How to Improve Teamwork In the Workplace

Every organization will accept the fact that teamwork is a GOOD thing. However, you might also come across a tiny percentage of people who say, “Teamwork? Oh, such a waste of time it is!” That’s okay—no need to focus on them.

There is definitely something special about teamwork that makes it a top priority for HR and organizations. When you have teamwork in your workplace, you can

• Foster creativity and learning
• Blend complementary strengths
• Build trust amongst teams
• Teach conflict resolution skills to your teams
• Promote a wider sense of ownership
• Encourage healthy risk-taking

Knowing the value of teamwork, an organization can scale its growth multi-fold at a faster pace. Wondering how to improve teamwork in the workplace? Then, you have landed in the right place.

Here are a few tips to help you foster teamwork at your workplace: 

7 tips to improve teamwork in the workplace

1. Set clearly defined goals

Being an organization, you need to have clearly thought out and well-defined long-term goals. Then, it will make it easy for every team member to work harmoniously towards the same goal with a spirit of teamwork.

You can also set variable targets and difficulties so that the team has a structured workflow. When the milestones are achieved, your team’s dedication is surely going to increase.

2. Stop micromanaging

Your teams should feel like independent, standalone units contributing to your company goals. Unless you give your teams some autonomy, they won’t be able to take charge. Instead, they will constantly look at you for direction. 

Wherever possible, try to let your teams set their own deadlines, develop their workflows, and tackle obstacles. This will motivate them and also help them work as a collective unit.

3. Recognize and reward

According to a survey, recognized employees are satisfied employees. And satisfied employees will do better at work. So if you are looking for a happier, stronger team, recognition is the secret. Here are some ways to recognize or reward your employees:

• Team-wide emails recognizing individuals
• In-person praises
• Promotions
• Bonuses
• More holidays
• Recognition program for employees

4. Create a culture of collaboration, not competition

The prime objective of teamwork is to foster collaboration, but it turns into unhealthy competition. Employers often compare different teams with each other, which is not a good practice at all.

Each team has a different set of responsibilities and different skill sets. When you compare someone with someone else, you are disregarding their work and putting them down. Instead, you can hold team-building activities to improve efficiency with healthy competition.

Try refraining from any such sort of competition within your teams and try to build trust in a team.

5. Set a protocol for resolving conflicts

Nobody likes to go through the unpleasantness of conflicts at the workplace, but no matter how peaceful your company culture is, conflicts will happen.

That’s why you need to put yourself into action. You should figure out a way to deal with conflict even before it happens. If you have pre-planned everything in advance, you have the power to spin an unpleasant situation into a learning event.

Wondering how to execute it? First, hold a meeting with your trusted team members to establish a protocol. Then, once you finalize the protocol, relay this to everyone in your team.

You can also fine-tune the procedure as conflicts arise within teams.

6. Use project management tools

You can enjoy flexible working practices and better teamwork if you have the right set of tools in your toolkit. There are various project management tools available in the market which you can use to communicate and collaborate with your team members effectively.

Though emails and instant messaging (such as WhatsApp) are a great medium to keep people on the same page, you might also need to host a weekly video conference to share your thoughts through a more intimate channel. Additionally, an online screen recorder can be an invaluable tool for recording meetings or creating video tutorials to further enhance team communication.

You can find the right project management tool for your team with just a bit of research.

7. Understand the importance of good leadership

Last but not least, you need to understand the importance of good leadership skills for effective team management. Each team requires a leader who encourages accountability, models empowerment, and facilitates unbiased decision-making while maintaining momentum.

Team leaders know the most about the project, and that does not always mean they have extensive experience with leading. But, they can indeed work on their leadership skills to ensure they have better teamwork in the workplace.

Wrapping up

Studies have shown that stronger teamwork has the potential to increase employee satisfaction and decrease absenteeism. Improving teamwork in your workplace can help your organization in various ways.

However, you need to keep in mind that strong teams are not through together overnight! You need to work on how to improve teamwork in the workplace! All the best.

