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Team Building Tips and Tricks for Managers

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Team Building Tips|Team Building Tips and Tricks for ManagersThe modern world is all about collaboration and teamwork. Without it, companies wouldn’t be as successful. After all, almost every great product in history was created by a team – not an individual.

At the moment, you might have 10, 100, or even 500 hundred employees. Whatever your exact number is, it’s important to focus on team building. This is because it:

  • Creates stronger co-worker relationships
  • Boosts morale
  • Enables better communication and collaboration

On top of all this, team building also helps to unlock potential leaders for your company – which is something else to bear in mind.

With the introduction covered, let’s now take a look at some team-building tips and tricks that all managers need to know.

Use Virtual Team Building Games

Unless you’ve been living on a faraway planet for the past few years, you’ll be aware that the workplace has gone virtual. Now, millions of employees have adopted hybrid schedules where they work between the office and home – it’s been a long time coming.

Of course, this means that teams are now using laptops, tablets, and smartphones to do their work and communicate together.

This is great for team building, as it means you and your teams have an opportunity to play virtual team-building games together when you’re not in the same place. A good example is the name that price game, which is perfect for boosting morale and allowing employees to have a good time.

Friday is usually the best day for virtual team-building games, as it’s the end of the week and everybody is looking forward to relaxing at the weekend.

Provide Your Teams with Goals

Whether you have one or multiple teams working under you, it’s important to provide them with goals. This will give them a clear direction moving forward and ultimately create greater focus and teamwork.

Teams should be briefed with goals at the beginning of each new month. Plenty of encouragement and incentives should be given to your teams, too. For example, there could be pay bonuses or extra time off for the early completion of tasks.
Plus, you should also encourage teams to set their own goals.

Use Microsoft Teams

As mentioned above, the modern workplace has gone virtual.

Now, it’s all about using internet-based tools to get work done and communicate. One of the best tools for this is Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams allows teams to hold video conferences with each other as well as send chat messages. Altogether, it’s the perfect platform for team building, especially when employees don’t see each other face-to-face.

Request Feedback

Sometimes, the best way to gain an in-depth understanding of what your teams want is through feedback.

Every month (or bi-monthly), you should hold meetings with your individual teams to discuss feedback in detail. For example, you might discover that your teams want more tools to use in the office, such as better computers.

Lastly, Get Social

It’s essential that employees don’t exclusively spend time together in the office. In addition to this, they should spend a little time together outside of work in social settings. This is because it enables employees to blow off some steam and have fun together in a less serious environment. Example locations include bars and restaurants.

Also, you should make it a rule that employees can’t discuss work when you’re socializing together! Moving forward, this will create stronger team bonds.

Using Your Office To Drive Productivity Is Essential

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |Productivity|Using Your Office To Drive Productivity Is EssentialProductivity is important to your business. If your productivity isn’t high, then there is no way that you are going to get very far on the market. You won’t be putting out the right kind of service to your customers, and people that do choose to use your business are going to get frustrated extremely quickly. One of the things that you can do to try and improve this is make a high-quality business office that is designed specifically to drive productivity. That’s what we’re going to be looking at in this article, so if you would like to find out more about this topic, keep reading down below.

Workspaces

The first thing that you are going to need to think about are the workspaces that you are providing for your employees. If you have people constantly shut away behind closed doors, then there is going to be no collaboration, no communication and everyone is going to feel isolated. This is not the way to do things as people who feel like they are constantly on their own are less likely to work well. As such, you should think about using office cubicles so that most people are together in one part of the building. This encourages teamwork and collaboration which will encourage a higher rate of productivity.

Social Areas

Another thing that you are going to need in your business office are social areas. These are things like break rooms as they are places for your employees to sit back and chill out on their break. Your employees are still human, and they need somewhere to go that isn’t their desk during their breaks. If you work them too hard or you don’t allow them a space where they can really unwind, even if just for a short time, then they aren’t going to work hard for you, which will impact your productivity.

It isn’t difficult to create a simple break room where people can talk to each other when they are not working.

Colors And Lighting

You should also consider the colors you use and the amount of natural light you get in the office space. Have you ever heard of the phrase happy employees are hard working employees? Well, it’s true. We recommend that you use bright colors such as yellows and blues for your office to encourage a good mood, and let as much light in as you can. Humans respond positively to natural light, so it’s a good thing to include. There are some other elements too that help you add a vibrant and productive touch to your workplace. All you need is to explore all of them and implement them on your workstation. You can read them all here https://www.officefinder.com/officeblog/4-ways-create-more-productive-work-space/ and see how it helps you add beauty to your office.

We hope that you have found this article helpful, and now see some of the things that you can do in order to design an office that drives productivity. At the end of the day, the productivity of your business as a whole should be one of your main focuses, so creating the office should be at the top of your to do list. We wish you the very best of luck, and hope that you end up with the results that you are looking for.

4 Ways To Develop A Stronger Team

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It can be argued that one of the most important parts of your role as an executive or leader of your company is the ability to manage a successful team. Your employees are your responsibility, and their success depends on whether you can get everyone working together and producing great work.

