How would you describe the teams you enjoyed being part of the most? What did they have in common? I’d bet they were teams where you had fun and worked hard. The direction was clear and everyone pulled their weight. You trusted each other. You felt satisfaction and your role made an impact.
What if you could experience that again with your team? What steps would you need to take to enable your team to thrive? Here are five practices to implement with your team.
5 Practices of Thriving Teams
- They’re passionate about the work because they believe in the purpose and live the values.
- They are intentional about where they’re going. They stay focused and say no to things that don’t align.
- Everyone is clear on their role and how they contribute to the team. They understand what is required of them to excel.
- Each person takes ownership for their success and failures. They look for ways to add value.
- Leadership cares about the success of each team member and holds them accountable.
Mission and Values
What do you stand for? Thriving teams have a clear mission and values. The mission defines who you’re helping (client), why you’re helping (need), and how you’re helping (service/product). Each role on the team contributes to fulfilling the mission.
Values define and guide the behavior for achieving the mission. They are the pillars of your company culture. Use values as filters for decision making when hiring, taking on projects, and developing partnerships. When teams live the values it shows in their daily work and interactions.
What is living your values? “Embrace Challenges” is one of the CEOffice values. Living this requires me to stay curious, understand friction refines, pursue truth, and think big. It can be measured in the risks taken, new ventures, client engagement, and quality of service.
Align Efforts
When work focuses on achieving the mission and living the values, setting annual business goals becomes easier. Instead of chasing the latest business trend, you focus on what furthers the mission. This intentionality reduces the likelihood of burnout and overwhelm.
Create Annual Alignment
- Define the annual business goals. If you have a team, these are different from individual founder goals. When you have a team, they must be specific and big enough for others to take part and contribute.
- Decide how you’ll measure progress and success. What are the quarterly and monthly milestones for each goal and skill?
- For goals, what is the #, %, or rating they must achieve?
- For projects, what are the milestones they must achieve? You can measure accuracy, completion, client satisfaction, actual/goal for budget, actual/goal for timeliness, etc.
- For skills, are they showing growth or positive consistency from month to month? Ideal growth shows progress from minimal support to having the capability to mentor peers.
- Determine how each role plays a part in achieving the goals. This supports the creation of individual goals. Individual goals are a collaborative effort to encourage ownership. When someone takes ownership of their success and failures, they’re more likely to contribute, grow, and excel.
- List the skills to develop in collaboration with the team member. Refer to their job description and individual goals. Skills might include communication, accuracy, design, organization, etc.
- Begin execution of goals and skill development. Having a shared virtual office with business processes and templates supports the execution.
A clear direction for growth aligns efforts and makes it easier to provide feedback. Feedback to fuel progress and sustain momentum.
In the absence of feedback, people will fill in the blanks with a negative. They will assume you don’t care about them or don’t like them.
pat summitt
Clear Expectations
Have you hired someone and found out later they weren’t a good fit for the role? You’re not alone. It happens to everyone at some point.
For clients, I start by reviewing the job description. Is the job description accurately representing the business needs? Or is it quickly thrown together using ChatGPT or a peer’s template? Are you hiring someone to fill a seat or to further the mission of the business?
Improving job descriptions is an important step in reducing turnover costs and building a thriving team. Relationships, professional and personal, require intentionality. You don’t want anyone on your team, especially when they’ll impact the culture and clients.
Because teams are made up of relationships it requires you to know yourself. Know your strengths + weaknesses and what the business needs. Strong teams have individuals who compliment each other and fill in the gaps.
Once you understand what the business needs, then you’ll be able to better define the roles. Job descriptions define expectations and summarize the role’s purpose to the mission. Clear performance expectations help team members excel, setting you both up for success.
A lack of clear expectations enables mediocrity which is detrimental to the culture and the business. When team members aren’t valued and don’t see a path for growth they look elsewhere.
Cons: I feel im stuck and not growing.
Glassdoor Employee Review
A well-written job description attracts ideal team members. It reflects the opportunity for impact and growth available with your company. Who are you attracting?
TIP: The ease with which you receive applications inversely correlates to the effort required to screen applications. Friction improves quality.
