Leading Effective Teams: Balancing Individual and Collective Goals
Continuing professional development is paramount to achieving a person's career goals. It is crucial for enhancing an individual's knowledge, skills, and expertise. Moreover, professional development enables them to stay competitive and prepared to face challenges as they advance in their careers.
Pushing for your team’s individual growth is undeniably important, as are your collective goals. While these objectives are primarily for the organisation’s betterment, they can also benefit your team as this fosters teamwork and cohesion.
Given the significance of these two for growth and improvement, the challenge of balancing individual and collective goals now lies in the hands of a leader. To achieve this, one must follow BRIGHT.
BRIGHT Ways to Align Individual and Collective Goals
Retaining the best talents while boosting their performance can be challenging. But if there is anything trickier to handle than the two mentioned, it is aligning your team’s individual goals with the company’s vision.
Striking a balance between personal and team objectives can be challenging due to differing motivations, priorities, and values. Balancing your members’ aspirations with the company's broader goals requires exemplary leadership skills, management programs, and the BRIGHT process.
B - Balanced: Strive for a harmonious equilibrium between individual aspirations and collective objectives.
R - Recognition: Acknowledge and reward individual and collective contributions.
I - Integration: Encourage collaboration and seamless integration of individual efforts into the collective mission.
G - Growth: Promote personal and professional development while nurturing the organisation's growth.
H - Harmony: Cultivate an environment where individual and collective goals align, promoting teamwork and synergy.
T - Transparent: Ensure transparency in goal-setting and progress tracking for individuals and the collective.
Digging Deeper to the BRIGHT Process
All company owners know that all talents are temporary. In a 2020 study by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, a typical employee’s tenure in one company is under or over four years. Having a talent who will stay with you until retirement is rare, especially now that job hopping has become a norm.
This may send you the idea that allowing and supporting your employees’ individual aspirations will put you at a disadvantage. But do not let this thought cloud your mind because supporting your employees in achieving their goals while working on your company objectives can actually benefit you even more.
Employ a BALANCED Approach
Employing an approach that addresses your members' possession of different strengths, passions, and career ambitions will help you find a better solution on how to handle them. Additionally, encouraging them to pursue personal growth and fulfilment fosters a sense of purpose and commitment in the workplace.
When these individuals feel valued and supported in their personal pursuits, they are more likely to invest themselves wholeheartedly in the collective objectives of your organisation.
RECOGNISE Your Team’s Efforts
Keeping a motivated and engaged workforce is the key to finding the balance between individual and collective objectives. There are multiple ways how this can be done, but recognising their efforts is probably the easiest and most effective.
Effective recognition involves appreciating their talents, ambitions, and needs while ensuring their efforts align with the company’s visions. Doing this will help you create a sense of value, belonging, and purpose among your employees. This can also inspire them to continue excelling and contributing to the team's success.
INTEGRATE Collaboration within the Team
According to an American poet, Mattie J.T. Stepanek, “Unity is strength when there is teamwork and collaboration… when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.”
Harnessing an organisation’s full potential in efficiently and effectively achieving its goals requires effort and teamwork. Without it, attaining a positive work environment where employees can achieve their pursuits while working on the betterment of the organisation may not be possible.
As a leader, your goal is to enhance your team’s desire to collaborate. The capacity for collaboration hinges on the collective emotional intelligence of a team. If all members are willing to engage and work together, that is only when you can achieve true collaboration.
Help Your Team GROW
A company’s success starts with the triumph of its employees. Hence, it is vital to encourage them to engage in continuous learning and skill enhancement programs. This strategy will not only help your employees to grow but also your organisation.
But to attain this, your team will need organisational support. This involves a solid onboarding system, constant training and development programs, efficient tools and resources, and regular feedback and coaching.
A robust onboarding process will help your team understand their roles and the company's goals from the get-go. While training and development programs can help your members build skills and knowledge they can utilise for their self-improvement and contribution to the company.
Leaders must also provide their teams with resources and tools to help them finish their jobs. Lastly, giving them feedback and coaching sessions can help ensure they are doing the right things.
Promote Workplace HARMONY
The word “team” is a remarkable term many do not highly value. Although this word is often used interchangeably with “group,” it has a specific and unique meaning.
When you say group, this can be individuals existing together. But when you say team, it is a group of people geared toward one shared purpose. This shared objective can only be achieved when you have a harmonious workplace.
Fostering harmony within the workplace creates effective collaboration, reduces conflicts, and promotes a positive and supportive atmosphere. The more united your team is, the more you can enhance productivity.
Be TRANSPARENT
Transparency means openly sharing information about objectives, performance expectations, and progress. You have to include your members as you define your company’s goals.
Learn to communicate and provide regular updates, as these are the only ways your team can better understand their individual contributions to the collective mission. Being transparent cultivates trust, accountability, and collaboration. These traits are needed for company success and your team’s career pursuits.
Lead Effective Teams for the Future
Building an effective team continues beyond searching and hiring the best talents in your roster. This is an arduous process that takes time, effort, and investment. When you take your time understanding your team’s aspirations, you are helping your company become better.
Following BRIGHT can ultimately aid you in achieving your dream team. But along with this, you must also invest in leadership and team development courses, like what Corporate Learning Solutions offers.
We are leadership specialists that offer courses for leadership and management to help you handle your team better. We are here to help you create leaders capable of influencing change.
To work with us, you may visit our website at https://www.corplearn.com.au/.
