Why Team Building in the Workplace Starts With You

For most businesses, this question comes after they've hired, established and organized the individuals who operate the business.

This method of building teams in the workplace is counter-intuitive to promoting successful "right-actions" toward building a unified team.

If you want to alter people's behaviors you must help them change the way they think. This is the only way to encourage lasting change in an organization. Change begins in the minds of individuals.

So what can you do?

Team building in the workplace can become a natural act by structuring how you communicate toward a common way of thinking and directed toward a common, agreed upon, goal.

But How Do You Encourage This Type Of Thinking?

As a leader, team building starts with you. You must personally adopt the right attitudes and behaviors toward others and your business in order to have people follow suit.

So team building starts within each individual.

Leading and managing a group of people is your greatest asset and your biggest liability.

For a small-business owner, how you implement team building in the workplace may be the difference between success and failure.

Remember, It Begins With You

Your personal core values give direction to yourself, your team, your business. . . but if no one knows what these core values are, you're destine to failure. You must make your values and your expectations clear.

Begin With A Vision

Clarity and vision go hand-and-hand. What do you see your business becoming?

Don't say you haven't thought about it. Though most business owners haven't.

You must start seeing your business future clearly. What are your feeling about the business when you arrive at the office every morning. How much money are you making? What is your role? What kind of team do you have surrounding you? What role do these people play?

Describe these thoughts to yourself every day. Take inventory about whether you're on the track that is taking your closer or farther away from these goals. You must polish your vision to a razor-sharp edge.

Begin Implementation

As a leader you must create the right environment that reflects and encourages your vision to come into focus. This step is reinforced by your day-to-day actions and your team's momentum toward your crystal-clear goals.

Team building in the workplace becomes an exercises that allows your business to run smoothly, taking inventory and building on successes, and consequently learning from your failures.

Your team keeps you from getting bogged down in the mire and minutia of working "in" your business, as Michael Gerber writes in his great business book, The E-Myth.

Focus Your Team On Success

You must have goals, individually, for your team, and for the overall success of your business. You must integrate these goals into the workplace -- the everyday operation and function of your team.

To do this it's essential to clearly develop and communicate these goals via a strategic plan to accomplish them. This becomes the solid ground from which effective team building in the workplace can happen.

This is not your usual warm and fuzzy team building excercises.

So What is it?

It is being very clear about:

• Who we are...
• How our business is different...
• What are our strengths...
• What are our weaknesses...
• Who are our customers... (who do we serve?)
• How can we integrate our answers to better accomplish our goals?

Team building starts here, as you implement a strategic plan and move forward. Those who balk or refuse to move forward at this point get left behind.

Moving forward, as a team. . . your workplace must be an organized and synergized unit, made up of individuals all working toward a unified and common goal.

These goals will be clear in all departments:

• Public relations strategy
• Marketing
• Website
• Sales staff
• Meetings
• Hiring and firing practices
• What you say and how you say it
• Organization