If you haven’t read Part I, click here, and add these final five to your team building strategies.
6. Team Diversity: I call the skill of moving in and out of diverse cultures “cultural agility.” That’s a big concept we’ll save for a later article. For now, it’s just this simple: the more people you can understand, on their terms, the greater your ability to create trust.
Embrace diversity within the team. Diverse perspectives lead to innovative solutions and a richer team dynamic.
Team diversity makes us smarter, enlarges our world, and heightens our awareness. It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s also good for sales.
7. Team Celebrations: I suspect each team has preferred ways to celebrate success. The important feature is to take time and pause to celebrate success before marching on to the next goal. Acknowledge and celebrate both individual and team accomplishments. Celebrations may be rewards or recognition. Use both. Rewards might be financial or extra time off. Recognition costs only your time and creativity to recognize a job well done. Something as simple as a handwritten note is surprisingly effective.
8. Team Professional Development: Why? Two words: Artificial Intelligence (AI). Ongoing professional development has always been a good investment, but now, more than ever.
“There will be winners and losers in the AI race…Yes, job losses are inevitable, but so are job gains. The most successful companies won’t fight the tide of change — they will figure out how to take part in one of the greatest technological revolutions we have ever witnessed.”
Venture Beat 7/30/23
Recruiting, retaining and retraining talent in a tight labor market will be essential. Three of the top five most in-demand jobs, according to LinkedIn, are customer service, salesperson, and retail salesperson.
“Talent is the defining, important ingredient for success in the knowledge-based economy. Without talent, you can’t recruit and grow businesses, and capital follows talent today, rather than just talent following where businesses are located.”
Ross Devol, Heartland Forward, 5/16/23
You have already made an investment in your future by registering for Sleep Summit, haven’t you?
9. Team Meetings and Check-Ins: Everyone knows regular team meetings are needed and useful. What is not effective is unnecessary, too long, and irrelevant team meetings.
In my experience most 60 minute meetings have only about 20 minutes of value. For team members who have nothing better to do that’s just fine, but high performing team members see this for what it is, wasting time they could otherwise be devoting to their performance.
“Focus on being productive instead of busy.” Tim Ferriss
10. Team Humility: Team success requires organizational humility. “A 2021 study published in the Journal of Corporate Finance found that boasting about performance is not associated with value creation. In fact, the study found that firms that did not boast about earnings enjoyed stronger financial performance over their less humble peers” (Breaking Through, 2023).
The unexpected nature of modesty is hugely attractive, and it has currency.
I’ll end with a quote that might sum up my two part series:
“None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful.”
Mother Teresa
