Leadership Strategies to Improve Team Performance in 2021

You might be asking yourself, why is it important to improve team performance? Well, that’s a simple question, with a very clear answer. Teamwork is essential for all organizations. Employers and employees must all work together in achieving their own goals, which point towards a shared purpose of benefiting the organization’s overall success. For a company to grow, the team must grow with it, and a team is only growing if team performance is improving. It does, however, take effective leadership strategies to encourage a team to improve their overall performance.

According to The Balance Small Business, there are two reasons why we aren’t as productive as we’d like: 1) Bad habits that interfere with workplace productivity, and 2) Reactive behavior rather than proactive, which means putting out fires instead of making progress towards goals. Yet a performance-driven team won’t allow those two obstacles in the workplace. Reaching that point, however, can be a long and arduous journey, and it takes a skilled leader to guide all members of the team towards that common goal. 

5 Ways Leaders Can Improve Team Performance

Improving team performance is a simple matter of learning effective leadership strategies and applying those leadership tips to your business. Here are 5 crucial ways leaders can improve team performance:

• Ensure alignment on active projects amongst team members
  If team members who are supposed to be working together aren’t aligned, the project will be useless and take too much time for fixing mistakes/miscommunications towards the deadline date. As a leader, ensure that team members communicate on specific tasks and projects everyday, every week, and every month, and that they share detailed updates on what needs to be done, what’s in progress, and what has been completed as of yet.

• Clarify goals, responsibilities, and expectations
  It is unproductive to hold high standards when the goals, responsibilities, and expectations set are not clearly communicated to the team. Miscommunications can be avoided when asking team members to repeat back what their tasks are after explaining them and always being available to answer questions or respond to concerns. If an open door policy cannot be imposed then schedule daily, weekly, or monthly check-ins to follow up and ensure team members fully understand their tasks and are on the right track before it’s too late and too much valuable time has been wasted.

• Encourage recognition
  There is nothing more rewarding than acknowledgment on a job well done from colleagues/employers. Employees are motivated when encouraged and ensured that their time and efforts with the company are making a positive impact. If someone is doing a great job, tell them.

• Continue to provide constructive feedback
  There is nothing more productive in leadership than providing team members with constructive feedback. The only way to learn, grow, and advance is through making progress; which can only be achieved when one is told where he or she needs to focus his or her attention and efforts on improving their performance.

• Hold team members accountable
  When a team member commits to a deadline, or makes a mistake, hold them accountable and make sure they acknowledge their wrongdoing, so they can prevent missing a deadline, or making a mistake, from happening again.

These are rough guidelines that all leaders can follow to build a cohesive, productive, and high-performance team. However, with very large teams, it can be time-consuming and difficult for leaders to pinpoint issues that are hurting team performance. This is where executive coaches come to the rescue. 

How Coaches Can Help Leaders Improve Team Performance

Executive coaches are responsible for teaching effective tools and mechanisms to clients so that they can streamline team projects and improve performance on an ongoing basis, according to Directions Unlimited.

In a recent article, we go over the process of building an engaged workforce. This workforce is built on four crucial abilities of a leader: communicating their job expectations, finding opportunities, creating a culture of high performance, and encouraging daily habits. These leadership capabilities are very similar to the abilities coaches must possess in order to improve team performance. 

Executive coaches can support leaders and managers in their quest to boost team performance and productivity, in various ways, depending on the specifics and overall goals of the team. Coaches can help improve team communication, they can help resolve conflicts immediately and effectively, they can boost company and employee morale, set expectations for success, and offer practical tips and tricks that leaders can apply in the long run. Essentially, an executive coach can help leaders identify hidden problems and provide practical tips and strategies so that leaders can resolve future conflicts effectively. 

Boost Employee Productivity with Roos Advisors

Roos Advisors is committed to helping you scale your team. Our certified professionals use experiential evaluation and learning to help teams work more effectively by developing the core fundamentals of trust, commitment, accountability, productive conflict resolution, and results-driven goal-setting. We incorporate up-to-date methods to help you recruit top-tier talent and train them for optimal growth and retention. Successful organizations have learned that with the right people, processes and products success is inevitable.

As certified professionals, we quickly assist teams in identifying their strengths, so they can confidently face challenges in the workplace. One of our main executive coaching tools is the DiSC Agile EQ™. Using a three-step approach, we have increased employee retention and team performance an average of 35% within 6 to 9 months. 

We help executives grow their dream business while living an authentic life. Let’s kickstart your journey to personal and professional excellence. Contact us today to schedule a free 15-minute virtual consultation to see if we are the solution you have been looking for. Claim your free 15-minute virtual consultation.