Every team leader wants consistent high performance from their team, but most struggle with ways to make it happen. Managers and their teams often find it difficult to find sustainable and feasible ways to maintain consistently high performance.
Team leaders often fail to organically connect with their team members and create a space that values trust, inspires creativity, and encourages inclusivity. It’s difficult to achieve collective company goals when the team leader and its members are out of sync.
While there are many traditional ways or expectations of what efficient team building exercises or methods look like, the reality is far from them. A post pandemic world demands a broader yet personal and sensitive approach to team building, one that’s highly dependent on building organic and authentic interpersonal relationships.
Let’s look at some of the most common expectations and realities of team building methods.
Expectation #1: High paychecks and incentives are enough to drive high results
Reality: While a stable paycheck and incentives are an integral part of boosting employee morale, a consistently high-performing team requires inter-relational trust and safe connection. An incentivized work culture is ineffective if employees don’t feel comfortable sharing their concerns, challenges, ideas, and perspectives.
Expectation #1: Scheduling regular monthly meetings is a great way to keep the team motivated
Reality: Yes, regular meetings where different teams and project heads talk about their achievements, deadlines, and KPIs help in motivating the team and improving a sense of collaborative effort, but they’re only a surface-level method of boosting morale.
The real hard work is done behind the scenes. Apart from the regular team meetings, every team requires a regular and functional feedback system. More often than not, feedback is often deprioritized in the scheme of a manager’s day, but continuous performance feedback is a great way of helping staff members realize their true potential.
Expectation #2: Multitasking improves focus and productivity
Reality: Giving an employee multiple tasks at a time may seem like you’re getting a higher number of tasks out of the way at once, but the truth of the matter is that multitasking can decrease productivity.
Multitasking employees often have lower performance, attention span, and comprehension. Moreover, switching between tasks and having to refocus is a form of disruption which can lead to further productivity decrease.
Expectation #3: Work and personal life should be strictly separated
Reality: The traditional approach to business and increasing workplace efficiency involved a very strict separation of work and personal lives. But this can be more counterintuitive because technology has moved us all to an “always connected” reality, blurring the lines between work and play. While this situation has some advantages, it also calls for an acknowledgment of and empathy towards employees’ personal lives.
While it is important for employees to focus on their work responsibilities while on the clock, enforcing overly strict rules can create unnecessary stress. It can lead to an imbalance between one’s professional and personal life, which will affect staff morale. A team leader who strives for high engagement needs to first work on increasing transparency and embrace a healthy work-life balance.
The bottom line is that every team leader who wants to maximize workforce efficiency and improve the organization’s overall performance needs to be mindful of their employees’ well being and happiness. Create a transparent system, implement an effective feedback system and create a space where employees feel at home. If you chase employee happiness, productivity is bound to follow.
