How to Build a High-Performing Team

By Kris Schinke

Teamwork is the ability and willingness of a group of people to work together towards a common goal, by sharing their knowledge, skills, and resources, and by coordinating their actions and decisions. Effective teamwork is not just a nice-to-have, but a must-have for any business that wants to succeed in today’s competitive and complex environment.

Why is teamwork important for business success?

Teamwork can bring many benefits to a business, such as:

• Improving productivity and efficiency. When people work together as a team, they can accomplish more than they could individually, by dividing the tasks, optimizing processes, and reducing errors and waste. Teamwork can also help to save time and money, by avoiding duplication and rework.
• Enhancing innovation and creativity. When people work together as a team, they can leverage their diverse perspectives and experiences, and generate inventive and effective solutions. Teamwork can also help to foster a culture of learning and experimentation, where people are encouraged to try new things and learn from their mistakes.
• Increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. When people work together as a team, they can better understand and meet the needs and expectations of their customers, by delivering high-quality and customized products and services. Teamwork can also help to create a positive and memorable customer experience, by providing consistent and responsive service.

How can one cultivate a culture of teamwork?

Teamwork does not happen by chance. It requires a deliberate and intentional effort from both leaders and team members. Here are some tips on how to cultivate a strong culture of teamwork in your organization:

• Establish and clearly communicate a shared vision and purpose. Before working together as a team, make sure that everyone is clear about common goals and desired outcomes, and confirm everyone’s commitment to achievement.  This can help to create a sense of direction and motivation for all team members, thereby avoiding potential grounds for confusion or conflict.

• Create a collaborative and trusting environment. To encourage teamwork, one needs to foster a sense of collaboration and trust.  This means team members need to feel comfortable to share their ideas and opinions, as well as to ask for help from others (or offer it as they are able).  This process can be facilitated by providing effective forums to enable strong communication and coordination among the team members – perhaps through the provision of common technology tools or regularly-scheduled team meetings or other forums where information can be freely shared.

• Encourage diversity and inclusion.  It will be difficult to foster a strong sense of team unless every member of the team feels like they are valued.  Do you regularly celebrate the diversity of backgrounds, experiences, skills, and personalities that comprise your team?  The more voices at the table, the less likely to fall into the traps of groupthink or failing to notice obvious blind spots. Ensuring that major decision-making processes incorporate the inputs of different perspectives not only strengthens individual team members’ commitment to organizational goals but can also be an effective way to proactively identify and mitigate business risks.

• Be aware of the power of leadership modelling.  How well does the organization’s leaders practice effective teamwork skills?  How does the organization respond to team members who proactively identify potential risks?  How does the organization respond to mistakes? It might not be so easy to get team members to demonstrate desirable teamwork skills if they don’t see these behaviours in action from those who lead them.

Practical Team-Building Tips for Individual Leaders

Does being a visible role-model for good teamwork practices seem like too arduous a task?  It doesn’t need to be.  Here are some bite-sized tips you can consider incorporating into a daily routine.  Once one or two of them are habits, one may be surprised at how much easier it is to continue “stacking” on additional best practices into a regular work week:

1. Setting and communicating clear and realistic expectations and roles for each team member. This can help to avoid confusion, frustration, and duplication of work, and ensure that everyone knows what they are responsible and accountable for.  It can also help to align the team’s efforts and resources with the organization’s vision and strategy; and measure the team’s progress and performance.  Team charters and RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) matrices are excellent tools to support this type of communication.
2. Giving and receiving feedback in a constructive and respectful way. By identifying strengths, areas for improvement, and suggestions for enhancement, the regular provision of timely and specific feedback can go a long way to improving a team’s overall efficiency and quality of work. It can also help to build trust and rapport among team members and allow them to better understand the impact of their individual contributions into larger organizational products and processes.
3. Acknowledging and appreciating the efforts and achievements of others. Recognition can be an excellent motivational tool to inspire teams to continue to perform at a high level.  It can also help to create a positive and supportive work environment, by boosting the team’s morale and confidence, and reducing stress and burnout.  Recognition can be delivered in many ways including verbal praise, written feedback, public acknowledgment, and other tangible incentives, each of which should be tailored to the preferences and needs of the individual recipients.
4. Resolving destructive conflicts and disagreements in a timely and positive way. Conflict can and should be harnessed as a positive force to increase the range of available options and mitigate potential risk factors.  However, destructive conflict – especially destructive conflict which goes unaddressed for long periods of time – can lead to negative impacts on team morale and performance.  One way to support positive conflict resolution is to provide team members with training on collaboration, compromise, and accommodation in a context of fairness, openness, and respect.
5. Showcasing failures as learning opportunities. It’s easy to celebrate successes – but what about when something doesn’t go according to plan?  To build a culture of resilience and agility, it’s important to take the time to showcase failures (rather than bury them) and use them as learning opportunities for the betterment of the organization.  Taking a systemic approach to the investigation of failure eliminates the process of blaming individuals and builds common team accountability for doing better in the future.  Leaders can use the “after action review” process to support team members in identifying – what was supposed to happen, what happened, why did planning not equal execution, and how could a better result be achieved the next time?

Everything DiSC® as an Effective Approach to Building Better Teamwork

X5 Management is proud to be an award-winning partner with Wiley in offering the many training solutions that form part of the Everything DiSC® suite.  In particular, Everything DiSC® Workplace training helps learners to better understand their own and others’ behavioural styles, preferences, and tendencies, and how they affect an individual’s approach to teamwork.

Everything DiSC® Workplace training can support:

• Discovery of an individual’s DiSC® style and how it influences their delivery of their assigned role and responsibilities

• Awareness of the DiSC® styles of all team members and how to appreciate and leverage their strengths and differences

• Identification and understanding of strategies to overcome the potential challenges and conflicts that may arise from different DiSC® styles working together

• Development of strategies and action plans to improve an individual’s communication and collaboration skills to enhance the overall functioning of their team.

Everything DiSC® training is flexible and customized to the needs of specific clients.  Individual half-day workshops are suitable for teams of any size and hierarchical level and can focus on any number of specific skill sets that certain teams may wish to explore (including emotional intelligence, harnessing the power of productive conflict, and general leadership skill enhancement).

Conclusion

Teamwork is not something to be taken for granted, but rather something to be nurtured and developed. By cultivating teamwork, an organization can improve productivity and efficiency, enhance innovation and creativity, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Teamwork can also help to create a positive and engaging work environment, where people enjoy and excel at what they do.

Any organization who wants to take their team to the next level of performance and collaboration should consider the Everything DiSC® Workplace training, which will help to understand and leverage team behavioral styles and preferences.

About the author: Kris Schinke, Vice President – Integration, X5 Management

Kris is a focused and goal-oriented business professional with extensive executive experience in retail, financial services and not-for-profit. She has a passion for inspiring and coaching others and believes a positive work culture is key for business growth and sustainability. She is adept in training, leadership and promoting teamwork.

Kris is delighted to be working with X5 Management, not only to support valued clients but also in her executive role supporting the ongoing business growth, both internally and externally.

She is an avid volunteer and loves to donate time and effort to a variety of organizations.

A proponent of personal development, Kris holds an MBA from Athabasca University, her Distinguished Toastmaster designation from Toastmasters International and her Life Coaching Certification from New Skills Academy. She also attended Harvard Business School (A Culture of Health in Business), Norquest College (Inclusion at Work, Business Economics), and U of California (Diversity and Inclusion,). Kris is a certified Everything DiSC® Facilitator, an accredited Five Behaviors™ Trainer and a certified Conflict Management and Mediation Practitioner.