A Simple Guide on How to Improve Team Performance
As a leader, your job is to try and make your team more effective using all the resources at your disposal.
It sounds simple, but anyone who has done it before can attest that managing a diverse mix of human beings and getting them working together towards a common goal can be rather challenging!
Just ask Phil Jackson, who famously coached one of the most successful and well documented sports teams in recent history, the Chicago Bulls.
He had to unite the highly skilled but egotistical Michael Jordan, the extraordinarily talented and understated Scottie Pippen, and the extravagant and unpredictable enforcer Dennis Rodman, just to name 3!
He managed to do so using some basic principles and a few innovative ideas to improve team performance.
You might not have a Jordan in your team, but as a leader there are a lot of things you can do right now to ensure you have a winning team! In this guide, we’ll give you 7 tips for how to improve team performance.
How can a team leader improve performance?
A team leader can dramatically improve team performance through recruitment and performance management, empathetic and clear leadership, and by orienting the team toward the company and team’s goals.
Establishing a strong team culture also leads to higher levels of engagement, reduced attrition rate and better performance, and culture should be curated by team leaders.
There are of course some team performance factors that are inherent to the members of your team (e.g. individual skills and abilities), but many factors for team performance are within your control as a leader, and maximizing your team’s talents should be your primary focus.
In order to get started, it’s important to have an action plan for improving team effectiveness. If you have a plan you can measure against it to determine how your team is performing over time and course correct as needed.
Next let’s look at 7 tips for how to improve team performance.
7 Tips on How To Improve Team Performance
Start Strong: Come up with SMART Goals
Setting and achieving specific team goals is essential to improve team performance.
That’s where “SMART” goals (based on the research of Locke and Latham) come in - goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound.
Without specific goal-setting, team members might all be working towards different things, or even worse, not working towards achieving anything.
That’s a sure fire way to see underperforming teams and poor results.
To establish and implement a plan effectively, you must first determine what the team is expected to accomplish—and you must be clear on who is responsible for each part of the plan.
SMART goals help the team stay focused on the goals that matter most, while also giving team members a helpful measure of progress towards those big picture visions and tasks.
Coming up with SMART goals is one of the most important things you can do to improve team effectiveness in an organisation.
2. Focus on the Larger Picture: Training & Development of Employees
When it comes to how to improve team performance, training and development is an essential factor.
Most leaders go through extensive and expensive processes to find and onboard appropriate team members, but frequently the focus ends there, with some ignoring the significance of fostering their teams' potential and professional growth.
Continuous professional development and personal growth should be valued and encouraged within high performing teams.
In fact, when leading a team, you can tackle this at the team level, by educating your team on the key levers of team performance, like team psychological safety.
Providing the right training and development involves an understanding of what your team members' needs are, and dedicating resources and time to making sure those needs are met.
It should come as no surprise that team members who feel valued in their professional development are more likely to work productively, increasing the output and effectiveness of your team.
Therefore, investing in training and development is one of the best ways for how to make a team more effective.
3. Award Progress: Incentivise High Performers
It's essential to recognize and reward staff for exceptional work if you want to keep top talent and improve team performance - with research supporting that bonuses lead to better results.
Furthermore, the results of several studies demonstrate that one of the main factors influencing employee engagement at work is a sense of appreciation.
Employees are likely to become more devoted and effective when they are incentivised appropriately for their work.
If part of what makes them an exceptional contributor are team-based outcomes, then there is a direct link between their contribution and team productivity.
Employees who are recognized for their accomplishments feel a sense of ownership and pride, and are likely to be more engaged, and work harder over time.
Recognition brings employees closer to the team and to the organisation, and reduces the likelihood of them feeling disengaged and wanting to leave your team.
Aligning incentives to recognize top performers and emphasize strong performance is a great method to demonstrate to employees how productivity benefits the team.
The rewards may be bonuses, salary increases, perks, or you may present your staff with a range of prizes / other perks in addition to money incentives, things such as gift cards, additional leave, travel incentives, care packages, or even a fun team game in place of a morning or afternoon of work!"
You can also reward them by investing in their personal and professional development - for example by providing them with a masterclass, paying for them to attend a conference, or subsidizing a course.
4. Better Together: Focus on Team Building Activities
Organisations that wish to foster a productive team culture where staff love going to work, trust one another, and communicate effortlessly and effectively, invest time and resources in team building.
Employing skilled individuals is only one aspect of building a great team. Once hired, the next step is to ensure smooth integration and effective processes in the team.
Team building provides your team with an opportunity to build relationships and to better understand how their fellow team members think, feel, and process information.
Having a cohesive team will lead to better problem solving, higher levels of engagement, and better team performance.
Activities can be targeted at different teams depending on their stage of development. New teams will benefit more from collaborative games whereas established teams can fine tune their team skills with problem solving games.
With Loumee, team leaders have access to a range of different team building activities and games that help build relationships, and improve team performance.
We know how important it is for leaders to provide the space for teams to flourish, and we've designed several games with different themes through which teams can do exactly that - engage, connect, learn, and improve their performance.
5. Be Transparent: Take Meetings But with a Clear Agenda
Agendas are a critical part of any meeting and research suggests a clear agenda saves time and effort.
It helps people focus on the task at hand, while giving them a sense of direction and purpose.
Clear agendas can also avoid confusion, save time, and prevent missing key information, all leading to more productive meetings, and better performing teams.
Here are some tips that can help you with creating a clear agenda:
Take time to prepare
Give your team a heads-up about the meeting. Create a thoughtful agenda and give participants enough lead time to prepare.
Set an objective
Before you create the agenda for your next meeting, consider what you want to achieve and base the meeting around that.
Concentrate on important issues
At every team meeting, you don't have to go through everyone’s tasks. Instead, narrow your focus to a few important subjects and dig deeper.
Choose subjects that have a current or impending impact on your team.
6. Foster Accountability: Create Feedback Loops
When it comes to how to make a team more effective, accountability and feedback are also key, with research showing that mutual accountability is intrinsically linked to performance.
Feedback loops foster frequent, two-way interaction between employees and management, and as a leader, they can help you identify problems in your team early, and remedy the situation before things spiral.
They are also important to ensure all your team members remain accountable for their work, and to maintain the quality of individual and team output.
Giving your team frequent feedback regarding performance-related issues enables teams to resolve problems and advance and execute faster.
7. Lead With a Purpose: Do Not Micromanage
Research shows that micromanaging employees is very costly.
No one enjoys being micromanaged - it’s stressful, leaves you with a feeling of incompetence, and doesn’t allow you the automony required to flourish and succeed in the team.
Most leaders understand that they should guide their team strategically, but it’s important for team performance to allow the individuals in the team to feel a sense of autonomy and purpose, and to allow the individuals to come together by adding their own skills and experience, and making mistakes in a safe environment.
Forward-thinking organisations value employee autonomy more than monitoring.
By micromanaging an employee, you are conveying to them your lack of confidence in their ability to operate independently and create quality work.
According to research, individuals respond unfavorably, emotionally and physically to needless or unwanted support, and this can damage interpersonal relationships.
Following are some actions you may take to avoid micromanaging your team:
Focus on the big picture
Communicate the priorities to your team.
Establish guidelines for feedback.
Put results first and ignore minute details.
Leaders produce high functioning and performing teams when they concentrate on the results rather than the individuals and systems that create them.
FAQs
What are the five factors that can enhance team performance?
The five factors that enhance team performance are strong leadership, team goal setting, training and development, team building, and incentivisation for high performance.