How To Build A Winning Team - 5 Best Team Building Practices

(Sharma, 2011)

1. Appreciation

Often people can leave teams or companies and leave them, not as a result of not being paid enough but because they didn't feel appreciated.

I can certainly relate to this. I quit a job because after 5 years of working there, i was sick of being harassed everyday to do more. There was never any praise or commending for what you had done. There would never be acknowledgement for when you did something right, only when you did something wrong.  So it is definitely important in collaboration to be able to say something when something has been done well, and to give encouragement and let people know they are a vital part to your team.

2. Belonging

Creating a unique sense of belonging to let people feel they are part of a community. Form a culture with specific values and interactions with people they enjoy being around.

3. Challenge

Grow and develop peoples skills within people. Give feedback and encouragement, inspire them to do better. Mentor people and make time to improve their skills. Growth is highly satisfying and will make people feel good about themselves and motivated to keep going and getting better.

4. Celebration

The team that celebrates together is the team that stays together. Micro achievements should be celebrated and achievements shared. 

5. Purpose

To achieve passion there must first be passion. Passion with employees is contagious to the customer. Workers must understand how what they are doing can make a difference to people. Once they know what impact they are making they will feel motivated to keep doing it and doing it well. Having a clear and bold vision for the future that workers and team can become  passionate about. 

From these 5 practises i think the most underlying primary notion is motivation and passion. Although these aren't one of the 5 points, through implementing each of the practises, motivation and passion are the desired end result. If a team is motivated passionate about what they do than the results will be far greater and have a bigger impact on what they are doing. 

For my group, doing a project based on a real life situation really motivated us. It made the project so much more exciting and it encouraged us to work harder to impress the client. I think this was a considerable influence for the amazing results that were presented by all of the groups. Also because  we were working in multi-discipline teams I think there was the feeling of wanting to impress the other members. I think everyone wanted to prove the worth of their discipline which was good as it made us work harder. As we did not know what to expect from each member in terms of skills and quality I think we all tried our best not to disappoint.