Why You Need to Focus on Building a Cohesive Team First
Wednesday, March 1, 2023 - Joe Kiedinger
I’m back home after a whirlwind of travel from beautiful Napa, California to the snowy northwoods of Wisconsin, home of our retreat center (aka, the Kiedinger cabin), where I’ve been working with leaders to align their teams. There’s nothing more valuable than taking some time to get away from the office to solidify your vision and do some big picture planning.
If you’re looking to improve the health of your organization overall (and who isn’t really?) you need to start by building a more cohesive team.
So, how cohesive is your team? Are you united around one clear, common goal?
Here are five reasons why you need to prioritize clarity and alignment before anything else:
Benefits of a Cohesive Team
- Reduce drama
We spend more time with our co-workers than we do with our own families, so it’s important that we communicate and collaborate well together. If not, small frustrations can become amplified, fester and create much larger problems.
To reduce this dysfunction or catch it before it sets in, you need to create clarity around your mission, vision, values, and goals. Your team also needs a process or tool in place to regularly touch base and talk about miscommunications before they grow into contempt. - Boost productivity
If your team isn’t aligned on what your company stands for, there will be endless debate over, well everything, as they seek clarity. Communicate, overcommunicate and overcommunicate again until everyone is on the same page.
Once your team can clearly understand your organization’s mission, vision, values and goals they can get to work. Think of all the time saved when everyone sitting on the table has the same set of expectations. They can just go and do, radically increasing productivity! - Improve collaboration
Think of that person at work who most confuses or frustrates you. Are you more or less apt to collaborate well with that person? If you’re beyond frustrated and reaching the point of dysfunction, could you even see yourself going out of your way to avoid them? Probably!
That’s why it’s essential to make sure your team is aligned and communicating clearly with one another. We need to lean on and trust each other in order to collaborate well. In our office, we utilize our tool, Dignify, to check in with one another before situations get difficult. And we urge our clients to do the same! - Increase employee engagement
A happy, engaged employee is more likely to stay with their company. With turnover at an all-time high recently, employers are reaching for any way to keep people in their roles and avoid the timely and expensive process of hiring and onboarding.
Instead, focus your efforts on engaging the people you already have! Get to know everyone as an individual with culture building activities like a team lunch or an ice breaker at your next meeting. When we get to know one another as individuals, it’s much easier to feel like we’re seen and we matter in the workplace. - Achieve your mission faster
When your team is aligned and communicating well, they are powerful! Crush this year’s goals and initiatives with a productive team that trusts one another and will work hard to support your shared mission, vision, values and goals.
JOE KIEDINGER
ACTION PLAN: Take your highest level leaders out of the office for an offsite to begin forming the framework for your cohesive team. If you need some guidance, give us a holler.