Our contemporary business world urges people to shift from the individual completion of separate tasks and start collaborating with each other to succeed in meeting the far-reaching objectives of the company. People with different characters and moral values are put into the same workplace environment. They might sometimes be torn by the desire to boast in front of others with their personal achievements and, as a result, the outcome of the joint project or even the future of a company can be endangered. To avoid similar pitfalls, team members should be effectively managed by a team leader, who is not only aware of a company service vision statement and embodies all of its main standards, but is capable of setting challenging, yet achievable, goals and engaging each member to the process of its completion. There exist multiple strategies, which can come in handy during the process of ensuring the high level control, organization and motivation of a team.
Strategies of enhancing successful collaboration within a team depend primarily on the underlying principles of mutual respect and transparency of decisions, which shape the behavior of each team member. Regardless of the involved business area, people feel themselves more motivated and enthusiastic once the chance of open and unbiased communication between teammates and people standing above them in the management hierarchy is available. The contribution of each team member is more significant if he can freely express his opinion and be sure that it will be heard. The practice of providing team members with a constructive feedback on a regular basis belongs to the efficient means of their management. Highly beneficial is the B.I.F.F. model of providing team members with a feedback regarding their performance. It focuses not only on certain aspects of workers’ behavior and the impacts or feelings that are entailed by them, but projects the discussion into the future and provides team members with the suggested action plan of how to improve the existing problem and develop further (Ashby, 2014). Application of this strategy has its benefits because it promotes the atmosphere of open communication, transparent attitude of management to team members and constant checkpoints of their progress.
Within a framework of business startups, the importance of effective management and application of innovative strategies is even higher. People, whose minds are full of ideas and hearts overwhelmed with an intrinsic desire to make those ideas implemented in reality, can face a strong necessity to take the initiative into their hands. A caravan that is pulled into different directions will never reach its destination point. Similarly to that, startups can hardly grow into successful companies and business corporations, unless the concept of teamwork is inculcated and actively promoted by management. Therefore, while being in the shoes of a business startup team lead, I would encourage such principles of efficient collaboration, as open communication, respect to other ideas and willingness of team members to work themselves into leather for the sake of company success. Bearing in mind the far-reaching objectives of the company, I would do everything possible to make team members understand their role in the outcome. From this point of view, the strategy of providing regular and constructive feedback performs the crucial functions of evaluation and motivation of workers for future personal and team achievements.
In the era of advanced technologies, business world cannot go without virtual tools of team collaboration. They are especially crucial for the companies that have more than one location. All departments of a company are interdependent and cannot be fully isolated from each other. Even members of the same team can be divided by the many kilometers distance. For the sake of ensuring continued business process and establishing long-term relations within a team, I would make use of, for instance, business Google Apps to share the information quickly or Skype to hold webinars or conferences between cities.
Regardless of the applied strategies and promoted slogans, team members can simply suit each other well and feel comfortable while working together. If the situation is not that smooth, the task of a manager is to enhance the atmosphere of collaboration and create a special comfort zone, which would embrace the whole team. Team members, who put aside their personal evaluative opinions and pay more attention to the working process, are more motivated to achieve the ambitious goals of the company and help each other on the challenging route to success.
Reference
Ashby, P. (2014, September 23). BIFF model Archives – Professional Development People. Retrieved April 24, 2016, from http://professionaldevelopmentpeople.co.uk/tag/biff-model/
