4. Teams Adhere to Specific Team Culture
Your team culture is the backbone of your teamwork. It includes:
- Behavior
- Shared values
- Accountability
- Autonomy.
As a leader, you should reinforce and reward desirable behavior.
Your team members should share values and demonstrate them through behavior, such as accountability.
Ultimately, team members should feel a degree of autonomy in their work.
As a leader, you can do plenty by implementing a RACI matrix when creating communication plans to ensure you’re encouraging a positive team culture.
Source: RCMT Europe
5. Teamwork Fuels Creativity
Projects are dynamic; there are always risks to mitigate and issues to manage.
However, effective project teams have no problem doing so.
They are creative enough to devise solutions even in the most complicated situations.
Creativity is fueled by diversity.
Your team members are a diverse bunch; some are more extroverted and vocal.
Others are deep thinkers who may need a day or two, but then they’ve got the entire strategy planned.
As a team leader, you have to help every personality on your team shine and play well with others.
And when they all feel safe expressing their opinions and get a say in decision-making processes, your team will truly reach new planes of effectiveness.
Not even conflict is a problemif you manage it well.
Encourage team members to examine different perspectives, and create conflict resolution strategies together.
6. Project Teams Share Knowledge
Knowledge sharing and coaching are incredibly important for effective teamwork.
A lot of knowledge sharing starts from the top.
If you’re committed to helping your team succeed as a leader, they’ll take a page out of your book and help one another.
You can encourage your team to share their knowledge by:
- Holding specialized brainstorming sessions
- Having one-on-ones focused on individual team members’ professional development
- Pairing up team members with complementary skills.
Of course, formal training opportunities in line with your team members’ professional goals are ideal.
However, you can incentivize your teams every day.
7. Project Teams Are Aligned
The main prerequisite for alignment is transparency.
You and your top management should be transparent about your business and project goals.
However, you also need technological solutions to help your team stay on the same page and focus their efforts towards achieving the common goal.
Good project and task management software goes a long way.
Choose a tool that includes:
- Visual management
- In-built dashboards and reporting
- Scheduling, task assignments, progress tracking.
If it also has collaboration and communication features, that’s even better!
Every team can become effective.
But first, you must help them by providing the right infrastructure for great work.
8. Effective Teams Turn Failures into Successes
Every team struggles with obstacles.
Sometimes, you may not get the right instructions from clients and top management.
Other times, your team members are stretched thin across numerous projects.
However, an effective project team will deal with these issues constructively.
Even if individual team members are burned out, they’ll be able to lean on other team members.
As a project manager, the best you can do is represent stable leadership that truly cares about its people:
- Conduct evaluations and self-evaluations
- Remember to recognize and reward positive behavior
- Invite your team to work with you on creating project plans and Work Breakdown Structures
- Take the time to reflect on the lessons you’ve learned after a project, and review your PM tool metrics
- Carve out time for celebration, especially after you’ve reached a milestone or successfully completed a project.
As a project manager, you’ve got a unique opportunity to help your team be the best it can be.
It’s teamwork time!
