Effective Ways to Create and Motivate a Winning Team

Good leadership is crucial to any successful business.  But what makes a good leader?

While the question appears simple, the answer is not.  Leadership is obviously a multi-faceted skill.  One factor of a good leader is communication. It is a key component of leadership.  Clear, concise communication – free of jargon and short-cuts – must be mastered in order to be an effective leader or a manager.  Being able to cleanly and precisely convey your ideas and thoughts to those who work for you is essential and puts you in the right path for leadership.  If your employees have no idea what is on your mind, your leadership is going to falter. 

Being an effective motivator is another key variable that plays into leadership.  Without proper motivation, employees can stagnate.  Coupled with unclear communication, this can prove disastrous to any operation.  While some leaders try to motivate through fear, these are not generally effective and powerful leaders. One must not confuse brute power and volume with strong management skill.  Fear only provides short-term results — and these results, if accidentally useful, tend to be impossible to recreate without further augmenting the climate of fear. Instead, try challenging your employees.  A new challenge will bring forth creativity and excitement.  Challenging your employees with tasks that may be out of their range can sometimes produce valuable and surprisingly successful results – which increase motivation through clear communication, resulting in job satisfaction for everyone involved. 

Building a winning team takes more than just hiring a group of talented people.  It is crucial that you hire people who work well together.  It also means developing a shared commitment and a vision.  Again, this is where clear communication is going to be so very important in any business development.  Bringing people together in a group for an open discussion of broad-based issues is effective. You should encourage positive interactions among the group. Instill a “winning attitude” throughout the company. Be sure to watch for and quickly reverse team-building problems such as jealousy, cynicism and defensive behavior. These are usually a sign of poor communication from management, or misguided motivation due to unclear expectations.

To build a winning team, you need to show them what direction the company is headed and get them “on board”.  You can’t expect people to support a group if they don’t agree with were it is headed or, much worse, not even know where it’s headed. You will need to share your vision for the future. The way you plan on getting there. Discuss why it is the best strategy – but be willing to listen to dissent, especially if it is in the spirit of team ownership of a method. Let them know of every achievement that indicates the team is winning; also, let them know how valuable their input will be to the future success of the organization.

Perhaps one of the most difficult parts of building a team is encouraging positive interaction between team members.

Some ideas to help with this:

• Have team members take part in the hiring process of new additions.
• Designate projects for team members to work on together.
• Create an incentive-pay plan based on common goals such as profitability.
• Have a specific part of the salary review dependant upon “interaction with others."
• Take your team off-site for formal meetings as well as casual get-togethers that create a sense of bonding.
• Employee Recognition for Top Performance:
• Salary Related – Monetary
• Gifts, Prizes, Dinners, Trips
• Other Incentives
• Monthly Service Award Meetings to be recognized among peers.
• Use meeting time for constructive criticism as well as positive reinforcement.
• Encourage self motivation, Demonstrate Respect
• Provide Feedback that has positive impact
• Institute a policy of Trust, as Trust builds a strong Team

To conclude – clear, honest, constructive communication cannot be stressed enough when talking about good leadership and successful businesses.  It is the bedrock from which motivation and ownership will build.  Talented, bright, intelligent people work at jobs every day; keeping them is the sign of strong leadership.

Dianne Nasiatka is a senior recruiter for credit and collection industry-focused executive recruiting firm, Executive Alliance.