The Importance of Building Teams in the Workplace

As a manager, one of the best things you can do to build employee engagement and get results is to build a cohesive team. Encourage employees to work together as much as possible to reach shared goals in addition to in/insights/build-employee-engagement-with-crossfit/dividual ones. Here’s why:

Accountability

Most people will fail themselves a thousand times before they’ll fail someone else who’s depending on them, particularly if they like and respect that other person. Team members will push themselves and each other when they most feel like giving up. Make sure every member of your team knows every other member is counting on them, and you’ll be less likely to have slackers in your midst.

Competition

Focusing on surpassing a particular competitor can galvanize your team and give it a focus. Leaders do it all the time in sports and politics, but it’s also effective in the business world. Pick your most frequent or toughest competitor and use them as a target. Celebrate as a team when you win over them and use a loss as a motivator to re-focus efforts.

Engagement

It’s lonely not being on a team. Working by yourself all the time can be de-motivating, as there’s really no one to say “great job!” or even to commiserate with about on-the-job difficulties. Isolation not only saps engagement, but also means that the employee may not know vital information about what other teams are working on and vice versa.

Knowledge Sharing

Having a team where people can teach and learn from each other is invaluable. Creative people need interaction to stimulate them, while those in more technical jobs such as web development or operations can share best practices and come up with innovative ways to solve problems.