10 Tips to Improve Project Teamwork
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If you’ve been lucky enough to have tasted what it’s like to be part of a team that just clicks, you’ll know how great it can be. It may have been in school sports, part time work as a student, an artistic group or in your current role.
A team with great teamwork is a joy to be part of and inspires you to be the best version of yourself to keep up. It sets the bar high and supports everyone to meet the challenges in front of them.
Projects need great teamwork – there’s simply no other way to get them done. How a team performs can make all the difference between achieving successful results and costly disappointment.
The more challenging the project, the more innovation required, the more teamwork contributes to its success.
Workplace projects often include people from across a business, who are new to each other and bring different skills and experience and quite possibly have other responsibilities too.
So how do you develop great teamwork in a team who have just met and will only be together for the duration of a project?
The key is to think of teamwork as a learnable leadership capability like any other.
Here’s 10 tips and practical steps you can take to improve teamwork on your projects.
1. Be intentional not hopeful
Hope is never a good strategy on its own to succeed. Starting a project with the intention of cultivating great teamwork will set you off on the right path.
What you can do
Include teamwork on agendas for initial project meetings
Ask each team member to describe their prior experiences working in great teams and what features they observed that created it
Be clear on what attributes of teamwork you want to cultivate and agree these as principles everyone will aspire to and be held accountable for
2. Be SMART with your teams’ focus
Teamwork flourishes when goals are clear, where each team member’s contribution and focus aligns and theres shared commitment and accountability.
When developing goals, priorities, targets and actions use the SMART framework to make sure they are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timebound.
What you can do
Use the SMART framework as a guide and test to make sure each priority and goal is clear from the start
Ask for feedback from team members to confirm goals are clear before locking them in and encourage people to speak up if they need help to understand
3. Make meetings matter
As a general rule, the fewer participants in project meetings, the better the teamwork. In fact, researchconducted at Stanford University shows the most productive meetings have less than eight people.
More than that, decision-making gets side-tracked by too many conflicting opinions and irrelevant discussions.
A study by management consultancy Bain & Company showed that for every attendee over seven, meeting effectiveness is reduced by 10 percent.
What you can do
Set an agenda for each meeting with the focus and outcomes expected
Only include people critical for the discussion and can make decisions
Make sure meetings focus on matters that have real consequences to keep people focused
4. Bigger isn’t always better
Select small teams. Teamwork and performance of smaller teams tends to be better than larger teams.
During the initial stages of Amazon, Jeff Bezos introduced a guideline known as the Two Pizza Principle: each internal team should be of a size that two pizzas could comfortably feed.
A smaller team is more agile, expends less effort on handling schedules and communication, develops greater trust and teamwork and dedicates more time to essential tasks, getting more done in less time than larger teams.
What you can do
Try and stick to the Rule of 7. No more than seven people as core team members
Use a Team of Teams approach to expand beyond the core team of seven to maintain agility
5. Treat trust like astronaut does
Great teamwork relies on trust. Trust supports teams break barriers, embrace challenges, and step up to a new level of performance – together. Its trust that helps astronauts survive in space.
In 2015-16 astronaut Scott Kelly spent an unbroken year in space, setting a U.S. record.
Among the many lessons he learned from his time aboard the International Space Station, it was his focus on trust that helped keep him alive. Trust in himself. Trust in his fellow astronauts. Trust that a million moving parts would get him safely into space and back.
Research conducted by Durham University professor Bart de Jong found that teams that trust each other perform better. And while some people are naturally more trusting, research has found that current judgments are stronger in determining trust than previous experiences. In other words, trust can be earned.
What you can do
Provide opportunities to build relationships between team members – both in person and virtually
Recognise contributions of team members to provide positive reasons for team members to trust each other
Take accountability for mistakes and repair damage to trust through positive future actions
6. Communication quality beats quantity
When it comes to communication in project teams, quality is more important than quantity. Project teams operate under time pressures. Being candid and economical helps make teamwork more efficient by cutting the time it takes to get to core of challenges and issues that need collaboration to solve.
What you can do
Role model being candid and direct in project communications
Set rules for use of instant messaging to avoid a fire hydrant flow of communication taking up valuable time and distracting teams
Ask ‘What does this mean for the project?’ to quickly get to the core of an issue
7. Make responsibilities clear
When each team member knows exactly what they and others are responsible for it reduces confusion and prevents tasks from falling through the cracks.
It also means people can more easily work with each other because they know who to collaborate with.
What you can do
Simplify team charts to positions that show responsibility area and key accountabilities
Encourage questions to make sure there’s a clear understanding of everyone’s role
In early team meetings ask team members to explain colleagues accountabilities to confirm understanding
8. Role model accountability
Teamwork relies on people doing what they say they will do, when they said they will do it.
There’s nothing more frustrating than people committing to deliver something and not doing it. Reliability helps build trust and erodes it quickly when it’s absent.
What you can do
Hold yourself to high standards. Show that you expect the same from yourself as you do from others
Own up to your mistakes, acknowledge the impacts and focus on finding solutions and sharing learnings.
Avoid micromanagement which can stifle accountability
9. Provide psychological safety
One of the most common causes of poor teamwork is having an unsafe team environment.
Psychological safety is the feeling that you won’t be penalised or judged harshly if you disagree, admit a mistake, or ask for help.
And it’s integral for taking the kind of personal risks that are necessary for collaboration and teamwork and sparking innovation.
Research has found psychological safety is one of the top predictors of team performance in settings as varied as a hospital emergency room and the Google office.
What you can do
Foster an atmosphere where team members feel comfortable expressing their thoughts, ideas, and concerns without fear of judgment or reprisal
Actively listen to team members, show empathy, and acknowledge their contributions
Avoid interrupting or dismissing team members during discussions and encourage others to do the same
10. Be deliberately developmental
Like any skill, teamwork develops over time. It gets better through experience and team members learning and improving.
You can accelerate teamwork improvement by being deliberately developmental, a term coined by Harvard University Professors Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow in their book ‘An Everyone Culture’.
Their research shows organisations that continuously nourish a culture that puts business and individual development front and centre for everyone, every day perform better over time.
What you can do
Spotlight behaviours and outcomes of team members showing excellent teamwork and unpack lessons from these for others to learn from
Provide insights from teamwork experts periodically and discuss in team meetings
The difference between triumph and disappointment hinges on how well a team functions.
As challenges escalate, innovation flourishes, and the significance of teamwork amplifies. Especially in complex endeavors, the collaborative spirit propels success.
In the landscape of workplace projects, the amalgamation of diverse skills and experiences often paints a dynamic picture.Nurturing remarkable teamwork in such scenarios may seem daunting, but the key lies in viewing teamwork as a skill to cultivate.
These 10 tips can serve as a menu of topics to discuss with your project teams, a guide for further study and education or as quests to propel teamwork to new heights in your organisation.
Good luck!
Craig