Category: Blog

Designed by industry experts with decades of training experience, our Learning Workshops provide long-term results for your employees, and for your business. Why not take a browse of our ‘Top 10’…

Building & Developing Successful Teams

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Communicating & Influencing With Impact

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Managing Change In The Workplace

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Minimising Conflict

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Time & Self Management

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Performance Management

 

Motivating & Engaging

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Presenting With Confidence

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Self Confidence & Assertiveness

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Train The Trainer Certification

Let us bring learning to the heart of your business. Get in touch with a member of our expert team to find out more.

At Outlook Partnerships we know it can be a struggle to push your team towards performing better. Building a team requires a great deal of effort from everyone! As a company who brings learning into the heart of your business, we have highlighted five points below to help you build an effective team.

1. Understanding What An Effective Team Is

Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, so a flawless team doesn’t exist. However, there are some methods you can implement to ensure your team is working as well as it can. Having clear objectives and communication is vital. If you aren’t clear on what is needed, then how can you expect others to understand what is required of them? Cooperation is also needed to ensure the team is accomplishing things together. After all, TEAM stands for ‘Together Everyone Achieves More!’

2. Establishing Leadership

To build a successful team you need employees to trust the decisions you make, which is why leadership is so important. By establishing leadership, you are pushing your team to work effectively. This doesn’t mean forcing authority, but there are simple steps you can take to help establish leadership. These include: transparency when it comes to decisions, delegating tasks and responsibilities, communicating business goals, and by simply being honest and friendly.

After hearing the struggles that leaders face with their teams, we developed our ‘High Performing Teams’ workshop, which is great for:

· Experienced business managers building a new team.

· New management who want to gain ownership and commitment with a team.

· ​Any manager who is looking to develop their team building skills.

3. Connecting Team Members

Good relationships are key to building an effective team. Although people can work well individually, they need to work just as well as part of a team, otherwise they will end up frustrating themselves and others. As a leader you must evaluate the way your team works together and be aware of potential conflicts within the team. Your role is to talk through and solve any issues in the best possible way. You can encourage a better working environment by introducing wellness programmes.

Our workshop also helps to develop your team and build effective, long-lasting team dynamics by learning how to reduce conflict and increase productivity.

4. Team Monitoring & Reviews

Sometimes you need to sit back and evaluate your team to understand what they need to become great. By setting goals for team members you can measure how well they are working. By having monthly or quarterly reviews it will allow you to have an in-depth discussion about what is and what isn’t working. Our ‘High Performing Teams’ workshop can help you identify your ‘Team Champion’ and how to utilise their strengths. It also helps you learn how to recognise the difference between a group of individuals and a cohesive team.

5. Team Building

Team building activities are proven to help build effective teams. They don’t have to be costly and can help develop strong internal relationships and inherit a sense of community/ team spirit. Team building activities can be anything from having a chat over a cuppa, brainstorming solutions to fix a problem or doing something as a team to raise money for charity. These activities are built to promote leadership, teamwork and performance skills as well as providing a fun day for your staff to help them unwind and remember why they love working at your company.

Final Thoughts…

It is your most important responsibility as a leader to build an effective team. Teams develop through the forming, storming, norming and performing stages and you can guide and influence the team to become high performing by knowing the right tools and techniques and having a little help. The tips above are a great starting point but our ‘High Performing Teams’ workshop is a fantastic resource to ensure success within your organisation and help you to reach your goals. Heading up a really effective team will also make your job easier!

If you want to learn more then get in touch here.

Not everyone can perform to 100% all of the time. That’s okay because we’re only human! However, if it becomes consistent it will start to cause problems. Not only with the work being produced, but it can also affect team morale and lose your business money.

At Outlook Partnerships, our mission is to empower individuals to deliver incredible business results. Our job is to make yours easier, even if it’s overcoming complex managerial issues like managing underperforming teams.

Keep reading for our top tips on managing underperforming team members.

Identify the problem – don’t just jump to conclusions

Don’t just assume that someone is being lazy or doesn’t want to work. There could be many contributing factors to this. They might be having problems with their home life, or even with another team member. Setting up a 1-2-1 is a great idea as this can give you time alone to discuss any worries you both have and will make it easier to handle any difficult conversations that may arise.

Question your own work

If you have more than one underperforming employee, you shouldn’t only question them, but also yourself. Your team should know what is expected of them, if they’re not living up to expectations then you should also review your own clarity.

You can do this by asking yourself:

• Have all employees had a clear brief and know what you expect?

• Do they understand consequences of not performing?

• Are they up to date on training?

Training

Downfalls can occur when an employee hasn’t had the appropriate training. There should be an appropriate verbal and written brief, or step by step guide they can refer back to. Make sure your instructions are clear. Ask current employees if there is an area of training they would like to improve on. This will ensure that your employees have the skills and knowledge needed to benefit your company.

Set measurable goals

Be specific when highlighting underperformance. You need to show exactly where the problem falls. Use figures, targets or your company handbook to show employees how they are not complying with what is expected.

It’s equally as important that you give the team member a goal to strive to. Creating measurable performance objectives can help guide a team member and will give you something to measure their performance against moving forwards. Be sure to set meetings to check back in regularly with the team member to see how they are getting on.

Incentive and motivation

It’s always important to keep your team motivated. If appreciation is not shown, employees can lack enthusiasm. It doesn’t have to be costly, a simple “thank you” or “good job” can go a long way.

To incentivise people to achieve their goals you could try running an internal competition, for example the employee who receives the best customer feedback, standard or works collaboratively with the team to hit targets or sales, you could try running an internal competition. A little competition in the workplace can be very healthy!

Do you need more assistance with managing underperformance?

