Great teams make up great workplaces. Who doesn’t like a great workplace?

I love a great workplace. It makes me want to come to work every day. I get to enjoy my day as I accomplish great milestones in an excellent environment. I see my colleagues not as workmates but as friends. It’s a cheerful world and the results bring great cheer too.

Here is how you can achieve such a great workplace:

Connect emotionally

Work takes a great deal of one’s waking time. Given this, even in the midst of a workday, people still have other relationships to maintain and a whole life to balance. A child or spouse might be ill, a friend may have lost a dear one or a pet may be missing.

These are things people seldom share about while at work. It takes friends to feel for friends and to know how they are doing. If people don’t feel you are emotionally connected with them, they create work and home segments in their lives. In essence life can’t be segmented, every part is affected and every part affects the other.

You need to go past the casual ‘Hi’ and find out if someone is really fine. Go out of your way to visit a sick workmate or send a thank you note when someone does an excellent job. When people know that you care, they also care about you as their team leader. It means they also get their work done well.

Encourage open communication

Be the team leader that encourages people to speak up.  Allow everyone the liberty to voice their concerns, ideas or observations. Give public praise and if there is negative feedback, deliver it privately. Public praise enhances the self-esteem of your team members while criticism if delivered publicly beats down their egos.

Be open in your communication with the team. Open communication facilitates the giving and receiving of feedback. With continuous feedback, progress happens faster. People realize their strengths quickly and they concentrate on them. They also realize their weak points and stay away from them. Areas for improvement are quickly identified and workable solutions found.

Focus

Having a team doesn’t mean you can achieve everything….decide on a clear vision and pursue it with all it takes. Continuously changing direction makes team members weary and dulls their motivation. It is important that you communicate a clearly articulated vision to your team

Along with the vision, develop a work plan with timelines. This will enable you and your team to evaluate their progress against the targets set. The sun’s rays can burn almost anything when focused on that thing, people can achieve greatness but with dedicated focus. Forget being a jack of all trades.

Great teams have the two greatest advantages of synergy and leverage. These advantages can’t be found among people who work in isolation. By building your team into a high energy motivated team, you will go from one milestone to the next. Take time to know the important days in the lives of your team members such as birthdays and anniversaries.