The 7 Qualities of an Effective and Productive Team
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- 46% of workers find teamwork extremely difficult, and say their daily productivity suffers for it.
- Seven qualities make a team effective: team spirit, communication, a sense of priorities, innovation and creativity, flexibility, curiosity and ambition, and a sense of belonging.
- A sense of belonging is the one that weighs most: it comes from caring management, stimulating individual objectives, and a clear view of the company goals.
- An effective team is not yet a high-performing one: that also takes clear, complementary roles, real autonomy, and shared objectives everyone can see.
- These qualities are cultivated through a feedback culture, sound management practices, a collaboration platform, and regular team rituals.
- A summary table at the end of the article pairs each quality with the management habit that keeps it alive.
Every manager dreams of building and leading a team that is both effective and productive. Yet 46% of workers find teamwork extremely difficult, and say their day to day productivity suffers for it. Weaving healthy, motivating professional relationships is therefore essential. Which qualities should you look for and develop to build a team you can count on? This article walks through those qualities, and shares practical ways to cultivate them across your organisation.
The main qualities of a productive team
1) Team spirit
Even the most skilled employees will struggle to reach their full potential inside a team that does not work. A cohesive team, on the other hand, quickly becomes the glue of a department. Hiring people who understand and embody team spirit and collaborative work therefore makes all the difference in your organisation.
Do probe your potential recruits on this during interviews, by asking how they see teamwork, and what kind of team they would like to join. You will quickly see whether a candidate fits your company culture, and whether they will settle into their new team easily.
From there, it is on you to create a healthy working climate, one that rewards team spirit and mutual support.
2) Communication
Talking to colleagues is not always easy. And yet solid communication skills prevent misunderstandings, delays and rework, all of which eat into team productivity.
It is therefore essential to create effective communication channels, and to get the whole organisation into the habit of using them. On a platform like Talkspirit, you can create topic based groups to keep internal communication flowing and let teams talk wherever they are. Dedicated workshops are another way to sharpen everyone’s communication skills.
3) A sense of priorities
Some employees get swamped by their weekly tasks, and a great deal of time and resource is lost along the way. A clear schedule of the projects to finish and the objectives to reach keeps the whole team on the same page.
It also matters that your people have a sense of priorities: spending hours on a low value task instead of a more strategic project is an unproductive pattern, and one you will need to correct.
4) Innovation and creativity
Delivering your tasks on time is good. Knowing how to innovate and improve processes continuously is better. Creativity is the quality that separates a good team from an outstanding one.
Healthy professional relationships and a stimulating work environment are your best allies to encourage innovation and creativity inside your team. Ask your employees about their ideas, and run weekly brainstorming workshops.
5) Flexibility
Working days rarely run exactly to plan, and it is sometimes necessary to reshuffle the task schedule and take on more urgent projects. Flexible, enterprising employees will adapt to those changes while staying effective, which keeps the whole team steady on its feet.
Organisational change should not be too frequent, of course, and should be handled with tact so that nobody burns out. But trust us: flexibility will get you out of many awkward situations.
6) Curiosity and ambition
An employee who is curious about new skills, and keen to progress within the company, is a motivated employee, and therefore a productive one. If you sense that appetite in your teams, it is time to offer them training and development opportunities. That is how you keep teams highly skilled and eager to take on more responsibility.
To cultivate that ambition, do review their performance regularly to surface areas to improve, and share constructive feedback on their contributions and their wins. Recognition, of course, also plays a key part in getting your teams to give their best every day.
7) A sense of belonging and motivation
If there is one essential quality a good team must have, it is a sense of belonging to their team and to their organisation. That feeling comes first from caring management, from stimulating individual objectives, and from a clear view of the organisational goals to reach. What matters is that every employee understands your company mission and cares about contributing to it.
To take the pulse of your teams, ask them how they feel in informal conversations, and send them regular surveys to measure their engagement. You will spot engagement problems early and correct course fast, keeping teams effective and motivated in the process.
The point is simple: by working on your employee engagement strategy, you raise both your productivity and your retention rate.
How to cultivate these qualities in your own team
Knowing what an effective team is made of is one thing. Promoting and encouraging those qualities day to day is another. Here is where to start.
Build a culture of communication and feedback
To encourage the behaviours that feed team spirit and productivity, you need to establish a climate of trust inside your team. That calls for an effective communication culture. Run regular team meetings, but also one to one meetings, so that you stay close to your people and catch any drop in motivation or productivity.
