4 Ways to Improve Your Team

Dear Managers and Leaders!

I am reading a very good book from John C. Maxwell titled “The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork”. In this book, John Maxwell emphasizes the fact that as a team leader, you must ensure that your team meets the highest performance standards possible. Your team must perform or it is bound to fail. You do not want your team to be caught underperforming because at that point, you will lose control over your team. Someone above you is likely to overtake your team and do what is necessary to correct the situation. At that point, it usually requires some serious actions that could even mean lay-offs of team members or even the elimination of the entire team. You really want to notice that situation before someone else detects it so that you keep control and do what you decide to do to correct the performance problem yourself.

To help you with improving your team, Maxwell suggests 4 ways to improve your team’s performance. I’ll share them with you here.

• Improve the performance of your team members – If you see that your team does not perform as well as it should, the first thing that you need to check is whether the team members can be trained to perform better. You must always look for ways to train and improve the people forming your teams. Note that you also must not forget to improve yourself in the process!
• Add competent people to your team – Sometimes, your team members are performing well, but you discover that you will not succeed with the current team as it stands. Maybe you lack some specific competences. Maybe it is just the sheer number of people that is insufficient to do everything that needs to be done. In those cases, you will find that you need to adjoin more competent people to help you achieve what you need to achieve. You need to grow your team!
• Change the leader – When a team is composed of the right people but still does not progress, maybe it is time to look for a new leader! Or maybe some people on your team would be better suited to lead certain aspects of the project. This is tougher to do when you are the team leader yourself. You have to look at your delegation skills and see how you can use some better suited people to help you with leadership. You can keep the control of the overall project, but delegate the leadership responsibilities of certain parts to someone else if you feel it will be better for the project.
• Remove inefficient members – Finally, sometimes you need to remove inefficient members from a non-performing team. A single member can change a winning team into a losing team! In that case, you have to put the interests of the team first and remove that person from your team. For you as the leader, the team is what counts. You need to compose the best possible team and this should be your focus.

Those are the four elements that Maxwell suggests in his book. I would add things around processes and relationship myself. We might look at those in some future posts!

What about you dear leaders? Do you always focus on your team’s interests first? Do you have your own suggestions as to how team performance can be improved? Please add your comments below. I’m always happy to see them coming!

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.