Team Chemistry: How to Get the Best From Everyone

Behind every successful business is a great team of hard-working employees. As a manager or leader, it’s your responsibility to develop and maintain a well-oiled machine that produces results. Doing so, however, is often easier said than done.

Effectively managing a team of diverse individuals is challenging. It takes a certain set of skills to get the best out of everyone and be valuable within the business. For example, you must be able to effectively delegate tasks to the person best suited to tackle it, or help employees develop goals that fit their career path and strengths.

While there’s no single blue-print for how to get the best from everyone on your team, these tips and tricks will get you closer to figuring out what works for your team.

Give Employees Opportunities to Learn

You may be surprised by how many employees are looking for additional training. According to Develop Intelligence’s 2017 Developer Learning Survey Report, more than 55 percent of developers say they seek out training in order to meet current or upcoming needs or to advance their career.

What’s more, the skills gap is growing among all employees in your business and 35 percent of respondents in the 2017 Skills Gap Report said they feel this affects them personally.

To get the best out of your employees, help them become better at what they do, boosting confidence and effectiveness. To determine what skills you want to focus on, consider the following, which were the skills respondents in the Skills Gap Report reported wanting to learn:

• Tech skills: 43 percent
• Leadership and management: 30 percent
• Productivity skills: 26 percent
• Interpersonal and work relationships: 24 percent
• Soft skills: 22 percent

Facilitate Communication

It’s easy as a manager to be unavailable to your employees, yet communication is one of the most important factors for teamwork to be successful. Having an “open door policy” in which team members feel free to ask questions and voice their concerns facilitates great communication. According to Richard Branson, this communication is the most important skill any leader can possess.

To get the best from your employees, give them a chance to be their best by being available. Employees need to work with you to develop valuable skills, set important goals, and work through concerns if they’re unhappy in their position within the company.

If you’re not sure how to improve your communication, here are a few ways to improve internal communication:

• Make information accessible
• Share goals and objectives
• Encourage information sharing
• Use online tools
• Keep shared documents

You can also set up 1-on-1 meetings each month or quarter with every employee, in addition to regular team meetings. These are opportunities for both you and your employees to communicate openly and directly.

Understand the Ins and Outs of Introverts and Extroverts

Not everyone on your team is the same, and with this comes a wide variety of personalities to account for and cater to. However, you can likely break your employees up into two groups: introvert and extrovert. These are two very different types of people, and knowing how to set them up for success is important.

For example, putting employees into smaller groups may help introverts be more active in conversation and brainstorming: “These mini-teams of three create a context in which each team member gets to share their point of view. This can also work as a healthy way of dealing with delegation and reporting,” according to Perfecting Teamwork: Harmonizing the Introverts and Extroverts on Your Team.

You can also be active in conversations, ensuring that everyone gets their chance to talk. Finally, having that “open door policy” may be a way to help introverts share their ideas if they’re nervous to do so in front of the group.

Create Team Chemistry

Building an effective team of diverse individuals is not easy, yet it’s critical if you want to bring value to the company. When you make time for communication, let all your employees shine, and give them opportunities to learn, they’re able to be their best selves. When that happens, they’re happy, the company is successful, and you’re able to develop employees within their career and the business.