May 24

Negative Team Culture To Watch Out For

By James Short Blogpost, challenges, Food for thought, Goals, inspirations, Leadership, management, opportunities

A winning team culture can easily give your company that extra advantage over the competition. The team or corporate culture is one of the foundations of a strong business. This can greatly contribute on how fast you can achieve your goals or better yet, be a factor in your company’s longevity.

Take a look at today’s most successful and long running companies and examine their respective corporate cultures. You can probably see how similar their corporate team culture is to their brand image and the quality of their products. The corporate culture in one way or another reflects what the company’s image is.

A winning team culture is achievable by any organisation but does not come easy. A team culture is developed over time. It takes time, discipline and good leadership. A leader’s job is to encourage positive values and prevent negative ones. There are negative values that need to be stamped out before they can become deeply ingrained in your team.

Poor Communication

This is the easiest one to detect and is easily one of the most toxic. Poor communication goes against the very concept of a team. Communication between team members is essential if they are expected to work with each other to achieve their common goals. Poor communication stifles creativity and hinders great ideas from being implemented. This can also turn off high-performing members – causing them to quit and look for another company to work for. Give the team members the freedom to speak their minds. Encourage open communication but do not force. Just like any value you want to instill in the team culture, it takes time.

Micromanaging

Managing your team is indeed your job as the leader but do not overdo it. You hired these people because you are confident that they can do their jobs. This is what the hiring and the interview process is for. The fact that they are already employed means that you have already decided that they are the right people for the job at hand. Micromanaging can put your staff under unnecessary pressure and can stress yourself out. Whether it’s you or a person of managing position in your company, avoid micromanaging. Trust the team. Guide them but give them enough freedom to do what they do best.

Too Profit Focused

Ensuring that your company makes a profit is important but should not be the be-all and end-all. This can lead to aiming for short term results and focusing more on the bottom line. A profit focused culture can lead to poor employee engagement. Just like having a culture of poor communication, this can lead to individuals, possible high-performing individuals, leaving for another company. Strike for a good balance between profit and employee engagement. Remember, without employees, you cannot run a business.

May 17

Love0

Changing Your Team Culture for the Better

By James Short challenges, Blogpost, Food for thought, habits, Leadership, management, opportunities, purpose

No company is perfect. Not even yours. There is always something to improve on. And that is a good thing. Those flaws keep you on your toes and if you have the right mindset for it and you love a good challenge every now and then, you can consider it as the fun part of running a business.

One aspect of the company that you can improve is the team culture. As I have mentioned in one of my previous articles, Building a Winning Team Culture, team culture is the sum of the beliefs, values and attitudes shared by the team members. Since a team is composed of different individuals with different personalities and attitudes, there is a tendency that bad habits will form overtime. It can start with one or two members and would then rub off onto their teammates thus becoming part of the team culture. If left unchecked, it can negatively affect the team and in turn your company. As the business owner, the challenge is to look out for these bad habits and change them. It is not easy to change a deeply ingrained habit in the team but it is never too late to change it.

Choosing What to Add or Change

Changing or adding a value in the existing team culture is a long process. It can take months or years depending on how deeply ingrained the value is. Since it can take a lot of time and effort, let’s make sure that those resources are not wasted. Carefully consider which value is worth adding or changing. Think how big of an impact it can make in the team. Ask yourself if adding or changing a value can come into conflict with some of the existing values in the team culture. Careful consideration and forward thinking are essential when making this decision.

Keep on Repeating

If you want a value to sink in to the team, you need to keep on repeating it. A team meeting is not the only way to remind the team, you can use different mediums to get the point across. You can use e-mail to talk about it or tell stories that are related to that value or habit. You can even build a company event around it. Be creative and fun when going about it. You may sound like a broken record, but you will achieve the results that you are aiming for.

Lead by Example

You are the leader and the team culture is not something that is posted on the wall or a fancy presentation. It’s your team’s core values and attitudes on how you face challenges. If you want the team to adopt a new value or remove an existing one, then you as the team leader should lead by example. Show them how you live by those values and how to apply them.

May 14

Love0

Qualities of a High-Performing Team

By James Short challenges, Blogpost, Goals, Human resources, Leadership, management, opportunities

Recruiting the right people for your organisation is not the only thing that matters when running a business. Though it is one of the most important, you also need to evaluate your existing teams on how they are currently doing with their tasks.

Regularly evaluating team members can be beneficial especially if you have new business projects in mind and need a team to handle it. With a new project in the works, you could be tempted to recruit new people to handle the project. This is a tedious process which could cause setbacks with your existing projects. Through regular evaluations you would be able to determine if a certain team in your company can handle the new project. Not only does this save time in the recruitment process, you might not even need to recruit new employees. So before thinking of hiring new team members, look inside your own company. The team that you need could already be working for you.

Individual Strengths

A high-performing team is composed of different members with their own individual strengths. These qualities can be strategic thinking, smart decision making, creativity, organizational skills and excellent attention to detail, you name it. The best teams have enough talent diversity that when combined produce great results. It is your job as a leader to recognize these strengths and to take note of the results or what they have accomplished as a team. This would allow you to determine if that particular team can handle future special tasks for your company.

Team Trust

Members of a high-performing team trust each other. People in this team have a deep trust of each other’s abilities. They know that their teammates have what it takes to accomplish a given task and completely eliminates second guessing when faced with a challenge. They know that their colleagues are the best at what they do and would only need to worry about their own role in the team. A strong foundation of trust within the team also encourages the members to voice out if something needs to be attended to. This also allows them to freely bounce around ideas to help the team accomplish their goals.

Team Chemistry

A team might have the most talented members but if they don’t work well with each other, those talents are wasted. A high-performing team has a good team chemistry. Egos have no place in this team. Each member knows their weaknesses and have no problem asking for assistance. They are clear on how to work together and what their roles are. Every team member supports each other and work off each other. They have a clear understanding of what the plan is and what the goals are.

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