Everyone wants to be engaged in a promising team, and every leader wants to build an effective team. But here comes the question: what makes an effective team?

1. Positive interdependent relationships

Teams with positive interdependent relationships tend to be more productive and creative. While working together as a community with interdependent roles and responsibilities, people easily find ways to overcome obstacles, solve problems and have fun adventures. Depending on one another, trusting one another, and collaborating with one another generate effectiveness for the group.

2. Agreed ground rules

Team conflicts and stress come out when perceived values and behaviors of each team member vary a lot. Thus, it is very important to articulate what each team member’s values are. Team members that have established and agreed on ground rules tend to better understand how the team makes decisions, how to eliminate stress, and how to deal with internal disagreements and conflicts.

3. Clear common objective

Team members need to understand clearly the common mission, vision, and goal they are committed to. What’s also essential is that members understand how important it is to have a collective objective. Ineffective teams lack clarity of purpose, and members wonder, wander and pull in different directions. Without shared goals, all the other factors that make an effective team such as collaboration, interdependence, and agreed rules would be meaningless.

4. Effective communication

Effective communication is an intangible asset to a team; one which is hard to perfect. The key to building an effective communication style for a workplace is openness. The best teams communicate clearly, share information, pay sincere compliments, and give warnings openly. Many organizations are becoming increasingly diverse so it is very important for team members to pay attention to different cultures, as well as special and sensitive classes such as minorities, females, and people with disabilities. Although this may be difficult at first, communicating with coworkers from different backgrounds will become easier and more natural with time.

5. Leadership

A leader is a core person in a team, and his/her leadership style is also the key to determining the future of the team. The basic role of a leader is to make team members feel respected, valued, and appreciated. The best leaders keep everyone in the loop. That is to say, effective leaders know how to empower and motivate team members to be more engaged. Another equally essential quality of a leader is his/her ability to see that listening is as important as talking. If you want others to listen to you, then spend more time listening than talking.

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