The quality of your employee’s work experience has a direct impact on the quality of your customer’s experience. Give me five minutes shopping in a store and I can usually tell you how the staff feels about working there.
One of the key drivers of the employee experience is how the staff feels about their colleagues. That’s why teamwork at the store level is such a vital component of a store’s success. When a staff works well together and feels proud to be part of the team, and is lead by a customer-focused leader, the quality of both the employee and customer experience is superior to that of a weaker team.
The key to effective teamwork is leadership. It’s leadership that makes teamwork an expectation. It’s leadership that holds people accountable to contribute to the betterment of the team. It’s leadership that is able to take a group of individuals and make them one.
To that end, here are four actions that will create a more effective team. You’ll see that the list doesn’t include a ropes course, walking over hot coals, or any other popular “team building” activities. It’s the day-to-day actions we take that truly determine a team’s success.
1. Stop drama in its place. Nothing tears apart a team more quickly – or more quietly – than drama. If people are complaining about someone, address it immediately. If two people aren’t getting along, sit them down together and put a stop to it. I find two words are very effective for dealing with drama: STOP IT.
2. Regularly communicate your assessment of your team’s teamwork. Share what you see are the strengths and areas of improvement needed in teamwork. The more you talk about your teamwork, the better it will be.
3. Don’t enable poor performance and unacceptable behavior. Teams begin to splinter when the majority feels that one or more individuals aren’t contributing to the team. Most employees can look past someone who is struggling in their role. What they can’t accept is when those employees are allowed to continue to underperform, or act in a way that negatively impacts the others.
Of course you obviously can’t discuss how you’re working with/coaching one employee with the rest of the team, the team should be able to see that you’re working with that person to create a stronger and more effective team.
4. Recognize and celebrate effective teamwork, behaviors, and results. It’s important to not only encourage teamwork from your staff, but to recognize and celebrate it when you see it. Just as we coach individuals, be sure to call out the behaviors and actions you saw and heard that created the effective teamwork. Sometimes leaders label a successful day as “good teamwork” without being specific about why the teamwork was good, but the more we recognize positive behaviors and actions the more likely they are to be repeated.
So let me ask, how are you doing in building a more effective team?
