What is the Key to Effective Team Building?

Team building in your office helps steer individual efforts towards a team goal. Putting together an effective team is a basic challenge managers face in virtually all industries and work environments. Find out why a collaborative environment is the key to effectively creating a team that gets the job done.

Why Collaboration?

A collaborative environment is the key to proper team building because it leads to more comprehensive ideas. Ideas lead to innovation, innovation leads to opportunities, and opportunities lead to profits. That's why business professionals often use teams to achieve corporate goals. Create strong teams that work toward company vision to make good things happen within your organization.

Advantages of Team Building

The main advantage of team building is that managers learn to leverage the strengths of each worker in a group to achieve goals. When you tap into each worker's strengths, they are generally happier at work and achieve goals more readily. Letting each teammate work in areas where they are strongest motivates them more naturally.

Another advantage to building a great team is that your staff gets to collaborate with one another in order to solve problems in the workplace. One person might have one idea for fixing a problem, and then the rest of the team can build on that idea to create a solution. This type of collaboration also fosters team members who rely on each other for input and support when completing everyday tasks.

Collaborate, Do Not Compete

Take the idea of team building beyond the confines of your own office. Teamwork is also effective when companies form partnerships. Every company has a strength, and if you can tap into another company's strength, you can better your company's industry position. Although some competition is good, being too competitive often drains resources and does not maximize your company's potential. When you collaborate with a competitor, skills, abilities and ideas are shared that can lead to the greater good of both companies. For example, both firms can sign a partnership for two years, and after that partnership concludes, both companies have expanded their customer bases and increased their bottom line.

Keys to Successful Team Building

Diversify your team, because diverse thoughts and ideas lead to better innovation. Be transparent with your team, because this builds trust. Use emotional intelligence skills to connect with your employees and fellow leaders. Empower teammates to tap into their skill set, and give them the tools and support they need to succeed. Offer relevant, continuous feedback that puts workers on the right track to success.

Team building takes time and effort, but the rewards are beyond measure. Once you leverage your team's strengths and use different leadership techniques to motivate workers, get ready for increased motivation and crushed goals as your company moves forward.

Photo courtesy of Nguyen Hung Vu at Flickr.com