8 tips for create a successful teamwork - techinfoseful

A good and productive cooperation in the team is sometimes quite a challenge. An important factor for success is the composition of the team. This must be good and balanced in order to achieve the desired results. In this article, we will show you some concrete tips on how to put together a successful team.

The challenges of teamwork

Workplace productivity often depends on good teamwork. In a well-functioning team, you can do more than work alone and make your work more enjoyable. However, pleasant cooperation is by no means always natural. First of all, let's take a look at some of the known issues with compound teams:

- There is no clear distribution of roles and tasks.

- The leadership style of the manager or team leader is not appropriate for the team.

- New team members are not properly accepted into the team by members who have known and worked together for years.

- The goal is not clearly defined, which leads to confusion among team members about task distribution and scheduling.

 

Tips for a better team composition

Most of the above problems can be avoided by paying special attention to assembling the best possible team for a particular task. Use the following tips for a better team composition.

1. Choose the right team leader :

The team leader is an important factor in assembling the right team. If the team leader is an oddball because his leadership style does not match the character and ideas of the other team members at all, the desired results will not be achieved.

And if your team, for example, consists of experienced professionals who value independent work, then these people will definitely not like the manner of this work. Conversely, it is usually not wise to place a team leader with a very relaxed leadership style on a team that still needs a lot of support and direction.

2. Pay attention to the right team size :

The size of the team is also an important criterion. Although the exact size of the team depends on the size of a project, it is important that you have enough people to distribute all tasks well, maintain momentum and ensure mutual support. But a team must not be too big. In a team that is too large, it is more difficult to ensure optimal communication and division of tasks.

3. Ensure a clear distribution of roles and responsibilities :

This may sound obvious, but it is not always easy in practice. When distributing roles and responsibilities, often only the functional description of an employee is taken into account. In reality, a broader perspective is often better, especially since an employee's role and added value often lie outside of their "dry" job description.

In a good team, the responsibilities of the individual team members are closely linked. Each team member needs to know clearly what you expect from them and what they can expect from the other team members. This creates a transparent whole in which the expertise, knowledge, competencies and skills of all team members can be highlighted.

4. Work with diversity :

A study by Sander Hoogendoorn (UvA) and several other studies show that both male and female teams with a high degree of ethnic diversity perform better than teams with a homogeneous character.

The same applies to teams made up of members with different professional backgrounds. For example, it's no longer uncommon for software development teams to consist of members who don't have a traditional IT background. Statisticians and scientists or linguists with an interest in IT, programming and coding are often excellent "citizen developers".

The ideal team therefore has a mixed character in many cases. The biggest advantage of such diversity is that it greatly broadens the knowledge base. This makes it easier to turn new ideas into innovations, solutions and ways of working that really move an organization forward. A diverse team often generates an inexhaustible stream of new and original ideas.

5. Mix the right qualities :

The right mix of qualities is at least as important for the ideal team composition as diversity and enough hands to get the job done. First and foremost, of course, it is important to have people on board who are very familiar with the subject matter the team is working on. These can be, for example, special technical skills or specific rule knowledge.

You also need at least one entrepreneurial team member – someone who is good at organizing, making decisions, and has the ability to start and lead a project. After all, every good team also has one or more "bridge builders" – i.e. employees who bring together both team members and external parties and show them the way to a common goal.

6. Team members should complement each other :

Diversity is nice, but of course it doesn't help if you constantly go at  don't understand each other. A good team also complements each other well, You must create teams with strong and smart personalities as well as good skills. You can do this for example, by conducting personality tests not only in the selection process, but also when you use a new employee in a team.

A good example is the principle of the 4 Hs, which states that in tech circles, every team needs a hacker, cougher, hipster and hero to be successful. In a complementary team you can have different opinions and discuss with each other, but in a constructive and solution-oriented way.

 

7. Choose a flat organizational structure :

Multiple levels of management sometimes increase effectiveness, but also often inhibit productivity. Especially at team level, it is important to limit the number of management and control levels. The most successful teams often have few managers and a flat organizational structure. Also, try to avoid formal job titles as much as possible.

8. Match personalities to group tasks :

What influence does the personality composition of a team have on the group process and team performance? Research by psychologist Alex Hellenthal shows that it is worth paying attention to this point.

His studies have shown that friendly and emotionally stable people are valuable to any team, while the pursuit of extroversion and intellectual autonomy depends heavily on a team's tasks. Extroverts are often sociable and think a lot. These are favorable qualities when it comes to teamwork. On the other hand, they are often dominant and like to distinguish themselves. If you put too many extroverted types together in a team, clashes and conflicts are predictable.

Build the ideal team with the help of competency management :

Putting together the ideal team becomes much easier when you have a good overview of the competencies and skills of your entire workforce. Competence management is therefore not a superfluous luxury if you want to achieve the ideal team composition. There are various tools that positively influence this process.