“When there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.” Mattie Stepanek

How many of you heard about teamwork and its effectiveness at workplace? I didn’t even know this term except in sports when growing up and it’s no more than a decade. But today, there is no business either a startup or well established that is not bringing into play this new form of work called ‘teamwork’. For me teamwork is all about discussions, collaboration, tracking each other’s activities on certain tasks and coming up with significant decisions together.

How to nurture teamwork at workplace?

Teamwork isn’t enough if it is not built, managed and nurtured appropriately. Good organizations keep looking into ways to enhance their employees’ individual capabilities along with improving their working capacity in a team.

Teamwork skills may not be beneficial enough till the point where top management starts fostering its true aspects. Effective and productive teamwork is only possible with a powerful team. Let’s check out how you can do this.

1. Provide open communicative environment:

To be a successful entrepreneur, you must provide friendly working environment wherein your team can communicate openly. Fear of getting penalized for any reason effects one’s working capacity and his ability to work in a team also declines. Hence you need to give valiant working atmosphere where your team can smartly utilize its persuasive potential. For this you can facilitate with joint exercises and collaborative activities.

Keep encouraging your employees to share their experiences, information and skills as well. The best way to create strong communication and spreading knowledge across the board.

2. Build Respect and Trust. 

For trust, confidence and respect building in your team, you must be true to your words. Or else, members will feel dejected affecting their work quality and overall productivity. You should give what you want to get and for this you must fulfill your commitments. Watching you being a reliable person, your employees will emulate your behavior. You must show confidence in your team so that it will work the same way in your absence as it does in your presence.

3. Understanding the teamwork dynamics:

Without this imperative factor you may not be able to build a team even. How come you will nurture it? An easy to go way in this regard is keep on assessing your workplace dynamics. This can be best possibly done by observing present attitudes of your workers towards each other and of course how they participate in routine tasks and meetings. Figure out the signs why your team is at verge of dysfunction. Decreased productivity and complains from clients or other team members will help you greatly herein. Be familiar with all pros and cons of an effectively dynamic and energetic team. Be a problem-solver and keep motivating your team.

4. Encourage cultural diversity:

For me it’s a wrong perception that people from different cultures cannot work effectively under one banner. In fact, cultural diversity at workplace not only helps in making individuals more social but aids them in respecting other cultures.

Final Thought:

Proactive team builds on trust that leads to speed building to accomplish tasks. And if trust is not built in the first place, forget that you will get your desired outcomes. For this you should also clearly define team goals along with the individual’s role in it. Establish team meetings weekly or monthly and also plan for social gatherings.