Why Is It Important to Develop Your Team as a Business Owner?
Many businesses invest significant time and money in developing their teams in an effort to build cohesion, improve motivation, and achieve greater commitment from their staff.
Research consistently demonstrates the benefits of effective team building, for example:
- Connected teams boost profitability by 21 per cent.
- Motivated staff outperform colleagues with low levels of engagement by over 200 per cent.
- Happiness in the workplace increases productivity by approximately one-third.
Effective business leadership has strong associations with a positive workplace culture and strong lines of communication between team members as our recent case study shows. However, 70 per cent of deviations in engagement are attributed to managers, so it is imperative to add value to your business culture by investing in your team to improve leadership and delegation skills. People, are one of the main drivers of success or failure in business. If your team outperforms your direct competitors, your business will thrive.
So, How Can You Develop Your Team?
Model the behaviour you wish your employees to exhibit. Employees aren’t robots who can be programmed to behave in a desired way. A staff team typically comprises individual personalities with a variety of experiences, talents, and idiosyncrasies, so model how you wish them to behave in their roles. Side-by-side mentoring, which draws upon the knowledge and skills of more experienced team members, can also be invaluable for demonstrating how to complete tasks, provide support, and intervene where necessary.
Don’t Overlook Soft Skills
Technical role-based knowledge and understanding are important facets for any team, but there are also so-called soft skills that you should aim to develop, through a programme of team development training or informal team building. Communication, time management, assertiveness, and leadership will all help you to get the best from your team and allow you to address known weaknesses.
Understand Your Team’s Needs
Unless you understand exactly what your team needs and where they need to improve, any programme of development that you devise will probably miss the mark. By inviting and listening to your employees’ feedback, you will understand what they need from you, so hold frequent review meetings and establish a culture of openness in which every employee feels empowered to share his or her views. Read our recent case study that demonstrates how excellent employee engagement can transform your business.
There Are Three Key Approaches To Developing Your Team:
1) Team cohesion: Establish a set of common goals or KPIs, so that every employee understands their role in achieving these. Employees should understand that they are part of a wider ecosystem in the workplace, rather than individuals aiming for hero status. A collaborative workplace culture encourages the sharing of problems and solutions, and recognises success, so that obstacles to business growth and productivity are overcome more quickly.
2) Training methods: Find approaches that recognise and respect each individual’s needs and learning styles, to support your employees’ development. Remember that absorbing information is easier through interactive and engaging activities and will enhance existing skills more quickly.
3) Team building: Team building is a recognised way to improve teamwork through informal interactions and challenges outside of a formal work setting and management hierarchy. Team building activities help expose people’s strengths and weaknesses and, most importantly, are fun and memorable.
Ready to get more from you staff? At Secantor, our experienced team can help you to get more from the people behind your brand. Working with an outsourced Operations Director can help give your team direction and improve your business’s processes to ensure a happier and more productive team. To find out how we could help you transform your team, please book an exploratory call today.
Image Source: Unsplash