Strong team identity: PART 2

In this blog we will be continuing to cover the remaining aspects on how to build a strong team identity. A lot of this blog is also linked to teamwork, efficiency and productivity.

1. Commitment

Commitment shows in many things, from the big decisions to the smaller details that get made. Altogether, this is about alignment between how you are engaging everyday and your team purpose, team values, and team vision.

Ensure key decisions are made clear at the end of team discussions and that everyone is willing to support them. Team members must also be willing to hold each other accountable for those team commitments. It can talk courage to get into conflict, but if you've laid the foundation, there will be enough reliance and respect as well as appreciation of the individuals to make conflict productive. When team members are willing to hold each other accountable, they enable higher standards because everyone is striving for the best possible outcomes. This could show up as higher quality, better solutions, greater learning, and more innovation. And ultimately, this enables the team to stay focused on their shared goals and team results. As a result, this ensures that everyone is diligent and committed to working non their tasks, increasing efficiency.

1. Appreciating individuality

Teams are made of people and it is important to not lose sight of the individuality of the members even though it is really easy to just want to do all the work by yourself. It is important to engage members of your team for maximum productivity and to do this based off their strengths, after all, you are a team.

First, recognize that everyone has a different personality and preferences. This includes communication styles, learning styles, conflict responses, introversion or extroversion, and many more contextual and specific traits. While it is impossible to satisfy all individual preferences on a team, it is important to understand and appreciate the individual preferences, so the group can negotiate and optimize for a given situation. And also appreciate when people are stepping outside their comfort zone for the benefit of the whole.

Second, respect that people are motivated/unmotivated. Instead of worrying about that, you need to create an environment that encourages motivation (direct or indirect). People want to choose how they do their work. And they want to do work that has greater meaning and impact. A key skill for all individuals to appreciate themselves and each other is emotional intelligence. This involves both understanding and managing your own emotions and being able to recognize and influence the emotions of others.

This is key to teamwork and productivity in a team.

1. Trust between members

Trust is the willingness to be vulnerable with each other and to have belief in someone that that they will complete something. Some trust is required to have meaningful conversations about values, purpose, and vision. Members need to have this trust as it is essential for teamwork- believing that someone can accomplish something and giving them a chance. Trust is very important for team identity and the stronger the trust, the stronger the team’s identity. The team can be more resilient and can recover quicker from problems. However, this takes time to build and in many cases, the trust given to an individual might me broken. This is very common and one of the biggest challenges of working as a team. Overcoming this challenge through effective management and communication is very important in the team for productivity and taking needed risks.

1. Accepting and dealing with productive conflict

Conflict driven from desire and is usually not productive. Not speaking up because you don't want to upset others or be perceived in a certain way is also not productive. Productive conflict happens when people are willing to share ideas and perspectives and also challenge each other's ideas and perspectives, all in the interest of reaching the best possible outcome. This enables creativity and innovation.

Here are a few basics for productive conflict:

• You listen to others without interruption so their ideas can be heard.

• You respect the perspectives, beliefs, and ideas of other members so you can challenge them and think of alternatives or develop them.

• You can disagree and commit. Because you feel heard and respected, because you listened and kept an open mind to alternatives.

When there is productive conflict within a team, it is then possible to have commitment to team decisions. This is very essential for a clear vision and productivity.

Next, we will be covering teamwork, a very wide topic which the past two blogs have also focused on. Thank you so much for reading and be sure to keep watching out for more blogs in the future.