Building a good team is a difficult task for most companies and organizations. So, how do you put together the perfect team? It might be hard to achieve, but it is not impossible. All successful teams have the same attitudes in common: collaborative, respectful and honest. The CXC team went through some ups and downs before transforming into a “high performance team”. We want to share some insights from our retrospectives. Maybe you find some inspiration in this.
Ensure psychological safety
Do you dare to openly share your opinions and ideas within the team or the organization? How do you handle recognition, or being ignored or ridiculed when interrupted? Building and maintaining personal relationships is an important indicator of successful teams. When team members treat each other with respect and show empathy and compassion, the overall outcome of the team increases and so does the feeling of being in a safe environment.
Try "emotional sharing" for example: Share personal issues in and with the team. You'll be surprised at the positive reactions.
Another big plus is the trust that the entire organization has in a team. The trust that self-organized teams bring enormous added value to a company. Believe me, it more than pays off.
I can count on you - build reliability
Reliability is strongly linked to psychological safety. And for this very reason it should not be neglected. It's simply a good feeling when I know that the work will be distributed evenly within the team - when I'm sure that everyone will work reliably and meet important deadlines.
Working together towards a common goal inspires everyone, whereas inequity and unequal distribution of the workload cause high performers to lose their motivation.
Finding the right balance - creating common structures and rules
If you want to work effectively, you need a goal in mind, but you also need clarity about the next steps to get there. But not every team needs the same amount of structure - some work better even in unclear and less structured situations and proceed according to their own, more flexible rules. So, structure should not simply be imposed, but first developed together in an environment of psychological safety (see above).
Conveying meaning and speaking about results
The personal commitment of individual team members increases almost exponentially if the work of the team has meaning for the company but also and especially for the individual employee. It is a management task to communicate this meaning and highlight the results achieved by the team, constantly and repeatedly. It is important for managers to live by the same rules as well. Nothing is more convincing than values and rules that are realized and adhered to every day. When was the last time your work was appreciated?
We would love to hear from you. Please do not hesitate to contact us directly (stavros.papandreou@arvato-scs.com, tim.boettcher@arvato-scs.com & david.pelster@arvato-scs.com). Or add your comments directly and kick off a discussion within the BCP community.
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