Dear Entrepreneur, 10 Reasons Why Team Building And Teamwork Is So Important

Throughout the three years of my entrepreneur journey, I have learnt that ideas, dreams or having the solutions alone is not enough when it comes to starting a business and growing it into a sustainable enterprise. So in my quest to make things happen, I needed people to work with and I’m still figuring this team building and team work out.

Having an idea alone like I said is never enough to start and run a business with, no matter what your business idea or venture is you need people. The importance of people in realizing your dream cannot be stressed enough. Even though it not easy to get the right people to work with, team work is essential in today’s world.

The success of a business is largely dependent on how you build value and how you can scale your business to survive without you. In every sphere of business, there are various skills that are required to reach this success; we know Africans richest man, Dangote, very innovative and filled with ideas, he cannot be successful as he is without his team, the group of people that works for him, most of them behind the scene. He may have birth the idea but for the ideas to come out to be successful, he needs a team of hard-working professionals, their abilities and skills to get to where he is now.

A close working relationship is a source of motivation, cooperation and support. In today’s multifunctional world, we all need the least motivation and support we can get, as individuals we have different weaknesses, strengths, talents, skills and ideas that when we organize and manage very well, it promotes harmony and efficiency.

5 Importance of Teamwork
1. Fosters Collaboration, Creativity and Innovation

Multiple sets of skills, thoughts, creativity, perspectives, opportunities and problem solving approaches are brought to the table. Once they are motivated and encouraged to reach their individual potentials, the collective goal of the team will also be achieved with less efforts as compared to one person doing everything.

2. Increase Working Morale
Teams encourage better work relationships and communication between leaderships and employees and when the barrier between leadership is dissolved to create an environment where everyone is a colleague, the result is increase workers morale and productivity.

3. Learning Opportunities
Building a team means you are bringing different experiences from different working backgrounds together. Everyone in the team have the opportunity to learn from everyone’s insight to different approaches to problem solving and generating ideas.

4. Increase in Efficiency and productivity
When teams have the opportunity to learn together collaboratively, they understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses which help them in knowing when to complement each other’s efforts. This creates a positive work culture where everyone is contributing their best. this environment also adds to workers moral which in turn increases productivity.

Workloads is also shared among team members, this reduces pressure and improves the quality of their work output. Task is also completed on a faster rate and is also more attainable with improved satisfaction.

5. Competition Through Fun
By channeling competition into work through fun, team members are in high spirit to contribute to the overall output by accomplishing their shared task on time and on high levels. This is a more effective way to achieve team bonding and increase productivity.

When there are incentives to win, celebration and fun at the end of every achievements, teams bond even faster and are motivated to bring their best.

5 Guideline To Running An Effective Team
1. Building A Dynamic Team
To build a successful team, it is important to ensure that you hire people with different abilities. Dynamic team members with different abilities complement each other and the team is equipped in every area and is poised to deliver better.

2. Communication
Communication is undoubtedly the most important life-line when it comes to every relationships including working relationships. When communication breaks or fails, everything else fails. Without effective communication, teams are positioned to fail.

So there should be a platform where open dialogue is encouraged and practiced when it comes to problem solving. Team members should be allowed to air their concerns and views without fear or intimidating.

3. Clear Instructions
Teams should have clear instructions about their task as individuals and as a team on a day to day basis. They should be completely sure of what is expected of them and if possible give them samples or provide examples of both the processes and the end results of their task.

Ensuring that team members know their responsibilities, affects the quality of work output required of them and the time they are expected to complete them which in the end contributes to the quality of output of the entire team.

4. Monitoring And Evaluating Performance
After assigning tasks with clear instructions, there is the need to place emphases on performance through monitoring and evaluating. The team as a whole and the individual members should be closely monitored and reviewed occasionally.

And to aid with this, let team members know the level of work output required of them and provide room for improvement whenever necessary.

5. Break The Barriers
It is one thing to build a team and another thing to lead them effectively to deliver the required results. To achieve these required results, create an environment that connects leadership and employees. There shouldn’t be a large gap between these two entities.

Your employees shouldn’t come to work every day to be remembered that you are the boss and they are nothing but employees. You may not need to say this with words; your actions can put them in that position. So delegate them to take up roles that may be meant for you and in turn you also take up their task.

In addition to this ten points, I want to add that team building takes time so don’t give up is you are trying but it seems not to be working out. Keep learning from the failures and keep improving upon them until you get what you want.