Building High-Performing Project Teams: Strategies for Effective Collaboration

For any organisation to survive and thrive in the intensely competitive business marketplace, it is essential to ensure that they have high-performing teams. This is, however, not something that just happens. Developing a team that is high performing involves, for instance, grouping individuals who complement each other in terms of skills and talents, identifying strengths and creating a team that always works together towards the business goals needed for success.  This can seem complex at times; however, the payoffs that are achieved will far outweigh the effort required. The right training will help to ensure that managers, leaders and supervisors have everything they need in order to develop teams that will deliver efficiently for the business.

What is a high-performing team?

A team that is high-performance includes people who are highly skilled in areas that are cross-functional. They are people who focus on reaching common business goals. They are people who are aligned and committed to a set of values and visions that are shared and have common objectives. They are innovative in terms of problem-solving and have high levels of collaboration and effective communication skills. This might sound like an unattainable dream team to some businesses and these sorts of teams don’t spring up overnight. But working towards building such teams with the right training to develop better leaders will drive business growth from the outset.

Building cohesive team dynamics

Creating a team where there are shared bonds and members interact freely is essential. This only happens when everyone aligns with the values of the team leader, and they work as a cohesive unit towards the same goal. Shared values and high levels of interaction, together with a sense of trust, can help to make this cohesion possible. This will ultimately help improve productivity. It is important, however, to ensure that a team does not become so cohesive that they fall foul of group-think.

Foster a collaborative culture

All too often, team members can keep themselves back when it comes to offering their thoughts and opinions because they don’t feel comfortable doing so. This can be counter-productive, and it is important for project managers and leaders to ensure that they build a working environment where interpersonal risk-taking is less stressful. A collaborative culture is one where employees will feel motivated and encouraged towards innovation, and this can help to take new ideas through to the implementation level. Individual team members’ working styles should also be considered in order to understand thinking styles and behaviours.

Conflict resolution

One further consideration when starting to build a high-performing project team is the need for conflict resolution. This involves ensuring that when there is a conflict (and, let’s face it, there will be), the parties who are having an issue have the opportunity to meet face-to-face and reach an agreement that addresses the concerns that both parties have. This means having communication that is open and direct which should, hopefully, result in a solution to the problems.