We’re all busy every day trying to meet sales targets, reach business objectives, drive social traffic, etc., and it would be impossible to do all of that alone. Working in teams is an integral part of any organization and developing that team into an effective one will result in numerous benefits – higher engagement and productivity, to name a few.
With remote work adding in a new challenge of collaborating virtually, how can you develop a strong, effective team that sees results?
Skills development.
Having the proper soft skills will help employees in any role, but it’s crucial when working as part of a team cohesively.
Learning in the flow of work is necessary for top performance as employees work to retain information and build skills throughout the employee lifecycle.
Here are some valuable skills employees should be trained on when working as a team:
Goal setting
There are many reasons goals fail – not knowing how to actually pursue a goal, lack of willpower, setting vague goals, etc. But, when they have concrete objectives and milestones to reach, they’re able to perform at a much higher level.
Setting goals improves results and is a critical step in the performance management process. Having clear goals and direction allows workers to know what they must do, when to do it, and to what level it needs to be done. Goals provide clarity and create a connection to the company while providing meaning to a job task.
So, what makes a good goal?
To set effective goals, you should use the SMART acronym. It stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bounded.
S – Goals need to be well-defined.
M – A goal must have some sort of objective target.
A – There must be a reasonable possibility to achieve the goal.
R – The goal must relate to business results.
T – There needs to be reasonable deadlines to meet the goal.
Check out this video on setting goals:
When employees know how to set solid goals and understand the process, they can better work as part of a team knowing everyone is working toward the same end game.
Problem solving
All employees, regardless of title, are going to encounter problems they’re going to need to solve. Through training on problem solving, they can become invaluable by developing useful strategies such as critical thinking.
Effective problem solving can be achieved by following these steps:
- Define your problem or goal clearly in writing.
- Ask “What else is the problem?” Never be satisfied with a single definition of a problem.
- Restate the problem to make it easier to solve.
- Determine all the possible causes of the problem.
- Determine all the possible solutions to this problem.
- Decide how to proceed.
- Assign responsibility for parts of the process.
- Set a deadline.
- Implement the plan.
- Check and review to see if the solution was successful. If not, implement Plan B. Or C. Keep working until there is a solution.
When employees know how to best solve problems, they can work collaboratively to do so, keeping productivity high. Strong problem solving works alongside goal setting – you overcome challenges to help streamline the process to continue reaching goals.
Project Management
A team is the backbone of all projects in a company. There are many moving parts to a single project, so each employee needs to have excellent project management skills so they know the process and what happens before and after their part to keep things moving.
Within project management comes other skills that are important for employees to master.
Employees must have strong communication skills to be able work well within in a team. They’ll need to convey messages to their team clearly and concisely.
Teams are bound to have conflict and it’s imperative that employees are able to work through it. Strong conflict management skills are essential for keeping up efficiency and productivity. Conflict management and resolution skills can also aid in fixing any roadblocks or setbacks.
Collaboration
Perhaps the most important skill needed to be a productive team is collaboration. Whether employees are in one location, dispersed across multiple locations, or part of a remote team, everyone needs to be on the same page.
Strong collaboration skills provide many benefits. Employees can increase innovation by encouraging the sharing of ideas and exploring new and interesting opportunities. They also help build employees’ skills across the board by bringing diverse individuals together and allowing them to learn from one another.
Good teamwork increases employee satisfaction and retention as everyone feels valued and meaningful to the organization. Collaboration can even increase client satisfaction and retention because employees can find solutions more quickly and efficiently.
Personalization
Now that the skills needed for effective teamwork are clear, there’s one more very important aspect to creating an effective team.
Through personalized training, employees can learn the skills they need for their own journey according to their personal career paths. By talking with each employee, a career path can be built aligning to their professional goals. This helps assign the skills they need to reach those skills.
Instead of a one-size-fits-most training plan, personalizing training provides employees with the learning they need, when, and how they need it. This can help boost employee productivity and retention and aid your organization in gaining a competitive edge.
We’ve identified steps to get your organization started on its way to building out personalized skills development to drive individual growth and company-wide success.
We’ve released an employee skills development platform called BizSkills that makes building career paths and employees’ job-specific skills more streamlined. We’ve included pre-mapped job roles to the skills needed for each role.
With this, training program managers are able to quickly scale personalized training by associating learners with standardized job roles and the content that aligns to the skills. It’s the solution to delivering more personalized upskilling and reskilling content to any organization.
This new platform comes with 5,000+ lessons mapped to 500+ job roles and 1,500+ associated skills. This solution will make it possible for organizations to tackle career pathing, attracting, and retaining talent, closing skill gaps, and succession planning, all with one platform.
Personalized training allows for each team member to get the information they need to do their best, and when everyone is working together, learning the skills they need, they can work well together because they have the same end goals, can communicate well, and solve problems together.
