team

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