In this competitive environment team work has its own value. Let us figure out how to create comfortable working conditions for employees and what to do to achieve their goals on time.

When all employees understand what should turn out in the end, it is easier for the team to prioritize and perform tasks efficiently. The goals - both short-term and long-term - should be:

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Understandable for everyone . Not only the board of directors should know about the plans and prospects of the company. Otherwise, there can be no question of trust. For clarity, goals can be visualized, such as sketches, graphs, or presentations.

Assign roles

Each team member should have clear tasks and responsibilities. Otherwise, a situation may arise when several people will be engaged in one business at the same time, not knowing about it, and everyone will forget about some important assignment.

For each employee (if we are talking about a small team) or department (for large companies), you can make a small memo with the distribution of roles within the team. Then everyone will know who to contact if they need more information or help.

And for the effective distribution of tasks to the head of a company or department, it is important to know well each employee, his strengths and weaknesses. This will increase the productivity of both the individual employee and the entire team.

The path to achieving a common goal should have a transparent structure and consist of clear stages. To do this, each team needs an action plan: for the day, week, month, quarter, or more.

To keep track of your progress, you can place a planning board in the office, or create a task manager for the entire team. Using these tools, each employee will be able to see his workload and plans of colleagues, discuss tasks and form work groups.

Build trust in your team

Trust in the team is one of the key elements of comfort. To achieve this, you can use different methods, for example, mentoring programs for new employees, teambuilding, out-of-office meetings.

But it is important that team members want to participate in such activities: being forced to go to the rope town or games like “Believe / Don't Believe” is unlikely to lead to anything good. Therefore, first of all, you need to get the opinion of employees. A simple survey will help in this, and so that no one is afraid to speak out, make it anonymous.

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Trust also manifests itself in the control over the implementation of tasks. You need to clearly define goals, set deadlines and provide employees with everything they need to work. But there is no need to stand above their souls and check the process every hour.

First, employees may have useful and unexpected ideas for improving the system of work. Secondly, they may notice some problems that the manager does not see. Thirdly, it will make all employees feel important and this will increase their motivation.

You need to hold both general meetings and personal meetings with everyone. It may be easier for some to express their proposals in a team, feeling the support of colleagues, while others, on the contrary, find it difficult to gather strength and voice their thoughts surrounded by a large number of people.

And to share ideas with even the shyest employees, put up an anonymous suggestion box in your office or periodically conduct anonymous online surveys.

With the help of the discussion, it is worth dealing with conflict situations: listening to everyone, analyzing the arguments and only then making a decision.

Let everyone express themselves

The development team needs room for creativity. Therefore, it is important to create an environment in which employees are not afraid to voice their ideas or make mistakes (within reasonable limits).

To make the risk less risky, have team members complete a simple spreadsheet before completing the task, in which they present the worst-case scenario. It consists of three columns: in the first one you need to write what result the employee considers the most terrible; in the second - what actions and factors, in his opinion, can lead to such an ending; in the third, what the team will need to do to get out of a likely bad situation.

Encourage not only courage, but also the desire of employees to develop. Find or organize educational programs, courses and lectures for them.

A large number of employees does not guarantee that the team will work more efficiently or faster. Conversely, in a group that is too large, it is more difficult to build trust and monitor performance.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, for example, recommendsThe two ‑ pizza rule and the secret of Amazon's successuse the “rule of two pizzas”: there should be so many people in the team that they can be fed with two pizzas. Not more. This limitation allows you to effectively monitor everyone's activities and increase productivity.

Use the same tools

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All team members must use the same communication channels and programs. Otherwise, a communication barrier may arise, which will interfere with the achievement of the goal and create internal discomfort. For example, if part of the team works in Google Docs, and the other in Microsoft Office; or one department communicates exclusively on Telegram and the other on WhatsApp. It's better to talk it over right away, rather than adjust to each other in the process.

Regular analysis and performance evaluation are effective tools for team development. It is worth using obvious indicators for this, for example, earned money or the number of customers / subscribers.

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