Building Successful Teams and keeping them

It’s so important for any leader to recognise good talent and to be able to retain them. As a leader, I want my team to do well in life, I train them well and my legacy is that when they move onwards and upwards in their career, they will think of me as a part of their career journey.

I have been very fortunate to have many people take a chance on me. Given me a go at a role that maybe I didn’t think I was ready for but they saw something in me and knew I would grow into the role and in return I worked hard and took the batten and ran with it, making them proud and showing them that they made the right decision.

So now I am a leader, I want to do the same. I love training and development, I love seeing people grow both personally and professionally under my watch and I get so proud of my team when they do a job well done.

See that’s what’s being a leader is all about. A leader leads, leads by example, provides direction and constructive feedback and most importantly shares information so that employees are empowered to do their roles. It’s not all rosy though, you do have to have those difficult conversations at times with some team members. But instead of a negative situation, use it as a training and development session so it’s seen they are not in trouble but how can they learn for next time so they do not make the same mistake twice.

So how do you build successful teams, there are 3 things that must happen, 1. Great communication 2. Consistency 3. Personality fit

Great communication is key in any team, the ability to have open and honest conversations among the team but also ensuring that other departments know what’s other departments are working on. You never know, another department might be working on a similar issue and collaboration could occur and make the workflow easier. When each department doesn’t know what the other is working on that is called working in silos and this is detrimental to any business and will lead to employees becoming frustrated as they are having to have multiple conversations to multiple departments about the same item. It also leads to a higher cost to the business as there could be multiple staff working on the same item.

Consistency, this is where a lot of issues arise and why I am a stickler for policies, procedures and checklists within a team. Customers need consistency of service, whether they speak to bill on Monday and Carrie on Tuesday, they should be getting the same information, however, if Bill tells the customer they can bend the rules and then Carrie says no, this is when a manager needs to step in to appease an unhappy customer. Consistency must also be present in management and how employees are managed. You cannot have different rules for different employees. You must as a leader treat all staff equally as if you don’t, that’s how favouritism comes into the workplace and this is detrimental to the organisational culture.

Personality fit, When creating a team, you want many different types of people on a team. People with different skills, ideas and backgrounds, as that’s how teams compliment each other. You don’t want all of the same type of people with the same skill set, as you cannot learn off each other and you will never challenge the status quo.

So once you have built the team, you have to spend the time with them. Training, talking to them, mentoring and coaching them. Because that’s how you retain them for longer. If they are learning, they feel empowered, they can contribute to the success of the business and see prospects for the future, you will retain them.

The true indicator of building a successful team is, The organisation should run the same whether you are there or not.

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