You’ll be glad to know that there are ways to develop a stronger team and make sure you’re all bonding on a regular basis. Doing this will help your company perform better, individual careers will take off, and everyone will be more satisfied to come to work each day. Above all, you should take your role seriously and put in the effort because your staff members depend on you to guide them.

Develop Your Skills

To lead your team effectively, you have to brush up on your skills and know what your strengths and weaknesses are. Work on yourself first before you try to develop and lead a team of people. You can do this through executive coaching sessions that will instantly improve your career. The team of qualified and experienced individuals who run the programs know exactly what to focus on to help you succeed. The better you are in your role and at your job, the easier it’ll be to create a strong team of employees.

Play To People’s Strengths

You should always delegate wisely and avoid giving assignments to just anyone because it’s faster and easier. To get the best out of your team, you should know who’s good at which tasks and what skills each person brings to the table. It will give you and your team a better chance of getting the work completed efficiently and correctly the first time. If you aren’t sure, then spend time getting to know each employee, analyze their abilities and how they handle the assignment you give them.

Schedule Teambuilding Activities

Your team will instantly become stronger when you participate in fun and exciting team building activities together. It’s not only about the work, but also how your employees interact and support each other. Mix it up and go out to eat one week and give them challenges to complete as a group. It’s vital to build camaraderie among your team as it’ll show positively in the work that’s performed in the office. You need your employees working together towards a common goal and not competing against each other to be the best in every situation.

Encourage Open Communication

Be an advocate for open communication between your team members. Remind them that they’re on the same side and should talk and help each other succeed. You should aim to create a positive environment that welcomes mistakes, as long as people are willing to discuss what went wrong and can learn from them. Make it clear that although you’re busy, your door is always open. Hold team meetings and let everyone have a chance to speak and bring up questions or concerns.

Don’t let your team fend for themselves. Step up and be a good boss by working on your skills and helping your employees deliver their best work. It’s never too late to make this your goal and improve the results you and your team are delivering to the company.

What Your Team Needs Besides Money

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The monetary compensation plays a big role in retaining your best employees and giving them good reason to give their job their all. But if you believe that’s all they need, you’re going to find more people leaving the team than you would like. There are deeper needs that you and even they might not recognize at first. Neglect them for too long, however, and those will serve as the reasons you can’t retain your staff.

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Goals

Employees have responsibilities for day-to-day work in their role, and they should know that. When it seems like the day-to-day involves nothing other than just running through a workload to no aim, however, that’s when people can get frustrated. Goal setting for employees, whether it’s collaboration toward a certain goal or simply improving productivity and efficiency can give them something important. It can give them something to aim at, so they don’t just feel like they’re standing still in their job. It’s also a good way to align their goals at work with the goals of the organization.

Progress

Beyond their work goals, you should consider your employee’s personal goals a little more. If they’re looking to progress in the company, see if you can bring out that leadership material. If their job requires expertise, help them build on it with training. If they have personal projects they want to tackle, then offer them time in the office environment to work on it. Make your leadership instrumental in their personal progress.

Value

Let’s not pretend this relationship is all about what you can do for your team. Your team does plenty for you and showing that you acknowledge and value that is important. From simple thanks and an employee-of-the-month scheme to an awards dinner complete with award plaques. Showing real, verbal appreciation and offering a physical token of that appreciation shows that you truly value the team. It also gives you the opportunity to incentivize the behaviors that you consider most important in the workplace.

Cohesion

The work environment is most likely one of multiple people. Getting them cohesive and collaborative is important. Even for those like remote workers who aren’t in the physical environment. Improving the ways they communicate and organize, such as using project management tools, removes the barriers from that cohesion. You should also consider those corporate get-togethers as the opportunity to have people build rapport and relationships without the pressures of work exerting on them.

Flexibility

Speaking of those pressures, every workplace has them. But allowing a little more flexibility to your team can help them deal with said pressures a lot better. Everyone has ways that they work better. Flexibility helps them discover those ways. Whether it’s flexibility in time, location, dress code, method or otherwise. You have to think of what you can reasonably allow. Whatever you can allow, you should.

A better understanding of the human needs in your team is going to make you a better employer in every way. You’re going to retain them, keep them motivated, engaged, and even happy to work for you.

How to Lead in High Turbulence – 5 Lessons from the Tunisian revolution

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StrategyDriven Management and Leadership ArticleWhat would you do if you were offered a new job and were told you would be fired after one year but you weren’t allowed to quit during your mandate? That you would be paid peanuts compared to your old comfortable job, and you would be harassed and bashed in the media constantly. And you wouldn’t be allowed to complain. You would probably say “no thanks,” right?

I ended up with that job and found out what it really means to lead in a high turbulence environment.

I was Dean of a leading business school in Paris and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the top mobile telecom operator in Tunisia when the Arab Spring broke out, turning the already troubled Middle East and North Africa upside down.

