Whether you’re the owner of a small business, or managing a team within a larger organisation, you have to make sure the people under you bond and work together effectively. It’s unrealistic to expect everyone to become the best of friends but establishing the sort of professional bond that allows people to trust each other and collaborate efficiently is a very useful target to have.
Today we’re taking a look at a few ways you can bind your employees a little closer together, and reap the rewards of a happy, hardworking group who are a team in more than name.
Communicate Effectively
The most important place to start is your communication. You need to make sure everyone is kept ‘in the loop’ – if you’re excluding people from important communications needlessly this creates divisions in the team, and may also create resentment directed at you, that will undermine your ability to effectively manage your team.
You might find yourself in a situation where you see high level communication going past you directly from the C-Suite to everyone in the company. When this happens, it can really help to take some time to put together a follow-up, whether it’s a whole meeting or simply an email, for your team talking about how it will affect them, and what your collective response can be. If a company wide report on a shareholders’ AGM reveals a new priority for the business, sitting with your team for fifteen minutes to discuss how they can collectively contribute that helps to bind your team closer together and makes sure your part of the business is pulling in the right direction.
Rewards
It’s important to recognise achievements that your team makes. While individual rewards like bonuses or additional days of leave help to stimulate individual achievements too many of these without balance can completely destabilise your team dynamic.
Whether it’s expensing some pizzas when your team work late together to get some urgent work finished, or looking for your own venue hire for a team specific Christmas party, small rewards and bigger events like this give your team something to work towards collectively.
It’s collective achievements like this that reinforce the need to help each other, rely on others’ expertise and go the extra mile on behalf of the group that will make your team stand out among the others as an effective, efficient and highly achieving part of the company structure.