How to build and manage an effective team

Working in teams and encouraging effective teamwork among your staff can bring many benefits and competitive advantages to your business.

Business benefits of teamwork

Advantages of effective teamwork in the workplace include:

• Increased productivity - individuals contributing to help a team produce results will feel valued, supported and committed to each other. This can lead to happier, productive and more motivated staff.
• Deadlines met - individuals working on their own can only achieve so much in a certain amount of time. Bringing individuals together to work in teams can increase productivity, make heavy workloads more manageable and help meet tight deadlines sooner.
• Problem solving - teams bring together different people with different ways of thinking, varying levels of experience and different ideas of how to do things. A number of people coming together to consider a problem can often be more effective at finding solutions than one person working alone.
• New ideas and opportunities - teamwork can spark creativity among your staff, which can lead to the development of innovative new ideas, products or services as well as identifying new business opportunities.
• Support network - in the face of business challenges people in a team are able to support one another by helping each other out especially if an individual in the group is facing difficulties.
• Strong relationships - teamwork helps build strong bonds between colleagues. Team members learn about each other, developing better understanding of individual strengths, weaknesses and personal traits. Through stronger relationships trust is built and communication becomes more natural, open and free.
• Flexibility - working in teams can help transfer skills and knowledge between individuals. This can lead to more flexibility as individuals will be able to cover for other team members.
• Conflict resolution skills - there is often the potential for personality clashes between individual team members, but collaborating towards shared goals often enables employees to work out how best to resolve disagreements for the benefit of the team.
• Boost morale - teamwork can help increase staff morale as individuals will have a sense of belonging to the team and appreciation from others for the qualities they bring to the group.

To get the most from teamwork for your business see steps to building an effective team in the workplace.