Those conversations are also prime moments to share feedback on the contributions and the performance of your team members. Words of recognition sustain team spirit, especially when they are exchanged between peers, and they push people to go further.
Read also: Why and how to instil a feedback culture in your team
Adopt management best practices
As a manager, you also need every one of the qualities it takes to build and hold together a productive, cohesive team. Kindness, empathy and flexibility are essential to the kind of healthy people management that pushes a team to its full potential.
Investing in continuous training and development opportunities is also what keeps teams effective and productive over the long run. And do not forget to communicate with your colleagues, to stay open to what they tell you, and to show them recognition day to day.
Read also: Reinventing management to make work meaningful
Use a collaboration platform
To improve the productivity of your team, we also recommend using effective collaborative tools such as Talkspirit. In practice, these platforms make communication and collaboration easier across your teams through:
- the creation of communities where everyone can share information, discuss team projects and ask colleagues for help;
- simpler management of personal and team projects;
- knowledge capitalisation, with working documents stored in team drives and content libraries.
Keep team spirit alive
Team spirit has to be maintained and fed on a daily basis. Team meetings and team building activities are considerable allies when it comes to weaving healthy professional relationships. And while it is right to push your employees to be productive, take care not to create an atmosphere so competitive that it undermines team synergy.
You can also encourage participation in collaborative and peer support workshops, the exchange of ideas and knowledge, and the sharing of regular feedback.
By making collaboration and mutual support the norm, you give your team every key it needs to become more productive.
| Quality | What it produces in the team | The management habit that sustains it |
|---|---|---|
| QualityTeam spirit | What it produces in the teamIndividual skills turn into a collective result | The management habit that sustains itProbe how candidates see teamwork during the hiring interview |
| QualityCommunication | What it produces in the teamFewer misunderstandings, fewer delays, less rework | The management habit that sustains itClear channels, used regularly across the whole organisation |
| QualityA sense of priorities | What it produces in the teamTime goes to strategic projects, not to low value tasks | The management habit that sustains itA project schedule and objectives everyone can see |
| QualityInnovation and creativity | What it produces in the teamProcesses improve instead of repeating themselves | The management habit that sustains itRegular brainstorming workshops, and ideas that are actually heard |
| QualityFlexibility | What it produces in the teamThe team absorbs the unexpected without losing its rhythm | The management habit that sustains itKeep organisational change measured, and announce it with tact |
| QualityCuriosity and ambition | What it produces in the teamSkills that grow, and an appetite for responsibility | The management habit that sustains itTraining, regular performance reviews, constructive feedback |
| QualityA sense of belonging | What it produces in the teamEngagement, and a better retention rate | The management habit that sustains itCaring management, a clear vision, regular engagement surveys |
Conclusion
The qualities an effective team needs are cultivated through communication, collaboration, and sound people management practices. An effective manager becomes the backbone of the team, and knows how to bring out the best in the talents around them.
To move up a gear and give your teams every tool they need, choose a collaboration platform that improves teamwork across the whole company. This practical guide gathers all our advice for rolling out your collaborative tool 👇
Get the methodology sheet
In this methodology guide, you will find: the 8 steps to implement your collaborative platform, the questions to ask yourself to identify your needs, the criteria that will decide your choice of solution, the elements to include in your communication plan, and our best tips for driving adoption of your platform.
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Article written by Morgane Lança, Content Manager and Writer at Folks
FAQ
46% of workers find teamwork extremely difficult, and say their daily productivity can be affected by those difficulties.
Seven: team spirit, communication, a sense of priorities, innovation and creativity, flexibility, curiosity and ambition, and a sense of belonging. Employees who understand and embody team spirit make all the difference in an organisation.
Because solid communication skills prevent misunderstandings, delays and rework, all of which eat into productivity. Hence the value of clear channels, used regularly across the whole organisation.
If you had to keep only one: a sense of belonging to the team and to the organisation. It comes from caring management, stimulating individual objectives, and a clear view of the company goals.
Start by establishing a climate of trust: run regular team meetings, but also one to one meetings, so you stay close to your people and catch any drop in motivation. Add sound management practices, a shared collaboration platform, and regular team rituals.
An effective team executes well; a high-performing team keeps it up over time. The difference rests on three organisational conditions: clear and complementary roles, real autonomy over day to day decisions, and shared objectives everyone can consult. The seven qualities described in this article develop all the better when those three conditions are met.
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