Teamwork: What is your status?

Over the past two years, I am sure most of our teams have endured a level of challenges we have never experienced before. These difficult times have undoubtedly highlighted the strengths and pitfalls of every team. The ability to maintain a high level of performance and achieve results while responding to a crisis.

As organizations and teams continue navigating their way through an ever-changing landscape, is your team in a state where it can successfully take on the next twelve months and whatever the future will bring?

Here is how to evaluate your team

To ensure your team is calibrated and able to reach the full height of its potential, you need to get an accurate assessment of the team. Find out where the team is now and what development is required to get it where it needs to be. Then, as a leader, do not ignore the essential role of helping your team member’s transition to the new working system. Help them rebuild emotional connections with their colleagues and explore the wide variety of issues, needs, or decisions they may confront as they return to work in the new business environment. 

To effectively bounce back to high levels of performance, engage your team to tackle the topics I have suggested below:

• Reorganization of corporate functions and roles
• The arrival and assimilation of new team members
• The departure of familiar team members
• Communicating effectively with virtual team members, clients, or stakeholders
• Resolving concerns, differences, or areas of tension
• Exploring sensitive issues like diversity, equity, and inclusion
• Resetting processes and disciplines
• Mapping out new strategies, goals, and priorities for the team
• Clarifying expectations and working agreements between team members
• Building trust, unity, and collaboration
• Learning new skills and competencies or refreshing existing ones 

Team assessment give leaders insights to pinpoint target areas in their team-development initiatives. This helps to unleash the full potential of the team position it for success as the business environment begins to stabilize. 

While rapidly shifting circumstances have certainly taken a toll on leaders and teams, the future holds a lot of promise. Change of any type will offer an opportunity for leaders and teams to start fresh and begin anew.