“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” —Andrew Carnegie
Building an effective team is easier said than done. You can manage machines easily, not people. You can press buttons and get the things done by machines mechanically, but managing people throws lots of challenges as they have different mindsets, emotions, egos, and feelings. Leaders must find out various personality types, mindsets, emotions, and expectations of team members to motivate them to accomplish their organizational objectives.
Synergy Is Strength
Stephen R. Covey in his book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” highlighted the significance of working in teams as one of the habits—Synergize. Hence, all leaders irrespective of their industry must acquire the ability to work in teams and collaborate to build effective teams. There are innumerable advantages to working in teams. Leaders can leverage the strengths of their team members as everyone has strengths. When they come together, they become a powerful team. Most organizations craft their vision, articulate it effectively, create a strong organizational culture, build strong teams, leverage the strengths of their employees, and finally, accomplish their vision. Thus, when leaders build team, they utilize the strengths of their precious human resources to improve the organizational bottom line. George Bernard Shaw rightly remarked, “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples, then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” So exchanging ideas generates more ideas, thus, providing solutions to lots of problems.
A Blueprint to Build a Successful Team
Here is a blueprint to build your team successfully:
- Encourage diversity in your team to get more ideas and insights. This will enable the team to successfully brainstorm more solutions to problems.
- Be transparent to build trust in your team. It inspires them to deliver their best.
- Inculcate emotional intelligence in your team members to enable them to get along with others easily.
- Provide clarity of tasks to be executed to eliminate any differences of opinions and views among the team members. It helps them work as per the expected objectives.
- Empower your team members. Allow them to explore and experiment. If they fail, correct and ask them to learn lessons from failures. Don’t criticize them.
- Create a healthy organizational culture and climate for employees to contribute their best. Culture connects employees to create an emotional bonding to improve the organizational bottom line. For instance, leaders such as A. G. Lafley of P&G; Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com; and Ross Fowler, the managing director of Cisco Systems Australia, strove hard to connect people by emphasizing organizational culture.
- Adopt different tools and techniques to different team members based on their needs and expectations. Additionally, adopt situational leadership to enhance your team’s effectiveness. Remember, there is no one-size-fits-all approach in teambuilding.
- Offer them feedback to enable them to assess their strengths and concerns. It helps them overcome their concerns to grow as better performers and leaders.
- Allay any apprehensions and fears among your team members. Constantly inspire them about the possibilities to execute the vision effectively. Enlighten them to look at the door that is opened, not the one that is closed.
Don’t Compete, Collaborate
King Solomon once was quoted as saying, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”
With a dynamic global business environment, the permutations and combinations are changing rapidly. Companies are reinventing themselves with the changing business scenario. They are finding that collaboration is better than competition. Every company has its own strengths and weaknesses. Leaders currently capitalize on the strengths of competitors by collaborating, rather than competing with them. The truth is that while competition is needed, excessive competition drains a lot of resources and energies. So leaders must consider the current global climate and redesign their strategies in order to collaborate.
Collaboration is not new to mankind. In the olden days, several leaders avoided competition with the strong ones and collaborated for mutual benefit, peace, and prosperity. Collaboration involves a win-win situation for all, while competition involves win-lose or lose-win.
The advantage of collaboration is that people share their knowledge, skills, abilities, and, above all, ideas to deliver better results. We find more creative solutions for problems as people think differently and present diversified ideas and insights. It adds value to work, thus, leading to the best decision or solution. It capitalizes on the strengths of all the people for the collective good.
We find several global researchers and authors collaborating, rather than competing, to provide the best content to readers. Although it does entail a division of labor and saves time, apart from leveraging diversified competencies, such collaboration pays off for authors and mostly for readers, as the latter receive a manuscript that has been well-edited and proofread. At the workplace, too, we find employees coming together and working to achieve the best outcomes.
Working Together Is Success
In the ancient days, the slogan, “Might is right,” prevailed. However, in today’s world, it has been replaced by “Just is right.” Similarly, in ancient days, competition and the rule of the jungle prevailed. However, in today’s world, people appreciate collaboration, which is congenial for both growth and prosperity. It is obvious that what worked in the past no longer works in the present. Henry Ford rightly noted, “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”
The 21st century is a period of coalition and collaboration. A new mindset must replace competition with collaboration. As Mother Teresa said, “I can do what you can’t do and you can do what I can’t do. Together, we can do great things.”
As such, it is crucial to identify the various personality types of your team members, leverage their strengths, understand their expectations, and apply different leadership tools and techniques as per the situation to build an effective team to improve the organizational bottom line.
Adapted from “Soft Leadership: An Innovative Leadership Style to Resolve Conflicts Amicably through Soft Skills and Negotiation Skills to Achieve Global Stability, Peace and Prosperity” by Professor M.S. Rao, Ph.D.
Professor M.S. Rao, Ph.D. is the Father of “Soft Leadership” and founder of MSR Leadership Consultants, India. He is an international leadership guru with 37 years of experience and the author of more than 40 books, including the award-winning “21 Success Sutras for CEOs” (http://www.amazon.com/21-Success-Sutras-Ceos-Rao/dp/162865290X). He is a C-suite advisor and keynote speaker. He is passionate about serving and making a difference in the lives of others. His vision is to build 1 million students as global leaders by 2030 (http://professormsraovision2030.blogspot.in/2014/12/professor-m-s-raos-vision-2030-one_31.html). Prof. Rao advocates gender equality globally (#HeForShe). He was honored as an upcoming international leadership guru by Global Gurus (http://globalgurus.org/upcoming-leadership-gurus). He serves as an advisor and judge for several international organizations, including Global Leadership Awards in Malaysia and Middle East Business Leaders Summits & Awards in Dubai. He coined an innovative teaching tool―Meka’s Method; leadership training tool―11E Leadership Grid; and leadership learning tool―Soft Leadership Grid. Most of his work is available free of charge on his four blogs, including http://professormsraovision2030.blogspot.com. He can be reached at: msrlctrg@gmail.com.
