Most, or should I say all, teams must address this issue of teamwork to get better.
Below are some of my personal thoughts on teamwork and the material from Clifton Strength resources. Christina Federline on our CDP team is a certified coach in facilitating Gallup StrengthsFinders Assessments.
How can we increase and encourage teamwork?
Begin by describing what each employee is supposed to accomplish, not how they are supposed to accomplish it.
Know the strengths of your team members and help them learn about their strengths. Then name, aim and claim those natural strengths and make them known to all the team members.
Build teamwork by recognizing quality work and achievements. When you reward team members for quality work, they will repeat what they have done, and the entire team gains a greater understanding of what excellence looks like.
Ask your team what gives them energy and what drains their energy. This helps individuals identify potential partnerships with coworkers and improves team awareness.
What builds trust with a leader?
Having confidence in the leader’s reliability and dependability is essential for the leader. “You are the message” as the leader of a team.
Consider these items that great teams have in common:
- Team members name and understand the individual talents of everyone on the team. Some assessments have badges or plaques to put on the desk or wall of a person’s office identifying their major strengths. Knowing your team member’s strengths improves relationships. Encourage team members to share one or more of their strengths and give examples of how they are growing in the use of their primary strengths. This creates a learning culture for all the employees and builds a thriving team.
- Team members see a clear connection between each other’s strengths and behavior. They see the link between strengths and success when they create their own examples for at least 3-5 of their strengths.
- Team members have coworkers that encourage their strength’s development. Would be an interesting get-together as it develops when the leaders lead by example. Some team members may not recognize their strength or want to talk about it unless they have seen an example and have a partner that helps them discover their strengths and the use of them personally.
- Team members use their knowledge of each other’s strengths to plan, strategize, analyze, and direct their efforts. Make a list of the team members strengths and share with the group, with the idea of becoming more effective in the way the team plans, analyzes and directs the activity steps.
Here are a couple of quotes on teamwork that are useful for a fun activity.
Share one of the quotes below with the team and ask what people think about the quote and then discuss how a team could come up with a new quote of their own to add to the list:
- “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
- “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”
- “Teamwork begins by building trust.
- “It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.”
Teamwork when working well, brings new ideas, helps to solve problems, encourages a sense of comradery, and builds morale. It is one thing to have a team, it’s a whole other thing to have teamwork.
I find the Bible always has good words about how to live and work more wisely. Here is one I think fits from King Solomon who was known as the wisest man on earth.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12“Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”
