A. Steps to Create Participative Team Relationships

1. Create a Shared Mission

Successful teams know their purpose – what the reason is for their existence. Teams that fail, often attribute their failure to an unclear focus. For the company to be successful everybody should be moving in the same direction.

The most important aspect of creating your team mission is that the leader cannot do it on his own. To gain maximum buy-in and engagement (Employee engagement means that employees’ hearts hands and minds should be involved in the work, not only their hands) from employees, team members themselves should develop the mission. The role of the leader is merely that of facilitator and gatekeeper.

What to include in your mission statement:

Click here to view a video that explains SMART goals.

2. Set Goals and Measure Results

Without a set of measurable goals, teams can easily be distracted by issues not relevant to the success of the team, the project and the customers.

Not measuring performance is like playing a game without keeping a score. A set of clear performance measures allows the team to manage its progress and fulfil the purpose outlined in its mission statement.

Setting Goals

Goals and objectives are statements saying what you want to achieve; how you want to achieve it; at what time you want to achieve it; set up a step-by-step plan to prevent procrastination and ensure that goals empower people by participating in the whole process.

Steps in Goal setting

Step One: Ensure that your goals are the best ‘avenues’ to achieve your department’s vision and the company’s strategy.

Step Two: With the active participation of your team, establish goals that are stated in measurable, focused terms. Ensure that these are SMARTER.

A well-formulated objective statement is:

Step Three:  Test your goals again asking the following two questions: “Will the goal drive the right behaviours?” and “Does our team have the authority to execute this goal?”

Step Four:  Determine the tasks through which the stated goals will be achieved. Tasks should be concrete, measurable actions that must be effected at a specific, stated time.

Step Five:  Establish priorities for the required tasks. Some tasks have to be completed before others can commence, which calls for priorities that will determine the order in which tasks must be completed as well as by what date.

Step Six:  Finally, it is necessary to follow up, assess and check to determine if the group/team is doing what is required. Your involvement as a leader in this process is essential in that it validates the importance of the stated goals and priorities. It is important that the leader sees the process through to its conclusion.

Click here to view a video that explains performance standards.

3.  Setting Performance Standards

A standard is simply a statement of what will be an acceptable performance. Perfection obviously is not standard. Standards should be attainable by the average person and surpassed by superior performance.

Key questions the individual needs to ask himself concerning his job are: “What are the performance standards that need to be maintained/ reached in my section?” or “How can I tell when I am performing my job to standard?”

The main requirement of the standard is that it should mean the same thing to the people who are using it. It is better to put emphasis on facts and data rather than opinions and subjective judgment. Not everything can be measured. In making some of the most important business decisions such as, “Will it sell?" or "Will he fit into his job?” or “Should we trust them?” judgment, as well as measurement, must be used. Any standard, which enables you to distinguish failure from success, is better than none at all.

Finally, it is important to apply a standard to the end result or output of the job – measure whether you have achieved what you have set out to achieve in your goal setting.

4.  Putting it all in an Action Plan

Action plans provide a method for identifying who needs to do what and when in what order to accomplish an objective. In other words, action plans outline and sequence the steps and the resources (people, finance, time, and equipment) needed to achieve the performance objective. 

Example of an Action-planning Pro-forma

Define Team Member Roles and Responsibilities

Clearly defining team member roles and responsibilities up front is crucial. Begin by jointly deciding what should be expected of all team members. Once in agreement on areas of common responsibility, start determining individual roles:.

• Review existing skills and expertise in your team.
• Compare these with skills needed by your goals, objectives and charter.
• Allocate roles and responsibilities clearly.
• Identify the development needs of team members in order to fulfil your team goals.

5. Feedback

Each team member’s performance affects the work of the whole team. Giving feedback for improvement requires special skills. Here are three principles to use feedback as a performance improvement tool:

• Giving feedback- is a way to improve the performance of the team, not to make oneself feel better.
• Avoiding critical feedback usually makes things worse
• Arguing over others’ feelings or perceptions is seldom productive. It is more useful to listen, understand team members’ intent, and ask questions that clear up any confusion.

6. Develop Operating Guidelines

To function effectively, a team needs to set out its expectations about behaviour and interactions clearly.

Operating guidelines are a set of shared agreements developed by the team which define how team members will interact. For example

• ‘We will be prepared for meetings,
• ‘We will treat each other with respect and dignity or
• ‘We will follow through on our commitments’.

Such guidelines provide a conscious alternative to unspoken norms such as ‘we will defer to management to make decisions’ or ‘we will complain about other team members behind their backs instead of talking with them directly’. Used properly, operating guideline is a powerful tool for self-regulation and team well-being.

As team members give their commitment to helping improve team relations and subsequently team efficiency, the team leader should also give his/her commitment. Remember, if your aim is employee engagement, you are interested in employees’ hands and their heads and hearts. Although it sounds logical, it is sometimes very hard to get commitment from employees on this level.