Team is everything

The long-term success of any company lies in the quality of the leadership and vision, finance, the quality of the product, good marketing and, very importantly, team-work. Many leaders only pay lip-service to team work since it is the nature of who they are that they deep-down often believe that they can do everything better themselves. Yet this fatal for two reasons: first it breeds a sense of insecurity into the employees and secondly it will lead to burn-out since the leader simply cannot do everything, especially as the company grows.

So, if team is so important, how can a good team be created?

• invest quality time in discovering the strengths and weaknesses of your team members, in particular with regards to their knowledge, skills, aspirations and motivations. There are well-know tools such as Belbin and Myers-Briggs that can help you with this important analysis.
• do everything you can to align or re-align your team member’s skills with the vision, values and requirements of your company
• hold regular, meaningful team meetings that give your employees a real sense of being a very significant member of your team
• never talk negatively about one team member to another since this breeds a culture of mistrust throughout the company
• provide opportunities for your team to get to know one another outside of the work environment
• be aware that if you ever put anything, however important it may be to you, before the above points, you are sending the message that the team is not that important to you. Actions always speak louder than words.

More to follow in the next few days ….