Building High-Performing Teams: Focusing on Strengths for Leadership Success

Employee teams are some of the most vital influencers of your company’s success. Therefore, as a leader, it is important to make decisions that ensure you can maintain the most impactful teams. This doesn’t begin and end with the initial hiring choices you make, though.

Rather, one of your key leadership responsibilities is encouraging and cultivating the development of strengths that boost performance. This requires genuine care for the well-being of your employees as well as knowledge of the skills they could gain that might genuinely make a difference. With a focus on some key areas, you can lead your team to be powerful influencers in the company’s trajectory.

Boosting Productivity

Productivity is a key metric of high-performing teams. After all, if your team is unable to operate efficiently and meet essential goals, this is likely to impact success. There is certainly a range of common issues that decrease worker productivity. If your team members are expected to take on too many simultaneous tasks unnecessarily, they can become overwhelmed. Not to mention that a lack of recognition and growth opportunities can demotivate employees in ways that affect their performance.

To be an effective leader of high-performing teams, it’s essential to encourage strengths in your team members that help mitigate such productivity issues.

Some of these could include:

Stress management

Certainly, you have a duty as a leader to ensure your team members aren’t subjected to excessive pressure. That said, most jobs have some stress. It’s important to help your team cultivate effective stress management skills. This can include taking regular time for mindfulness and meditation. It should also involve communicating with one another about stressful experiences so they can help one another make impactful adjustments.

Mutual recognition

Recognition traditionally tends to come from management, in the form of rewards and development opportunities, which can influence operational excellence. However, day-to-day recognition can be vital, too. You should take the time to guide your employees in regular mutual peer recognition. Gaining strengths in this area involves getting an understanding of how praise based on details is more impactful than more vague and general comments. You can also offer forums to host their recognition, such as daily meetings or communications channels.

Celebrating Diversity

High-level performance isn’t just the result of solid productivity. The characteristics of the team are also vital influencers. Developing and celebrating diversity in your employee base can lead to positive outcomes, such as influencing company culture and potentially driving innovation. As a leader, you need to cultivate not just a membership of people from different backgrounds but also the strengths that support diversity.

These can include:

Empathy

Having a diverse team means that you have members with different perspectives, experiences, and challenges. As a result, your employees need to exhibit high levels of empathy to ensure team unity. They need to have active listening abilities that enable them to have insights into the needs of their colleagues and adapt accordingly. Not to mention that they should apply forethought to how their actions and choices affect others they engage with.

Inclusion

Diverse teams aren’t just successful because they have contributors from a range of backgrounds. Rather, efficacy tends to be influenced by all members feeling a sense of belonging to the group. Therefore, it is important to encourage strong inclusion skills among your team. This should include being open to learning about other cultures and experiences. Inclusive teams also tend to be active advocates against inequality in the workplace.

Enabling Safety

When considering how to push the performance of a team, a lot of attention tends to be on strategies for productive tactics or skill sets. While these can play an important role, it’s also important to consider the importance of maintaining a culture of safety among the team. Not only can teams minimize disruption in productivity, but the sense of protection can also help them feel secure in their roles. Therefore, safety skills should be among the strengths you cultivate among team members.

These can include:

Risk management

Any workplace is subject to a range of risks to safety and security. Encouraging team members to develop risk management skills can empower them to have an awareness of hazards and minimize issues for everyone involved. Train employees to regularly assess their environment for signs of physical or mental health obstacles. They should also understand the company’s internal controls and know with whom to communicate in the event of present or potential risks.

Cybersecurity

The prevalent safety risks of the workplace are not always physical in nature. Cybersecurity breaches can cause significant disruption, too. Given that human behavior is one of the key causes of breaches, it is important to provide employees with effective cybersecurity training. This should involve helping them to understand the risks and how their behavior plays a role. Avoiding highly technical language and incorporating games can also affect how receptive they are to the information. Importantly, ensure they get regular refresher sessions so they’re aware of current risks and prevention tools.

Conclusion

As a team leader, your success can be influenced by encouraging your employees to cultivate a range of strengths. Help them adopt techniques that impact productivity, such as stress management and peer recognition practices. Developing strengths in celebrating diversity can also influence the culture of the business. It’s vital, too, to recognize that risk management and cybersecurity skills minimize disruption and keep employees safe.

That said, it’s important to note that these strengths aren’t just good for day-to-day operations. They’re also vital in helping your team gain the leadership skills they need to progress. Be active in helping them to understand how these characteristics fit into management tasks and mentor them toward being the kinds of leaders the company, industry, and their colleagues need.