10 Ways to Improve Your Teamwork Ethic
By: Synthia Satkuna
Tags: Mental Health, Workplace, Organizational Culture, Teamwork, Psychology

It’s always great being a part of a team, especially when you get into that rare sweet spot where you feel excited, motivated, and challenged. It’s a momentary bliss, especially when everyone is somehow magically aligned, even as the professional stakes get higher and higher.

However, a lot of workplaces suffer in a lot of areas, whether it is from miscommunication, low engagement, emotional manipulation, or even a lack of trust.

Photo by Maliha Mannan on Unsplash — It’s hard to gauge trust when there’s miscommunication.

Yet, we also crave teamwork and thrive on it. For example, the research has noted that at least 3 out of every 4 employees find teamwork to be rather important in their professional development.

While teamwork can be stifling sometimes, it can produce the right results, especially if you and others are particularly receptive to learning new things.

Think of it this way:

You are exposed to the insights of others, making you cultured and cooler

You’ve expanded on your knowledge base, becoming the bigger person

Others have also learned from you, boosting your credibility as a subject-matter expert

With the right level of interpersonal and material support, teamwork can produce more optimized results than solitary pursuits. If you happen to lead a team, perhaps the following points might resonate with you.

1. The Leader Sets the Benchmark

Before diving deep into teamwork, we have to consider the big boss at the very top. You might be the boss, or perhaps someone else is the boss.

Either way, when someone leads a team, they have to lead by example. The rest are looking to the leader for guidance, and the precedents they set are going to be the norms of tomorrow.

Photo by Jonathan Francisca on Unsplash — The boss sets the precedence.

If you’re the leader and you yell or scream, your team will likely cower in fear, and not provide any substantiative feedback. If you’re too soft, they’re going to steamroll your authority.

Either way, the balance between the two is precarious and takes a lot of trial and error. However, whatever you set will become the cultural norm, for better or for worse.

2. Teams Thrive on Daily Communication

At the very core of a good team is reliable and ongoing communication. This means that team members are not afraid to express their expert insights and the leader is not afraid of it either.

Together, brainstorming sessions commence, and even if two parties cannot agree on a final product, they can always set compromises, as well as cost-benefit analyses.

Photo by Start Digital on Unsplash — Daily communication can happen any place.

This requires the leader to be succinct, clear, anticipatory, and an active listener, alongside being able to readjust their demands as needed.

3. Teams Need Solidarity

Team building exercises, while seemingly silly at times, helps build rapport between dissimilar members. Instead of picking or choosing a venue just for the sake of choosing it, consider what activities the team can do that is directly tied to the task at hand.

Furthermore, you can also consider if these tasks are long enough, cost-efficient, substantiative, inclusive, and also relevant to your overarching goals for the department.

Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash — Groups foster solidarity,

Finally, a one-off exercise is not good enough. You need many of these solidarity events sprinkled across the months.

4. Establish, Reaffirm, and Adjust Rules

While the rules are sometimes boring, they set decent parameters for good reason. We often have a tendency to overanalyze, generalize, or even fail to take into account multiple third-party variables that can affect the performance of a team.

These third-party variables can include terrible weather, unreliable/spotty internet connections, family illnesses, and a lack of resources or money in the company.

Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash — Make sure you’re not hemorrhaging funds.

When drafting your rules, it’s good to make them semi-permeable to change. Things can and will go wrong, so it’s best to anticipate these things ahead of time.

For example, you can be transparent about any mitigating issues, such as illness, that could potentially influence your ability to perform. A good manager will understand. I mean, they’re also human too.

5. Specify a Clear Purpose

Teams don’t always understand why they need to work on a specific task because the managers fail to explain to them the purpose and significance of the job.

It’s here where we should be mindful of blatant miscommunication. If the team knows the bigger picture, they’ll be more inclined to support you, be receptive, and can offer more appropriate alternatives to resolve specific problems as they arise.

Photo by Giu Vicente on Unsplash — Purposes should be highlighted.

Without that understanding or motivation, the team might unintentionally harbour ill-informed decisions. It not going to their fault, because they literally couldn’t have known.

6. Set Up Rewards and Appreciate The Team

Those who work hard often receive something, as a token of appreciation. Being appreciated leads to satisfaction and more sustained interest in their project.

If you want a stronger team, incentivizing certain goals with prizes or gamification techniques may help employees work together competitively.

These prizes don’t always have to be financial, but they can be if you want them to be. They can include an email appreciating your fellow workers, company-wide memos, a gift certificate, a rewarding lunch, or a special bonus.

Photo by Kasturi Roy on Unsplash — Gifts and rewards are great incentives.

7. Optimize Office Spaces

Most people don’t pay too much attention to their environment. However, the productivity of one’s space is sometimes reliant on one’s organizational system.

For example, dedicated spaces that are specialized for a specific but repetitive task may be important, while entire project rooms can be used for the latest conferences.

For remote working, collaborative tools and niche chat rooms can be used to replace physical project rooms.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash — The organizational system influences behaviour.

Plus, having some fresh air, access to windows and some nice green plants may help to spruce up your office space. Overall, the health of the team can be reflected within one’s coveted office space

8. Allow for Breaks

People are not robots. We cannot be expected to work 24/7. With breaks, people are more energized to get back working, especially if some periods of time have passed.

Research can verify that higher cognition and motivation is associated with those who take reliable breaks versus those who don’t. Plus, in the time you are taking a break, your mind is silently calibrating ways to resolve the problem.

Photo by Louis Hansel @shotsoflouis on Unsplash — It’s okay to take a breather, I promise.

By the time you get back to the problem, new insights or perspectives might be achieved with greater ease, especially if they’re allowed to stretch, perform remote work, and wear comfortable attire.

8. Highlight Strengths and Show Appreciation

Harping on the weaknesses of a specific team member or multiple members does no one any favours, and will lower the overall morale of the team.

If you capitalize and optimize the strengths of each team member, each member will do their part most diligently, leading to a much more successful product.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash — Who knows what will be inside.

Each person is different, and rather than shoving people into a clean box, you can instead allow each person to play an equal contributive role that complements the skillset that they most suitable for. As long as all parties contribute, then weaknesses can be overcome and defeated.

10. Show Happiness, Gratitude, and Celebrate

Overall, it can hard to show gratitude towards others, especially if we’re the type to not really warm up to others. However, taking the time out of your day to provide genuine compliments towards others might make their day, and keep them going.

Plus, think of it as positive feedback. Since we’re focussing on the positives, team members will appreciate the opportunity that was afforded to them.

Steered in a specific direction, people will likely reciprocate thanks back onto. Thanking someone increases their overall sense of worth, happiness, goal-orientation, trust, and willingness to succeed.

Photo by Angus Gray on Unsplash — We’re right on track.

Now, we get to the best part — the celebratory stage. Once you reached your deadline, you’ve finally got a chance to unwind for a bit, let yourself take a break, and then…breathe.

I mean, you don’t want an entire team quitting once the project is done.

For example, you can have final meetings where each member can talk about the successes of the project, highlight the things you can do for the next one, and even have a raffle party if you wanted to. Then, when all is said and done, then you can pre-plan for the next stage.

As Henry Ford once said,