Click here for Part I: What makes a team successful?
Create transparency within the team
Open and honest communication eliminates doubts. This applies, for example, to politics, banks, insurance companies – all those areas that necessarily require a high degree of trust from their voters or customers. Transparency is also necessary for companies that want to gain and retain the trust of their employees.2 Transparent communication must work through all levels of the company, but especially within the individual teams. Trust is the basis for good cooperation, and transparency is essential for this. Nothing creates and maintains trust as much as talking to each other regularly and openly. Honesty and authenticity ensure closeness, insight into the emotional inner life of colleagues enables a better assessment of the other person. Only when it is comprehensible how someone “works” is it possible to reach a level of trust. Especially in virtual teams, it is important that colleagues can assess each other as well as possible, even at a distance, since direct on-site exchange is usually not possible.
Trust within the project: avoiding control
Sufficient and continuously transparent communication during a project can be created by documenting all processes and procedures within a team for all to see. Useful planning tools, such as Kanban boards, mind maps or project plans, which can also be created online, can help here. Such useful aids also make it easier to assess colleagues. Especially in virtual teams and with more remote work, for example from the home office, it is more difficult to see whether colleagues are completing their tasks. Planning tools can be used to measure the progress of the project through predefined milestones and associated tasks. In regular coordination meetings, the progress of the project can be discussed, tasks delegated or marked as completed. This makes the progress and the results comprehensible for everyone. However, it is important to evaluate the colleagues on the basis of the results achieved, not to control the way. Excessive control damages trust.
Decisions, open exchange and tolerance of failure
In addition to transparent cooperation, hierarchical transparency within a team is also essential. Decisions on project progress should ideally be made jointly within the team, unless they are unavoidable decisions at management level. In that case, however, these decisions should be sufficiently and comprehensibly justified and should not create a feeling of paternalism. A shared decision-making culture involves every team member in the decision-making process. An equal perception promotes team cohesion and motivation. This in turn strengthens trust in each other and in the team leader. A fair and transparent performance appraisal of the members of a team is also a requirement for a trusting working environment.
Lifelong learning and trust
A climate of mutual trust is a prerequisite for learning. Thinking outside the box and constructive criticism of others’ suggestions are important in finding optimal solutions.
Those who do not trust do not make courageous decisions. However, when it comes to developing and spreading innovation within a company, courageous decisions are inevitable.
More information about learning culture at LAPP: Hooray, we made a mistake!
This also includes encouraging team members to try out new things, to contribute their own ideas and to allow everyone to make mistakes now and then. A healthy culture of failure is important in order to learn. Constructive support is essential. In teams with a lack of trust, people avoid admitting mistakes for fear of negative consequences. However, this wastes the opportunity to react in a timely and meaningful manner when difficulties arise. This affects the quality of the project outcome. A climate of mutual trust is a prerequisite for improvement. Constructive criticism and suggestions from others are important for finding optimal solutions together. If there is an open professional exchange with constructive discussions within the team, it has a positive effect on the project process. If team members feel that they are perceived as equals and there is a basis of trust, employees will dare to take more courageous approaches than in an inhibited atmosphere. Those who do not trust do not make risky decisions. However, when it comes to developing and disseminating innovations, risk-taking is inevitable.
Trust improves team cohesion
Trust grows the better people know and appreciate each other. Ideally, team members get to know each other through joint activities or private exchanges, detached from the work level. This can be achieved, for example, through positive experiences outside of professional work, such as a team event, a joint lunch break or an after-work gathering. In virtual teams, joint activities can also be realised digitally, whether in an online coffee round or via a digital group event, such as an online tasting. The important thing here is a shared positive experience that promotes team cohesion and thus strengthens trust among each other. However, the personal level can also be reached through everyday work. A short exchange about the highlights of the weekend, planned activities, but also about upcoming difficulties within the project promotes sympathy. A focus on the commonalities within the team supports the feeling of togetherness. For example, team cohesion is strengthened by common challenges as well as by jointly achieved successes. It is important to duly acknowledge these. Even small, achieved stage victories that are highlighted motivate the team and increase the satisfaction, pride and sense of togetherness of the employees. Strong cohesion within the team leads to higher satisfaction, increases participation and helpfulness within the team. In addition, the common goals are accepted more strongly, there is a higher work performance and productivity, while fluctuation is reduced.3 Companies, in turn, benefit from this.
Stronger in the group – reaching the goal together
Successful teams are united by common values and a living community culture. In order to promote, build or develop this, it helps to regularly keep in mind the necessary conditions for good and fruitful teamwork – within the team, but also with regular self-reflection.
Here you can find entertaining and helpful tips for team building↵
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1 StepStone: Erfolgsgeheimnis Team 2019, Patricia Pela, Dr. Tobias Zimmermann. S. 18
2 https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/196026/umfrage/meinung-zur-notwendigkeit-von-transparenz-von-unternehmen/
3 https://wpgs.de/fachtexte/gruppen-und-teams/teamgeist-kohaesion-und-zusammenhalt-in-teams/
