Leah Ryder* says everyone wants to be more productive, and a key part of that is working better with your team.
Ah, teamwork.
When everyone’s in sync and productivity is high, working together is a dream.
On the other hand, a team that’s having problems working together can make everything at work seem cold and un-motivating.
Everyone wants to be more productive, and a key part of that is working better with your team.
Research from Gallup found that engaged teams deliver positive results.
In fact, these teams see improvements over their less-motivated counterparts in all kinds of areas:
- 17 per cent higher productivity overall.
- 10 per cent higher customer satisfaction.
- 21 per cent higher profitability.
- And a whopping 41 per cent reduction in absenteeism.
Group work is always going to have its inherent difficulties, but if your team isn’t engaged, their output negatively affects their teammates, which influences the entire work environment.
Harnessing engagement and motivation is important for all teams.
Improving motivation starts with making changes to how the team works, to create an environment where collaboration and performance are shared, visible, and easily managed.
There are three critical pillars that need to be put in place for your team’s productivity to thrive:
- An actively evolving team culture that values trust over talent.
- The co-owned prioritisation of work, so that everyone has a say — and a stake — in what they work on.
- A structured approach to the “how” of teamwork that solves basic team needs so everyone can feel free to clear away confusion and get the job done.
Meetings don’t have to waste time, projects can be delivered promptly, and your team can enjoy working together.
Always be actively creating team culture
The value of trust in the workplace gets a bad rap, but there are some really good reasons for putting culture first.
An emotionally intelligent team is more productive because personal investment on the part of each member builds engagement and innovation.
What constitute the unique traits of your team culture are only limited by your imagination, but there are some set conditions for creating a trustworthy team culture that grows productive collaboration.
According to Harvard Business Review: “Three conditions are essential to a group’s effectiveness: trust among members, a sense of group identity, and a sense of group efficacy.”
Psychological safety is a core component of trust.
It is defined by how each of your team members perceive threat versus safety when considering taking a risk at work.
According to Harvard Business Review, teams with true psychological safety take more healthy risks, are more comfortable speaking their mind, being creative, and feeling comfortable to question and challenge ideas.
Team members feel confident that they won’t be made to feel embarrassed or punished unfairly for making a mistake, asking a question, or offering up a new idea.
Merely paying lip-service to trust, however, won’t make it a real pillar of team productivity.
Prioritise your team’s right to choose
The co-owned prioritisation of what your team works on has a profound effect on team productivity and retention.
A joint research study between The Energy Project and Harvard Business Review analysed various facets of work satisfaction, and prioritisation was a strong motivating factor: those who were able to effectively prioritise their work reported being 48 per cent more engaged.
The people on your team don’t want to feel like bystanders to how their work gets prioritised, but that doesn’t mean it’s as easy as letting teams freewheel and sort it out on their own.
So what’s the best approach?
Transparency is a great place to start, by keeping information open and accessible to anyone, with the goal of breaking down silos between teams.
The style of how to prioritise work should be decided by your team.
How would they prefer to define their to-do lists?
Does your team define success and set goals collaboratively? (Truly?)
If your team could work on anything they wanted, what would it be?
These are all-important questions to not just ask yourself, but to ask each other.
Build in structure that can stretch
As much as everyone likes to write their own rules, a lack of team structure makes maintaining cohesive and effective team productivity tough.
For one, without structure, it’s harder to depend on each other, and dependability has been found by Google researchers to be the second-most important factor in building effective teams (after psychological safety).
According to Gallup, each of your team members has needs to be met to be successful.
These break down into basic, individual, teamwork and growth needs.
Basic and individual needs are paramount to getting a team to a base level of productivity:
They need to know what’s expected of them (basic need).
They need the right materials and equipment (basic need).
They need to be able to do what they do best (individual need).
They need recognition that they accomplish work successfully (individual need).
Without these assurances, even the most closely bonded team won’t be able to stay on course.
Your team will be more productive with some standardisation to how work gets done, so long as it’s tailored to meet their needs.
You’ll also save time if you can quickly adjust those processes in order to stay flexible and keep the good teamwork flowing.
* Leah Ryder is Content Marketing Lead at Trello. She tweets at @leahryder.
This article first appeared at www.atlassian.com.