If you feel you need to focus in more depth on how to manage underperforming team members, our Learning Workshop ‘Managing Performance & Handling Difficult Conversations’ has been created to offer you further guidance.

Does this sound like something you could benefit from? If so then book onto our workshop. Priced at £225* per person, this 1-day training course can be delivered by one of our expert trainers, in a venue of your choice, for up to 12 delegates. Let us bring learning to the heart of your business, book your place here.

*Learning workshops are priced at £225 per person, per day excluding workshops with profiles which are priced at £295 per person, per day. These prices are based on a booking of a minimum of 8 delegates per learning workshop and exclude Learning Consultancy travelling expenses and VAT.

Did you spend time last year playing catch-up and wishing there were more hours in the day? The answer isn’t necessarily making more time for the tasks you have on your to-do list, but organising them in a better way and maximising the time you already have.

By effectively managing yourself and your time, you can take the first steps towards reaching your goals.

Evidence suggests that putting off important tasks causes stress, and this additional stress contributes to negative psychophysiological impacts on the body which increase our vulnerability for illness. Previous research has linked chronic procrastination to a range of stress-related health problems such as headaches, digestive issues, colds and flus, and insomnia.

So, here’s a few tips and techniques on how to effectively organise yourself: –

1. Realistic Personal & Professional Goals

Start by dedicating time towards looking at what you want to achieve as the year progresses, both personally and professionally.

Planning your aspirations will help you to manage yourself and your time and make those goals more tangible. And of course, give you something to be accountable for!

By keeping yourself happy and content in your personal life, you can transfer that sense of success into your business, and in turn, achieve your professional goals.

2. Check-In with Yourself

Everyone has a specific time or period of the day when they are at their most productive. Save this time for the tasks which need greater focus or energy and plan your day or week with these periods of time in mind.

As you go through your typical working day or week, be mindful of your own performance and ask others to give constructive feedback. Nobody is perfect but taking time to reflect on your performance will give you an idea of the areas to improve upon for next time.

Once you’ve identified your areas for improvement, ask yourself what you could do differently and be open to new ways of working. This could include making use of different information sources such as podcasts (which you can listen to in the car or on the train) and websites to get inspiration and advice and use the tips which suit your way of working.

3. Have you tried the 4MAT Model?

The 4MAT Model encourages you to ask yourself four key questions:

1. What do you specifically want to achieve? And how will you know when you have achieved this? Your evidence of success.

2. Why is it important that you achieve these goals? What’s in it for you? What are your individual drivers? These will help you to stay motivated and on track when things get in the way.

3. How are you going to achieve your goals? Remember to stay open minded with this question, as circumstances change and the more flexible you are with your plans, the more successful you will become by adapting to situations.

4. ‘What if’ questions will help you to think about other options if circumstances change and help you to stay on track in all eventualities.

In other words, the 4MAT Model combines the logical and creative ways of learning together. By doing this, we can gain a clearer picture of how we can effectively manage ourselves and adapt our approach to managing our time.

Keep the 4MAT Model in the forefront of your mind as you go through that period of transition. It’s one thing to create a plan or write down practical steps to take, and another to actually implement them.

4. Manage yourself and your time this year

Here at Outlook Partnerships, we can also help you to become more productive, our 2-day Self-leadership workshop will help you get a better handle on your priorities, share best practices on how others get things done and give you new techniques so you can achieve what you want to this year.

By putting you and your way of learning first, we can show you the steps you might need to take, then the rest is down to you! Find out more and book your place here.

Teamwork is at the heart of every business and building a team that is happy and enthusiastic at work, encourages growth and success.

Happy employees who feel valued are a real asset to any organisation. Here are some of our top tips on how to create a happy and successful team of your own.

Bring everyone together

For any team to succeed, everyone needs to know the vision and goals of where the team is going and have a role to play. Feeling involved and included can enhance morale and open new ideas.

Bringing everyone together creates an environment where employees feel valued and comfortable taking reasonable risks in communicating, advocating positions and taking action with members trusting each other.

Open up lines of communication

It’s not uncommon for employees to feel as though they can’t communicate their difficulties with workload or managing priorities. Offering encouragement to talk about these difficulties is one way to resolve the issue and also shows your team that you care about their wellbeing.

By creating a culture where your team are free to communicate, you can all share the workload equally and this, in turn, improves morale and builds trust – two important aspects of any successful team.

Recognise and praise contributions

Similarly, when someone in your team performs well or delivers beyond expectations, recognising their efforts can spur them on even further and encourage future success. This recognition can be as simple as saying a well-done or celebrating everyone’s achievements in a monthly group meeting, whichever is appropriate for your culture.

And remember to praise everyone’s contributions, no matter how small they might seem. Even if it’s just getting a colleague to check something over, success is a team effort.

Sharing ideas & creativity

Each member of your team has their own skills and strengths, and it’s vital for them all to have the opportunity to share their creativity and express new ideas.

Considering new ways of thinking and ways of performing tasks can bring longer-term successes and creates a sense of pride within your team, as well as building their confidence to use their own initiative.

Passing on knowledge

Finally, encourage employees to share their skills and knowledge by offering a mentoring scheme. Coaching new members of the team, who may be just starting their journey in your organisation shows you value all of your team and care about their future prospects.

Schemes such as these also encourage progression at all levels of your business and works towards happiness and success at each stage. It also helps you to retain the most skilled workers in your team.

Making your team feel happy now & successful in the future

These ideas have given you some insight into how you can build a happy team which leads to successful business results. But if you’re wondering what else you can do, or to learn how to put these ideas into action, book onto our workshop on High PerformingTeams.

Let’s make your team a happy and successful one!