How to Handle and Adapt to Conflicting Opinions Successfully

 I think it’s pretty obvious that we all bring different skills, strengths, and beliefs to whatever we do. Often we can learn more and find greater opportunity in our disagreements, discovering new ways to solve problems, strengthen proposals, and handle tough times together. RJ asked me to explain how this could be done better or supported more.

We’re All Individuals with Habits

If you pay attention to every person—what they are like and what they need—you can work with them more successfully than if you take a single approach and expect everyone to respond in the same way. Our brains are inclined toward habits and patterned thinking. So when we come into a meeting or enter a discussion, we often take and stick to a particular position about, say, how to plan for next year or improve a crucial project, rather than being completely open to others’ opinions and stances. 

Humans are naturally attached to their positions, often so deeply that these positions can start to feel like moral stances; we also typically think we need to protect our positions so as not to lose ground or status. It’s as if that habit, or that position, is inherently tied up with who we are as a human being. Unfortunately, this means that when our position is challenged, we can feel as if we ourselves are being challenged or are under attack—and therefore we often get defensive or try to anticipate the next blow by striking out before it hits.

This is a natural response, even when our positions have very little to do with the true problems the organization is facing—or the real opportunities available.

Start Where It’s Safe

So if you want real dialog, the place to start is not with the disagreement, or not even necessarily with the issue itself. Instead, begin with listening carefully, noticing any points of agreement about what is working, where the group is trying to go, or what everyone is trying to accomplish. Map these points of agreement visually, if possible, so everyone can see and affirm them. Once people have found all their agreements, they often feel comfortable enough to assess aspects that could be better or explore where the potential is. 

Try to avoid having people jump to any conclusions because that could snap them back into their mental habits and positions. Think of the conversation as building out carefully toward the thin ice where agreement does not yet exist. Facilitating the discussion in this way allows the participants to consider their differing positions out loud and even to change their minds without being penalized, which can be tremendously reassuring and energizing. When our minds are relaxed we can tolerate seeing new thoughts better. We can open to the possibility of trying new thought experiments or even real-world experiments, thinking about and doing things differently.

Leaders Should Always Go First

What it takes to be able to share ideas and experiment within an organization without fear of retribution. I think it’s specifically the responsibility of the person with the most power, usually the leader, to create and sustain psychological safety within the team. One way to establish a safe environment is for the leader to acknowledge how important it is to be able to share ideas, even if they challenge someone else’s, and to show they mean what they say by volunteering themselves for people to practice on: 

“I recognize that I may not always have responded well to new ideas in the past. I hope you’ll help me as I practice developing a new habit of responding to new ideas with curiosity and openness.

“So, here’s my request to you: Anytime I revert to my old habit of ignoring or shutting down a new idea, I want one of you to please point out that I’m operating out of my old habit and ask me if I’d like to use my new habit of curiosity and openness. And then give me a moment to adjust. Will you do that for me?”

Asking for and accepting help in initiating change is a particularly effective way to create psychological safety. It shows that the leader is willing to change to make the group better and is modeling the practice of taking feedback. Both aspects can actually improve the leader’s performance. That sets the tone for helping everyone in the group get better at sharing their views. This entire practice is a form of “cuing” someone to practice a new behavior.

Practice Cuing for Better Communication

Cuing is a way to create partnerships and help each other have more effective and productive conversations. Here’s an example from my own life. When my son was little, he didn’t always know how to tell his father when he was bothered by something. He would say, “Mommy, you tell Daddy.” But it’s important to learn to speak for yourself, even when you’re four. So I would offer to help, and we would walk to wherever my husband was. I would say, in a particular tone, and with emphasis that my husband recognized, “Daddy, there’s something we need to talk about.” Then he knew he had to pay attention. I would facilitate and cue each party: “What was the thing you wanted to tell Daddy?” and “Daddy, are you understanding this fully, and can you answer?” Over time, both my son and his father learned how to have this conversation. 

Team members often benefit from the same kind of approach. The more you do together through partnerships and teamwork, the less it becomes anybody’s place to make anyone else feel bad, regardless of who has hierarchical power.

We’re all flawed human beings, and we can accomplish the most for the organization—and for ourselves—if we are aware of our flaws and try to help each other share views and consider new ones. When we all have that intention and practice, psychological safety will pretty much take care of itself.