Thoughts on how to Create and Maintain a High TEAM SPIRIT

In previous articles I introduced some important criteria when choosing partners for your dream team. Here is a short recap:

• Choose people you trust
• Choose people you enjoy working with
• Choose people who challenge you
• Choose people that are hungry to learn
• Choose people that are coachable
• Choose people that are givers.
• Choose people that share your interests and basic values.

This article gives you some ideas how to create and maintain a high team motivation and good team spirit.

So now you have a good team and you all proceed to do the daily job. In the beginning everyone is full of enthusiasm and go to work full of energy. But how do you keep up team spirit after the initial “honeymoon” phase?

Information is one key issue. Make sure to share information in your team! Everyone shall knows what is going on in your business. Regular meetings or telephone conferenses are the most obvious ways to exchange information, tips and tricks. Other possibilities are regular information emails, a common bulletin board or a forum. Email, bulletin boards and forum all require computer acces for your team members. They are also one-to-many communication, i.e. you do not know that every team member actually receive information and interpret it the way you want.

If you have meetings make sure to have them the same time and place with regular intervals. If you prefer telephone conferences have them on the same time, with the same telephone number and code and at regular intervals. Also remember to send out reminders to everyone.

Make your meetings/telephone conferences interesting! Invite external people every now and then! E.g. someone with experience from your business can tell an interesting story, news or new ideas.

Ask one of your team members to host next meeting/telephone conference! This will make your team members feel important while releaving yourself from the task of planning and hosting the meeting.

Acknowledge team members who did a good work or came up with a good idea! This will boost the spirit of the team member that gets acknowledged and  encourage others to do the same.

Set individual goals for team members and have progress reports on the meetings! Nobody wants to report failure to reach a goal in public so it will make your team work harder to reach their goals!

Keep meetings and telephone conferences short and efficient! Let everyone have their say but do not allow prolonged discussions or nonsense talking. To chair such a meeting/telephone conference is a critical task so you had better practice.

A competition with a small price for the team member that achieves best results until next meeting is always a good possibility.

Arrange non-work related activities! Common lunch or dinner, a game of bowling, picnic, visit an exhibition... there are a lot of possibilities! It is much easier to work together if you know each other well and have fun together. This is also a perfect occasion to ask one or more of your team members to arrange next activity!

Remember that you become like the people that surround you and Good Luck with your team spirit!