11 Attributes of a High-Performing Project Team
Team leaders and managers keep striving to have high-quality team members on their team. But, sometimes they forget to understand the importance of their own contribution to turn their teams into high-performing teams. As a team leader, you can consolidate the attitude and potential of your team members to reap great outcomes.
“No one can whistle a symphony, it takes an orchestra to play it”, H.E.Luccock
In this article, I will discuss the most outstanding qualities of great teams and how you can incorporate those attributes in your teams.
High-performing teams are like an army of soldiers working wholeheartedly for a common goal. People on a good team might be different in so many ways, but a great team culture and sense of unity of purpose can do wonders in terms of what they create together.
Here is a list of the qualities that are integral to great teams. I will elucidate on these qualities below.
- Unity of purpose
- Strong leadership
- Personal development
- Skill sets
- Learning opportunities
- Team Culture
- Concept of SCARF
- Conflict resolving
- Communicate, communicate, communicate
- Collaborate
- Appreciation
1. Unity of purpose
All high-performing teams exercise unity of purpose. Team leaders can create this sense of togetherness by preliminary orientation and induction sessions. When you start working on a project, you should discuss the larger goal of the project, how it matters for the organization and what can the success of the project add to the profiles of team members individually. You should also mention the learning opportunities that a particular project offers to motivate your team and ignite interest.
2. Strong leadership
Do not confuse strong leadership with authoritative leadership. Rather, strong leaders are those who feel as if they are one of the team members and execute participative leadership.
Participative leadership is a style of management such that the employees are a part of the decision-making process. Feedback is invited from employees on all issues and decisions are taken keeping in mind everyone’s thought process.
Some of the key benefits of participative leadership are:
- Increases employee retention
- Decisions are accepted without dissent
- Keeps employees motivated
- Boosts creative solutions
- Increases collaboration
3. Personal development
An individual always tends to be a better team player if it offers him avenues of personal development. By personal development, I mean the development of professional skills. As a team leader, you should allocate the work in such a manner that allows people to work on different aspects. In this way, members of the team can have an opportunity for multi-faceted development. This technique can help people stay motivated and interested in their jobs.
4. Skill sets
Treat every individual on your team as a unique resource. As a team leader, you should have a sharp vision to recognize the strengths and skill sets of individual team members and allocate the duties accordingly. Also, you have to be keen on polishing the skill set of your teammates.
Regular conferences and training sessions to better the capabilities of people can prove instrumental in building high-performance teams.
5. Learning from one another
However intelligent or experienced we may be, we can always learn something or the other from others. You can cultivate a healthy learning environment in your team to upgrade their overall personality. The rule should be that if any team member learns something new, they should apply it and then teach others. You can organize special team sessions focussed exclusively on sharing one another’s learning experiences.
This process, if executed right can create a stream of motivation to learn new methods of improving team performance.
6. Team charter
High-performance teams function as per protocol. You can also call it a team charter. It is the set of foundational rules and regulations as per which your team functions. A team charter mentions the goals, objectives of the team, the time frame of the project, spells out roles and responsibilities clearly.
A team charter can act as a reliable tool in case any conflict arises. You can always refer back to the team charter to clear any confusion.
Apart from this, your team charter should involve even the simplest rules like punctuality is important. This way, you can set a standard for your team as per which functioning will be done. You can always make changes in your team charter if the need arises as per circumstances.
A team charter builds a definite team culture that is officially standardized and everyone is bound to follow that.
7. Appreciation is important
Appreciating your team members can make a drastic difference in how your team members perform. Appreciation fosters a positive relationship between the employee and employer and keeps the employees motivated. High performing teams are highly appreciated by their leaders for all the right reasons.
As a team lead, you should take out opportunities to praise your employees for their hard work.
You can arrange a special “employee appreciation day” to extend appreciation for your employees.
Here are a few benefits of employee appreciation:
- Breeds a culture of mutual appreciation thus improving relationships.
- Brings positive work culture
- Employees will give their best in reaping the results
8. Follow S.C.A.R.F model
S.C.A.R.F model is a concept based on neuroscience. This model theorizes the behavioral pattern of human beings. S.C.A.R.F stands for status, clarity, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness.
Status- Status represents the concept of self-worth in a human being. Human beings tend to calculate their self worth in a social and organizational setup. If any person’s status is at the verge of risk, it affects that person’s behavior and triggers negative behavior.
