Keeping Your Team on The Same Page
A vital component of a successful business is a well-disciplined team that not only communicates well but cooperates effectively in the work environment to solve problems and meet deadlines. A good team sets a business apart from the competition, and since people are the driving force behind any business, it’s crucial that you’re building a trustworthy and effective group to work with. Keeping your team on the same page is no easy task, especially if you’re working with remote team members, but by following these simple tips, you can increase communication and ensure your team is working together well.
Better Communication
Communication is key to keeping everyone on the same page. Without clear expectations, guidelines, and relevant information, your team will be left scrambling to figure out the finer details and likely experience frustration in doing so. Communicating with team members on a group basis ensures that you’re setting clear goals that everyone can understand.
If you’re not great at communicating, here are just a few pointers to help you better communicate with your team:
- Always make eye contact and speak in a way that everyone can understand
- Always ask if the person you’re speaking with understood what you said, or if you need to clarify any details.
- Keep the message the same across all team members to avoid confusion
- When setting individual goals for team members, stay in contact for updates and give praise where appropriate.
- Choose in-person communication when possible for better comprehension and personalized communication
- Let your team know that your office is always open to them should they have questions or concerns
- Provide an easily accessible medium with which to get ahold of you or other supervisors
- Promote the message of good communication throughout the work day
- Set the example for your team members by choosing effective communication
These are just a few examples of how you can further communication between you and your team, but the overall message remains the same: communication is absolutely essential to an effective team and the overall success of the business. Without a working team, you’re left scrambling to complete projects and meet deadlines.
Hosting Better Meetings
A meeting can be a great way to introduce new concepts or ideas to the team, or discuss important issues in relation to the current project or the direction of the business as a whole. Effective meetings get everyone on the same page, and in order to achieve this synchronicity, you’ll need an agenda.
Every good meeting starts with a blueprint or an agenda. Just as an architect creates a plan before any structure is built, so must you before any meeting is held, whether it be a conference call or in-person gathering. Without a good agenda, your meetings will be disorganized and inefficient, leaving them unable to truly achieve much of anything.
Agendas can be as simple as a bulleted list of goals or discussion topics. It’s important to share the meeting agenda with your team before the meeting takes place, to ensure everyone is on the same page and any last-minute suggestions are considered before the meeting takes place.
Conference calls can be a quick and easy alternative to in-person meetings and are crucial to teams with remote members. There exist many online conference calling platforms, which allow you to setup a conference call quickly and with little effort. Using these wonderful tools, you can host quick, focused meetings from anywhere in the world.
Be sure to ask for feedback from your team members after your meeting has concluded. This will allow your team members to have a voice in how future meetings are held, and help you identify and negative patterns in the way you organize your meetings. No one knows better what positive (or negative) aspects of the meeting exist than those who participated in it.
Offer Incentives
Nothing serves as a better motivator than incentives to succeed. Offering incentives for excellent cooperation among your team members will not only provide the team with a tangible goal to reach but also help promote communication and cooperation across the board.
Incentives can be as simple as a gift card to the team that reaches the best solution or meets their goals, or as advanced as paid time off for the most cooperative team. Imagine how much better you would perform in a team setting if you were working towards a tangible incentive such as paid time off.
Encouraging your team members to work together will also allow you to gauge the effectiveness of individuals within the team. This can be crucial when it comes time to choose someone for a new promotion or project, as their ability to work well in a team setting is an indicator of their personal abilities.
Relay Information Quickly
Without the correct information, your team will likely struggle to stay on the same page with one another. That’s why it’s so vital that information is relayed quickly to team members, and through a medium that everyone can understand.
While a chain email may be the best way to reach your team quickly, they can often become cumbersome once people start replying. It’s better to send individual emails to your team members, so as to better communicate with them on an individual level and ensure they’ve comprehended the information.
Keeping your team up to date with the latest news and information is arming them with the most important tool at their disposal. You’ll find that a well-informed team functions on a higher level than a misinformed one.
