Seven Tips to Create an Ideal Team Culture
By Michael Zhang, Account Supervisor
Leading a team can be a nightmare. Many things can go wrong. Team members can ghost meetings, become unproductive, not listen to your advice or turn against each other. After the pandemic hits and everything goes online, leading a team has become even more difficult, especially when you have team members in different time zones across the globe. After leading a group of four with each member in a different time zone, I found several tips that would make leading a team easier.
- Activate your team members at the very beginning
Often, team members can be confused and unproductive because they do not know the purpose of their job. Many leaders give orders to their team members with extremely detailed instructions, but, against leaders’ expectations, their team members complete their job half-heartedly and submit perfunctory work. For your team members to enthusiastically crush their tasks, you have to make sure your team members understand the reason behind the work they are doing. Whether it is your brand’s mission statement or a shared vision that you and your members resonate with, motivating your employees at the start of your team will always boost productivity and efficiency in the long-run.
2. Be an example of the team
When you set up team rules for your squad, it is essential for you, the leader, to abide by the rules. For example, when a leader sets the rule to arrive five minutes early and does so in every meeting, members of the team will look up to the leader and try to follow. In reverse, when the leader breaks the rules he or she sets, the authority of the rules vanished, and team members would become more likely to break the rules and not listen to their leaders.
3. Listen to your team members and take action
Life in a pandemic can be challenging, and a leader must listen and understand many difficulties members of the team can face. People might miss the meeting because of being in a 12-hour difference time zone, or they might request a short break because of a mental breakdown during the pandemic. Leaders who carefully listen to their team’s vexations or needs can build more trust with members and positively influence the team’s culture. However, sometimes listening to your teammates’ needs cannot solve the problem alone. Based on your understanding after listening to team members, you can take action accordingly. If there is too much stress in the team, try to reduce the workload; if it is too difficult for the team to meet synchronously, record the meetings and upload it to Google Drive. There are always ways to make the team work better as long as you listen to your members and take action.
4. Actively seek feedback
Leaders can feel over-confident about themselves and stop taking in constructive advice. Leaders that ignore advice and criticisms can arrest their developments, surround themselves with obsequious individuals and make the team more likely to generate poor decisions. To avoid the downfall of your team, try to seek feedback actively. In this way, you can receive suggestions from your team members as soon as possible and correct yourself before it becomes too late to do so. At the same time, try to encourage your team to give you feedback as well. It will help the group form a two-way communication channel and allow a more regular flow of feedback and suggestions.
5. Be dare to give suggestions
Once in a while, leaders might feel reluctant to give the team suggestions because they are afraid of hurting the team’s morale or making themselves look bad. However, there are two major ways for people to grow – learn from suggestions or make mistakes. Giving the team constructive suggestions helps the team to avoid mistakes better and flourish at the same time. When I gave advice to my team for the first time, I was feeling uncomfortable. Things changed when my team members appreciated my suggestions and took them for granted. The reaction of my team made me believe that I am doing the right thing. If your team does not appreciate your comments, please do not be discouraged. You can try to change the way of framing your suggestions to make it softer.
6. Build personal connections with your team
Here is a question first: Do you feel more comfortable working with a friend or a stranger? Most people’s answer would be to work with a friend. It is because a friend has more commonalities with you, and you are more willing to trust your friend and agree with them. When leaders are mere strangers to the team, members would feel more hesitant to trust or agree with their leaders. Instead, leaders should take every opportunity to understand their team members on a personal level. For example, one can know where teammates come from, their hobbies, and even the names of their cats and dogs. Doing so allows team members to trust their leaders’ decisions and support their leadership.
7. Encourage respect within the team
Many teams have undergone catastrophic storming stages. Part of the reason is that those teams do not generate a culture where team members respect disagreements and never show disdain for each other’s opinions. As the leader of the group, it is your responsibility to forestall any actions of disrespect from team members. You can achieve this by following the second tip and showing respect to every team member first. It allows team members to sense the benefit of being respected and start to do the same to each other. Increasing the sense of respect within the team not only helps boost the team’s morale, but it also makes the team a more inclusive place and allows more ideas and opinions to flow.