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While some leaders may view their employees’ happiness as an added bonus, team member happiness is actually essential for creating a cooperative company culture. Happy employees are more cooperative and productive and have fewer team member conflicts. When team members look forward to coming to work, this leads to lower turnover rates and more innovation among team members. Before implementing any changes within the organization, leaders who assess their cultures with strategic group behavior assessments ensure a higher change success rate. TIGERS Success Series offers as 360 Team Behavior survey that HRD Executives are welcome to run on their company’s behalf. The initial survey comes with two additional comparison surveys so leaders can quickly assess their team culture, add interventions and training and check the results against improvements in the company’s bottom line over time.
After deploying the initial survey, there are many team building tips that leaders can implement to improve their company culture to make it more cooperation-based. Many articles are written about the subject, and this article references the following:
- How to Help an Overwhelmed Team
- How to Stand Out as a Leader: 6 Tips
- Fareed Zakaria Shares 4 Key Ways to Become an Incredible Leader
- The Business Impact of Authentic Leadership
- 30 simple ways to make your employees happier
With team building tips, leaders can take their individual team members and turn them into one cohesive team.
Team building tips to bring individuals into one cohesive team
Learn. Technology is constantly changing, and great leaders understand the importance of keeping up with the times as they change, states How to Help an Overwhelmed Team. Not learning how to use new, more efficient technology is a deeper issue than it may initially appear. One of the top reasons that team members feel overwhelmed is poor communication. One way that leaders exhibit poor communication habits is by inundating team members with countless emails. While these leaders may feel that they are communicating effectively, team members actually feel overwhelmed by the volume of emails and essentially tune out and do not retain the information presented. The article suggests embracing new technologies, such as online collaboration tools, that can inform all team members of essential information.
Don’t be afraid to fail. A large part of success comes from taking risks, but risks bring a fair amount of failure, according to How to Stand Out as a Leader: 6 Tips. Effective leaders only become that way once they embrace the opportunities presented to them and devote their time to making innovations and improving the organization. Effective leaders also understand the importance of others taking risks, and they encourage their team members to do the same. Failures should not be seen as obstacles, but rather as advantages and important learning moments.
Embrace the social aspect of leadership. People make the business. People are your employees, your customers and your livelihood, so learning how to interact with people is essential for success, states Fareed Zakaria Shares 4 Key Ways to Become an Incredible Leader. Within the organization and among team members, all employees need to understand how to work in a team to reach goals and achieve results. The idea of teamwork translates into all aspects of the business, including sales, funding and advancements, and many others. With team member surveys, leaders can assess how their team members function as a team and identify areas that need improvement.
Be authentic. Authentic leadership means embracing your true nature and encouraging others to do the same, says The Business Impact of Authentic Leadership. Leaders and team members who feel that they must hide their true selves in order to be accepted at work are less able to concentrate on their tasks and perform to the best of their abilities. To create an authentic workplace culture for everyone, leaders must embrace authenticity themselves, show their true colors and instill trust within their team members. By doing so, team members will be more productive and experience lower burnout rates than inauthentic members.
Upgrade the workplace environment. According to 30 simple ways to make your employees happier, research constantly explains the benefits of happy employees, which include more productivity and lower turnover rates, among others. Leaders can start to improve the culture by first focusing on the workplace environment. Some ways that leaders can upgrade the environment include offering a separate break room that allows employees to step away from their desks and take an actual break every few hours. Encouraging breaks allows employees to recharge and come back to work refreshed and refocused on the tasks at hand. Leaders can also create better morale by keeping the space bright and light.
Creating one cohesive team is the only way that organizations can experience success in the workplace. Without a sense of unity, team members will not take any stock in their work, which will lead to higher burnout and turnover rates. Leaders can combat this company culture issue by first assessing the teams culture with strategic group behavior assessments. With the guidance from these assessments, leaders can then implement other team building tips that will improve the overall workplace culture to reach goals and experience.
Copyright TIGERS Success Series, Inc. by Dianne Crampton
About TIGERS Success Series, Inc.
TIGERS helps leaders build cooperative work environments that drive improved business revenue. Learn how to acquire important TIGERS Resources designed to build more team cooperation for your team October through November 2015 by calling 1+541-385-7465 today.