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Encourage Ownership
Taking ownership is a requirement of success. You can encourage ownership by getting to know each team member through conversation and questions. What are their career goals? What skills do they want to develop? What opportunities do they see for the business? How would they go about taking action?
I encourage you to be curious about their experiences and opinions. Often during conversation, I learn something about a team member that opens the door to a new opportunity for them and the business. In addition, asking questions and listening allows you to understand things from their perspective and reduce assumptions.
PROMPT: This is what I observed…. tell me what happened from your perspective. What am I missing?
Take notes during the conversation. It helps with memory retention, shows you’re listening, and signals they’re important to you.
In the meeting, identify action items and schedule a specific time for follow-up. This practice supports the alignment of efforts and accountability.
Success is a collaborative effort requiring intentional effort from both of you.
TIP: I use intentional often in my coaching. Intentional in my practice means being thoughtful, present, and prepared.
I’m thinking ahead to make the best use of shared time.
I’m fully present (notifications off) and giving the individual my undivided attention.
I’m prepared to provide relevant feedback and make decisions because I did the necessary work before the meeting.
Reinforce Success
A team’s performance is a reflection of leadership. Do you follow through on what you said? Do you hold your team accountable for their responsibilities?
These days it appears accountability is a four-letter word. Few people want to be held or hold others accountable for their behavior. As a result, we get chaos and chaos discourages everyone else’s efforts.
Great leaders understand the importance and power of accountability. They hold themselves and those around them accountable to a standard of excellence. They’ve experienced the joy of doing great work with great people. From experience, I can tell you work is much more rewarding and the results compound when everyone pulls together.
Accountability supports team performance and business growth. It assesses individual efforts to reinforce positive behavior and correct negative behavior. Accountability reinforces trust between individuals because they can rely on each other.
Acknowledging positive behavior reinforces it and encourages it to be repeated. One of my mentors told me, “Catch someone doing something good”. It’s an easy practice to boost the confidence of team members and make that behavior contagious.
Only 23% of employees strongly agree that they get the right amount of recognition for the work they do.
Gallup
Negative behavior provides an opportunity for coaching, training, and sharing of resources. When identifying negative behavior focus on attacking the problem vs the individual. This practice reduces the likelihood of defensiveness and instead creates an opening for solutions.
If you’re unwilling to have a conversation to correct behavior, it begs the question of how much you care. How much you care about the individual and your business standards.
Frequency of Feedback
The frequency of feedback varies based on the purpose and depth of the discussion.
- Weekly – Ideal for immediate coaching, encouragement, and feedback. Quick conversations reduce problems from snowballing. Highlight what they’re doing well in passing, with a quick note, or at a team meeting.
- Monthly – Supports consistency in performance and progress of goals. In 30 minutes, you can reinforce positive performance, address opportunities for focused improvement, and collect feedback on gaps in the business or team.
- Annual – Summarizes contributions to the team and business for the year. Sets performance expectations and individual goals to align with business goals for the upcoming year.
A consistent practice of weekly, monthly, and annual feedback supports clarity of expectations and achievement of goals. The easiest way to start the practice of feedback is to schedule it as a recurring event in your calendar. Then commit to showing up for your team. When they know they’re a priority, you’ll see an improvement in work and morale.
Documenting your monthly and annual feedback sessions tells the story of the team member’s performance and growth. And documentation is a critical resource for personnel files.
Team Road Trip
If the frequency of feedback seems overwhelming, let us examine a road trip.
- Before you leave for a road trip, you map out the stops you’ll make on the way to your destination. This is your Annual performance review and goal planning.
- On the trip, you encounter road signs guiding you to your destination. These are your Weekly check-ins to ensure you’re headed in the right direction.
- Along the way you stop to rest, fuel up, and sightsee. These are your Monthly 1:1 meetings where you calibrate performance to make sure you arrive at your destination.
The ability of your team to arrive at their destination depends on how much you support their road trip. When they feel valued and supported, their energy and interaction with clients will show it.
You’re responsible for your team’s growth while they’re under your care. This is a privilege and responsibility. Instead of seeing it as a burden where you’re barely surviving in your role, reframe it as an opportunity to grow with your team. Invest in the relationships, invest in their success, and thrive together! It makes the journey of small business more enjoyable and provides the energy to persevere in hard times. 💞
join the conversation
What practices would you add to build a thriving team?