BUILDING A HIGH PERFORMANCE TEAM: 5 WAYS TO DO IT

Ask the winning organisations, they better understand the value of a high performance team and the significance of keeping it up and running. Nothing builds a well-motivated and high performance team in an organisation like a culture of co-operation. The following are strong tips to help your organisation build and maintain a high-flying team:

1.Celebrate each member's unique ability (Capabilities) and leverage them accordingly. What makes a rounded team is when every of its member brings different talents, skills and capabilities to work on the team. Respecting each individual's make up and harnessing it appropriately would widen the operational perspectives of the team, thereby, making it multi-perspective capable of tackling and overcoming challenge from many dimension. For example, in a soccer team each player has different talent that is suitable for different wing. The job of a good coach is to fix each player where he can optimally deploy his skills to help the team achieve its objectives.

2. Never do an Open comparison between your team members. " A good team leader measures the performance of his team member against his strengths and not against someone else's". Unhealthy competition leading to strive is born in a team when its members are compared to each other. Your team will break apart faster when members realise that you often engage in comparism between them. Everyone begins to work for how to outshine the other at the expense of promoting the team's success. It may seem to bring result in the short run, but the sustainability and long term success of the organisation is being jeopardised.

3. Celebrate your team's success more than individual successes. What keeps your team a team is the fact that it has a corporate interest to serve and a corporate vision and goals to pursue. You cause the team a setback whenever you celebrate an individual team member's success rather than that of the team.

4. Grant everyone equal opportunities. Every member of your team desires and deserves a level playing field. Opportunities to contribute and be rewarded should be equal across board. Everyone's opinion should be as valid as the other. Opinion or views expressed on subject-matter should not be tied to personalities.

5. Reward and motivate for every milestone achievements in the organisation. Rewards come as a way of expressing your gratitude for a job well done by your team, while written or verbal recognition addresses your team's need for attention and gives them credit for their accomplishments. The two combined are a powerful source of motivation. Many leadership classes teach the concept MMFI (Make Me Feel Important), It's a valuable tool to keep in mind to build a high performance team. To motivate the team for milestone achievements, the reward may not necessarily be monetary, but some sort of tangible acknowledgement can go a long way. A celebration certainly helps too, but remember to leave them with something tangible for their efforts. It is also important to reward everyone who contributed to the success of the team's accomplishment, not just the immediate team member. This sends a message that you quite understand a team's success depends on the collaborative efforts of various groups. People will clamour to support your team's projects if you provide visible and lasting rewards and celebrate frequently.

WANT TO FAST-TRACK YOUR START-UP’s SUCCESS? COMMUNICATE YOUR VISION THIS WAY.

What distinguishes an enduring and eventually successful start-up business from a low-energy and stuck-in-the-mud one is the force of vision. Many start-ups launched out without an articulated vision for their enterprise, while those with one lack the understanding on how to galvanize their available resources to drive it to fruition.

I’ll like to state here that it is practically impossible for a single individual to drive a corporate vision to reality. The big multinationals all around us today started in the heart of one man but have become successfully established through collaborative efforts of a number of different individuals and talents. This transformation over a period of time could not have been possible without a clearly stated vision of the organization made known to employees to enable them find their places and apply their skills to support the realization of the vision.

Business start-ups must understand that the survival and success of their enterprises depend on a clearly stated corporate vision and their ability to mobilize the support of every single employee to key into it with genuine interest. This implies that beyond putting up a vision statement for your business, there must be an effective means of communicating it regularly to every employee. It is so important because if everyone in the organization shares the vision, it becomes easy to walk in the consciousness of achieving it through their different contributions.This will keep everyone in constant tune with the organization’s vision.

The place of employees support in the realization of a corporate vision is so strategic that organization that fail to explore it ends up surrounding itself with mediocres who lack genuine interest in the success of the business. They are only there to passively work for their 8am-5pm pay checks.

Since people tend to support more of what they are made part of, the following are ways to communicate your business vision and make every employee an important part of its realization:

1. MAKE IT PLAIN ON TABLETS. God so much interested in ensuring organizations and individuals communicate their visions effectively instructed man to write vision upon tablets. Some businesses underestimate the efficacy of hanging up large frames of their corporate vision in their offices. As clearly stated by the bible, it is to ensure everyone in the organization runs daily towards achieving the vision. I suggest that a frame displaying the organization’s vision and mission should be hanged up in every office from the janitor's to that of the president.

2. SPELLED OUT IN OFFER LETTERS. Every employee at the point of entry into the organization should be made to understand the company’s vision and their specific places in its pursuit. When the corporate vision is spelt out to employees as they join the organization, it leaves them with an impression they are coming into an environment where every job task is driven by the quest to achieve the firm’s vision. This will also give them a sense of personal responsibility in helping the business achieve its vision.

3. RE-ECHOED IN EVERY MAJOR MEETINGS. Re-stating the company’s vision in every major meeting sends a strong signal that the business is committed and serious about its vision. This would help sink it deep into all stakeholders, ranging from employees, suppliers to shareholders.

  Employing these three ways in communicating your organization’s vision will ensure every important business decisions made at any level within the firm synchronizes with its vision. Regardless, of the size of your business, corporate vision is a sure way of releasing corporate energy to race to the top against all odds.