71% of leaders attribute their business success to team engagement
How is your team doing?
Knowing how your team is doing is pivotal to your business success.
Recent research has concluded that over half (56%) of UK employees have felt personally excluded in their current workplace, with more than a quarter (26%) being non-management employees.* This represents a dangerous drain on productivity and a low morale issue for leaders and HR.
So, do you really know how your team is doing?
Teams - their cohesion, their collaboration, and their effectiveness - should remain a key focus for organisations as we start to see a more positive and stronger future than ever before. Covid-19 brought with it many changes, not only in our personal lives, but working lives and environment too. So how are you as a leader, managing your teams back to the 'new normal' way of working?
According to a recent Gallup survey, 71% of leaders say that engaged, happy employees are pivotal to their companies success, and companies with highly engaged workforces are as much as 21% more profitable.**
Team Engagement
Engaging with your team or teams, has never been more important than it is today. With the increase in hybrid and remote working, teams can become displaced and disconnected from one another causing low morale. Team members, whether on-site or working off-site, need to feel included to participate within the team, and to feel motivated. Change in the 'new normal', can place additional pressures on teams as individuals within a team, will manage change differently.
Adopting a 'team-first' attitude in engaging and effectively working with and through teams, as both leaders and followers, will help to identify an individual's unique talents, strengths, and contributions, to inspire cohesive team performance and build on organisational success.
Engaging Conversations
Meaningful and engaging conversations with positive outcomes is critical to raising levels of team collaboration and engagement. The quality and quantity of these conversations taking place within the organisation and team, has a direct relationship to performance in the workplace, and boosts morale.
How are leader and team members expected to know, and understand, the support that may be needed by an individual and/or the team as a whole if it’s not communicated? A company culture that supports open, honest, meaningful, and inclusive conversations, will help leaders and teams to better understand each other in our different ways of thinking and working.
When employees speak up, companies win. A study published by MITSloan***, identified that employees who are regularly encouraged to speak out about workplace issues and given a safe space to air grievances, are happier and more successful at work.
Team Collaboration
Are we busying too much with ‘busyness’ to see a need for support?
An effective team collaborates and works cohesively – Working to Achieve More Together.
When an individual starts to struggle with their workload or ability to perform and deliver on the task at hand, this is where cracks start to appear in the team framework. These cracks are issues that are not easily identified until it’s too late. Too late in how it’s effected an individual and their performance, and/or too late in the affect it’s had on the success of productivity in team performance.
How can we develop a cohesive team?
Don’t just standby – be active!
Awareness, understanding and support. It’s important team members look out for one another to ensure strong cohesion to better understand each other. As a leader, encouraging allyship and active bystander awareness and engagement within the team culture is imperative to identify where an individual in a team may need support. This can be support with workload or even intervention to stop a wide range of behaviours that otherwise could cause some form of harm to themselves and others.
So much change has been thrust upon us that we feel we must be strong, enduring difficulties and driving hard to juggle all our responsibilities. Identifying cognitive overload has a huge impact on a team’s performance and remains a critical issue within sectors such as NHS and health and care. But it is not only an issue in these industries but within businesses from SMEs, PLCs to Public Sector. The burden of workload and the feeling of being overwhelmed by work pressures, plays a large part in poor team performance outcomes and mental ill-health.
Addressing the impact cognitive overload has on the increase in an individual or teams’ anxiety and stress levels, is important to ensure job-burnout is avoided.
"The greatest danger a team faces isn't that it won't become successful, but that it will, and then cease to improve."
Mark Sanborn
In summary, having a strong, agile and resilient workforce will develop long-term High Performing Teams, and deliver successful benefits for the organisation.
Communicating and listening to one another openly and honestly to forge cohesion within teams, and for leaders, to shape up, sharpen up and engage more with your teams, will help us all to work stronger and better to Achieve More Together.
Contact Simone Robinson, Director, The Oakridge Centre, for more information on how we can help identify areas of support, provide guidance, and suggest improvements your business may need to develop your High Performing Teams.
*Forbes Women - Povaddo research study conducted by PMI
**Gallup survey
***MITSloan Management Review
Knowing how your team is doing is pivotal to your business success. Exploring the fundamentals in developing High Performing Teams in your organisation.
