Duncan Brodie

Improving Team Performance

Teams without doubt can make huge differences when it comes to organisational success.   So what can you do to improve performance?

Most managers and leaders are dependent on others to achieve results.  Teams in many ways determine the success or otherwise of a manager or leader.  So what can you do to improve performance?

Create clear outcomes

Teams are most successful when they are working towards a clear goal or outcome.  Having clear outcomes is one of the essential ingredients of successful teams.  Clear outcomes are those that are easily measured and can be shown to have either been achieved or not.  Examples of clear outcomes include:

• Reduce waste by 10%

• Increase sales value per customer by 3%

• Reduce errors by 5%

How clear are your team outcomes?

Build accountability

Accountability is all about providing an account of what has or has not been done towards achieving the outcome.  When teams know that they are accountable and will be required to account for their progress, they are more likely to move forward and achieve more.  If everyone moves forward just a little, the impact on performance will be significant.

Create commitment

Commitment rather than passive agreement comes when teams have had the opportunity to air or discuss and debate their views.  In getting the commitment make a point of giving people the opportunity to offer up their views.  The long term benefits will far outweigh any short term losses.

Encourage conflict

Have you ever been part of a team where it felt you were just coasting and not really making any progress?   To be successful, teams need to have a degree of conflict or tension otherwise it gets too comfortable and can become a talking shop.  Conflict in teams is not about being destructive but is more link healthy tension and challenge where the intention is to achieve more.

Build trust

Without trust teams will never gel and never achieve results.  Building trust is about team members knowing that they can rely on others whether things are going well or are off course.  In many ways, trust is the bedrock or catalyst for achieving results through improved team performance.

Teams without doubt can make huge differences when it comes to organisational success.  So what areas of your team performance do you need to start working on?

Article Tags: Team Performance, Clear Outcomes

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