Hope

It was a hopeful moment across the region and particularly in Tunisia. Even more surprising was that unorganized youth, impoverished people and Facebook played a huge part in toppling the Dictator Ben Ali, whose stifling reign lasted nearly a quarter century.

After a rocky start for the country after Ben Ali’s fall, the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize went to the Tunisian Quartet, composed of four civil society associations, which facilitated the country’s national dialogue. This dialogue reached a consensus among political parties stipulating that the incumbent Islamists hand over power to a technocratic transitional government.

This was the context when on Christmas day 2013, the then designated Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa offered me the aforementioned thankless and non-lucrative opportunity. I was asked to be Minister of Higher Education, Scientific Research, and Information & Communication Technologies. How could I refuse?

I tried. My family was against it and it was risky. I didn’t want to turn down such an honor over the phone, so I travelled from Paris to Tunis to meet Prime Minister Jomaa.

When I got there, he pointed out that I had never done my obligatory military service and that it was time for me to pay my dues with a one-year commitment to my country. That was the beginning. I would later become the first minister he hired for his government and a very close collaborator in his core team.

Turbulence

With the two political assassinations that took place in Tunisia in February and July 2013 being among the reasons our government was put in place, our team knew from the start we would be working in an extremely high turbulence environment. We were faced with the threat of being taken hostage; hostile mobs quite often waited for us outside our ministry; at times, we couldn’t go home; our own staff went on strike, and on and on.

How can you start each day being positive and ready to lead under these circumstances?

Despite all of the hardships, it was the experience of a lifetime! Here are five lessons I learned about leading in a high turbulence environment:

1. Build a team with a fresh perspective. When setting up the transitional government, Prime Minister Jomaa didn’t gather the usual suspects from the Tunisian political scene. Like any good leader should, he gathered the best people for the job from far and wide, bringing back countrymen from the US, Brazil, France, Switzerland, the UK, and other places. He picked people who he knew had the skills to do the job and particularly looked for experienced leaders who had an outside perspective without connections to the old regime.

2. Destroy silos. In order to get our monumental tasks done in the short time frame we were given, we had to create a network structure. It was important to collaborate across ministries and hierarchies to move forward. We leveraged the local knowledge and experience of ministers on the ground as a foundation for cross-silo collaboration. For the Prime Minister, it also meant that he had to empower his team to make autonomous decisions.

3. Separate the transformation or innovation team from the traditional part of the organization. Just like a technology company, we intentionally physically set up our “lab” on the opposite side of Tunis, far from the main body of government. Big problems need big solutions and you can’t come up with great ideas when you are bogged down with e-mails and day to day issues. Our job was to come up with innovative ideas to move our country forward and for that we needed the space to think and be creative.

4. Build bonds to strengthen trust. There is no way you can accomplish any major feat, let alone getting an entire country off to a new start, if you don’t trust, respect and have confidence in your team.

To strengthen our teamwork, we got out of the office and did outdoor team building exercises. We met each other during the weekend for social gatherings or to play soccer together. We went on learning expeditions and gathered insights into how challenges like ours have been approached elsewhere. All of this helped us be on the same page and have faith that we could succeed together.

5. Recognize your window of opportunity and set priorities. We had one year to get the job done. In that timeline and with the task of bringing an entire country back from the brink, you have to focus. We made it a priority to set up state institutions as outlined in the constitution, to prepare the ground for fair and internationally-recognized parliamentary and presidential elections before the end of our one-year mandate, to create an investment friendly environment and to resolve ongoing political conflicts. The situation was dire. A sense of urgency can help leaders reach goals. We couldn’t work on issues that weren’t of the most pressing importance.

Success?

So did we succeed? We redesigned the national subsidy system and put the country on a better economic path. We led the fight against terrorism, redesigned the higher education system in the country, formulated a five-year strategic plan for “Digital Tunisia,” created a “country chief information officer” role that reports directly to the Prime Minister. On our watch an SMS-based registration system for national elections was also created. I would say overall we harnessed technology to push the country toward the future.

But sadly Tunisia is now facing an unprecedented terrorist threat following three attacks in 2015 on the Bardo National Museum, on a major hotel in Sousse and on the presidential guard in Tunis. More recently an all-out military style attack by ISIS was carried on Ben Gardane, a Tunisian city on the Libyan border. Because of this, tourism, one of the country’s biggest income generators, has plummeted leaving it in an economically weakened state.

But that’s also how business is. Success one year, or even one week, doesn’t at all guarantee future wins.

Look at Volkswagen in 2015. The formerly top-selling brand experienced a scandal that put its future in danger.

So leaders in any types of organizations need to prepare themselves, mentally and otherwise, to face high turbulence, or else.

Do you have what it takes to lead in high turbulence?

About the Author

Tawfik Jelassi is IMD Professor of Strategy and Technology Management. He was the Tunisian Minister of Higher Education, Scientific Research, and Information & Communication Technologies during a transitional technocratic government in 2014-2015 following the Arab Spring revolution in the country. He is conducting a session on Leading in a High Turbulence Environment at Orchestrating Winning Performance taking place in Lausanne from June 27th to July 1st.