Last week I wrote about the three different types of teams:

o   The team of individuals. 

o   The splintered team. 

o   The One Team – Better Together. 

The One Team – Better Together individuals unite their skills, talents, and diverse perspectives, forming a cohesive group focused on a shared vision. This team demonstrates collaboration, trust, humility, open communication, and a true sense of togetherness. This leads to higher success and collective achievement levels than the other groups.

There are four benefits to the One Team – Better Together team.

1. Stronger foundation.

2. Learn and grow from each other.

3. Encourage and motivate each other.

4. Teamwork that achieves higher results.

Here are six things you can do to build a stronger, more team-focused, higher-executing workforce.

1. Brand your team. Branding your workforce helps create a positive and compelling image of your organization, boosts employee engagement, and fosters a cohesive and motivated team. Branding like One Team – Better Together creates unity and sets team member expectations. It emphasizes collaboration, cooperation, and recognizing that individual contributions are strengthened when working together.

2. Raise and hold the bar. As I wrote on June 7th (read here), there is an incredible opportunity when we close the gap between what we expect and accept. Accepting poor performance or unacceptable behavior from anyone on the team is a team killer. The staff knows they aren't Better Together when someone is allowed to work or act at a level lower than is expected of everyone else. 

3. Managers must be highly effective team leaders. Managers can inspire trust, foster collaboration, and empower team members to perform at their best. They can also create distrust, create a team of individuals, and disempower team members to perform below their abilities. The best team leaders inspire and motivate their team members through enthusiasm, commitment, and daily actions. They are a positive example of One Team – Better Together.

4. Create peer-driven learning and coaching. This empowers team members to share their knowledge, skills, and observations to help each other improve. I've always been passionate about teaching leaders to coach. Now I am even more passionate about teaching entire teams how to coach and be coached. Peer-driven learning and coaching can happen organically. It will happen if you make it foundational to how your team works together. 

5. Use team recognition to foster learning and peer appreciation. Here are two easy ways. First, have a physical way to recognize and thank employees. A BTS: Better Together Salute. Team members write their praise/recognition on a BTS card and give it to a team member while verbally recognizing the person. Another approach is to have each team member share something they have observed or learned from their peers at daily or weekly huddles/meetings. Another is at daily or weekly meetings to ask each team member to share something they saw or learned from another peer.

6. Be passionate about daily results. I worked once with a leader who celebrated and recognized her team when they did well but said little when they fell short. Worse, she would make excuses for them. The results are the scorecard for the team. It reminds me of when I was in a meeting, and a person reported that their test was highly successful, although it didn't make any money. Uh, no. It wasn't successful if it didn't make money since that was the goal. A team doesn't need to be coddled when they fall short. Instead, the leader and the entire team must determine what else they can do. The One Team members don't blame each other or circumstances. They take responsibility and own their results. 

So let me ask, what actions can you take to develop an even better and more effective team?

Want to learn how I can help your organization become One Team – Better Together? Please respond to this email or call/text me at 617-340-9041 for a no-cost introductory call.