For example- your boss will behave in a threatening and strict manner if he finds his status in a risky position business-wise.
Certainty and clarity- Lack of clarity and certainty leaves us confused and it becomes difficult to make firm and balanced decisions. Familiar situations are easy to handle as compared to unfamiliar situations due to lack of clarity. And the sense of certainty impacts our behavior immensely.
Autonomy- Autonomy refers to the freedom to take decisions and actions. Autonomy is empowering but the lack of autonomy makes one feel threatened or caged and will lead to stress. Whereas being given autonomy almost feels like a reward to the brain.
Relatedness- Humans are social animals and have an innate desire to relate to other human beings. Lack of human interaction or being ostracized from a group in your workplace negatively impacts an individual’s behavior and morale.
Fairness- Fairness is welcomed by the brain positively and keeps individual stress free. Whereas an unfair treatment can trigger a negative impact on the behavior of a person.
The central point of this model is that all the attributes mentioned above (status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, fairness) if provided to your employees in the workplace, can boost their morale and make them happier, which in turn will enhance their performance in a big way.
The S.C.A.R.F model can be used by managers while planning social interactions at the workplace. As per S.C.A.R.F theory, our brain is wired in a way that it repeats the interactions which offer positive reinforcements in terms of behavior whereas if an interaction makes us feel worthless, our mind feels stress and curbs us from repeating that behavior.
If your team feels that their efforts will be rewarded positively, they will put their best work forward, whereas if they feel threatened, it will curb initiate on the part of your team. Thus great leaders make use of the S.C.A.R.F model to turn their teams into high performing teams.
9. Communicate, communicate, communicate
Communication is an integral element in creating high-performance teams. Communication builds mutual trust and good work relations. People become more clear about their part of the job. Transparent communication without any fear of judgment can enhance clear discussions about people’s vulnerabilities and challenges which can be managed unanimously.
“Switch to ProofHub to simplify and organize communication.”
10. Integrity
Integrity refers to the concept of mutual respect and mutual trust. High-performing teams do the right thing for the right reasons. When all the team members execute the integrity of character, by being honest with their duties, then high performance is inevitable.
Integrity is the quality which makes people work by will and because they are connected to the larger purpose and not because they are being supervised. Team leaders can cultivate this quality by creating a shared vision of the larger goal in all their team members.
11. Collaborate using smart Tools
Collaboration is indispensable for developing high-performance teams. Great managers go beyond just a good work environment to reap results, they rather provide their team with technological solutions to collaborate better.
You can use project management software like ProofHub to help your team communicate and collaborate better.
ProofHub is a project management software, a one-stop solution to manage all your project-related concerns. It offers impeccable opportunities for transparent and quick communication and collaboration, at the same time, it helps you keep all your project-related information, a progress report of your project, the ability to find out bottlenecks, the opportunity to make improvements, all just a click away.
“Get your free trial of ProofHub today and amplify your team performance.”
One important point that needs mention is that ProofHub caters to the needs of all kinds of industries. Be it software, law, finance, manufacturing, it can be used everywhere.
Let us learn how you can collaborate better using ProofHub
When you are handling a team of people working on a project, you need to maintain regular communication. Meetings or email threads are what we usually use to maintain this communication. But what if all this information could be shared in just a click? Yes, ProofHub provides you this feature.
All your team members can access ProofHub in just a click and here you have all you need to know about your project.
You can make use of features like announcements to make important announcements that might not be specific to the project. For example — you can wish birthdays or celebrate the achievements of a particular team member through the announcement feature. You can also welcome a new team member through an announcement. Announcements in ProofHub can be a fun way of bringing the whole team together to celebrate and laugh together.
Discussions in ProofHub brings the whole team together to discuss important matters. You can subscribe people to a particular discussion and receive their opinions and feedback. This saves time and gives agency to everyone to express their point of view.
“Switch to ProofHub and give a common platform to your team to come together and succeed.”
CONCLUSION
Great teams are not built in a day. It takes consistent effort and continuous improvement to build a great team. Team leaders can set the focus of their team right by cultivating qualities like dedication, integrity, discipline. But apart from the psychological abilities and inspiration, tools like ProofHub can be highly instrumental in building a great collaborative team culture.
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