What Makes A Great Team?

Previously, I wrote about definition of a Great Company and continuing from that, I am writing about “A Great Team”. For the past two years, I have had the privilege to work on ‘Great Place To Work’ initiatives in my company and one of the topics that I resonate the most is “What makes a great team”.

Have you ever wondered what makes a great team? Here is my take on what makes a team great:

Be part of a purpose driven team with clear goals and objectives.

Passion fuels motivation and it needs to be inspired. I always believe a team needs to be purpose-driven as that sets a clear direction forward and as a team member, you know your part in that journey. In larger organizations, you are often presented with objectives that may sound vague or overwhelmed to you. Yes, compelling visions are great but also needs to be well understood by everyone. Question is: How do you link your work contributing to these objectives?

My approach is simple: by practicing these simple actions - Share, Measure, Monitor and Reflect. It is essential for managers to connect the dots, explaining or discussing with your teams about the goal. Together with my team, we would conduct a “deep-dive” session at every start of the year to explore the department’s goal and openly discuss what it means for us as a team. This establishes the understanding within the team as well as knowing how to measure progress. Now, this is only beginning as throughout the year, we will continue to monitor and reflect on the progress and ensure that we stay close to our goals. This sounds pretty basic isn’t it? It actually is! but how often do we manage to reflect back on our progress and make corrective actions promptly? Be is an example of our mid-year team goal retro session - yes, virtually due to the pandemic.

Be part of a highly collaborative and engaging team

I cannot stress enough the importance of being collaborative and having a positive team culture that brings everyone in the team together to achieve the team goal! Who wouldn’t want to be part of a team that achieve great results; who have you back when you fall, who appreciate your contribution and makes you feel welcome every day?

A highly collaborative team is self-sustainable and self-managing with minimal dependencies.  In return, the team achieve higher productivity and quality.

How do we achieve that? Here are a few tips that I practice with my team and colleagues:

1. Celebrate every success. Appreciation towards others.
2. Learn from mistakes. Accept constructive criticism but no finger pointing.
3. Ask for help and offer a helping hand.
4. Practice daily standups and in those sessions, communicate, be transparent and specific about your daily progress with your teammates.
5. Take a class/course together.
6. Have fun together.

Be part of a team that encourage you to grow

Finally yet importantly, career growth. At the end of the day, who does not want to advance in his or her own career? Therefore, it is essential to be part of a team that provides you opportunity to grow your skillset and space to expand your responsibility. You feel positive influence and encouragement from your peers. At the same time, there is room and a safe environment for you to make mistakes because sometimes, people learn through mistakes.

As for personal development, it is important to share with your manager about your interest to learn and expand your skillset and together, come out with a plan to close those gaps. Set yourself a target to pick at least one knowledge area to learn every year and why not invite your teammates along the way?

“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people” – Steve Jobs

I couldn't agree more – If employees were the backbone of a successful company, having great teams would accelerate its success! Hence, it is essential for us to play our part to contribute to building a great team.