When it comes to the success of a business or any other organisation, one person can’t be held responsible for that. We all know about “The Beatles”. They were the chart-toppers in their time and much of their success is credited to the extraordinary coordination and teamwork between those guys. 

If you are a business owner and struggle to keep your team together, you are going to fail eventually. Even if the prior sentence sounds strong to you, that is the truth. 

No matter how skilled the workforce you have, if you fail to get them all under the same roof, you are not going to get anything out of their efforts. Good and effective teamwork plays a really important role in the success of a business. That’s why more and more companies are understanding the importance of team building. 

Unfortunately, a recent report says that about 40% of the employees of this age believe that their frim no longer focuses on the team. If you as a manager are searching how to encourage teamwork, here are some tips that you should follow.

Focus on individual strengths

It is a well-known fact that any person works while doing something that they are good at. Whenever you are making a team, you should consider the strength of every individual member. 

A great software development team is nothing special or different, it is just a group of people who like to work with each other. So, you can never have a great team if you are inaccurate about the strengths and specialty of individuals. 

The best way to do it is by having a very clear conversation with the team members while assigning tasks. That way, you will automatically know about the specialty of individuals. A time tracker app not only helps you in assigning those tasks but also keeps track of how productively the individuals use their specialties in different activities. 

Assign specific roles to each individual very clearly

When your team members are not well-aware of their roles, there is no way they are going to perform well. For the smooth functioning of a development team, it is very necessary that every team member is sticking to their role within the software development plan during a project. 

If your team members are not sure of their roles, they all will be partly confused about what to do. Such a situation not only impacts the overall performance of the team but also weakens the expectations and trust of your team members. As the problem lies in assigning the work properly, your team members start feeling demotivated when they don’t see good results. 

When you are assigning the roles to your team members, try different persons in different situations. It will make you aware of the obscure skills of your development team members. This is critical if you have a remote only or hybrid work environment too, and is one of the best things to do for those who are looking for ways on how to encourage teamwork.

Don’t set an unrealistic goal

This is a mistake that a lot of people make and they think that they are motivating the team members. Make sure that you are not setting unrealistic goals and timeline in front of the team members while motivating them. 

Doing such a thing will be really painful when they find out the actual result in the end. Such a dramatic situation will be enough to demotivate the team members for upcoming future projects. 

Spend some time with your team members

When you are the manager or the one controlling the team, you definitely spend whole days with your team. But we are not talking about that here. By spending time, we mean you should spend some leisure time with your team members. 

Such an activity will help you a lot in knowing your team members at another level. You will be able to harness the most out of your team members only when you know about them better. 

You can have coffee with them or even your lunch if you like it. Knowing about someone is possible only when you spend some time with them. 

Maintain a proper flow of communication between the employees

Most of the case studies of failed teamwork suggest that it was due to a lack of communication. A good level of communication can’t be achieved if you are not doing something about it. 

The first thing that you should do is to have a developer performance review in the schedule. These meetings are the doorway to the precious feedback from the team members. 

Having a smooth channel of communication between you and the team members will let you know about the challenges, achievements, and struggles of your team members in a precise way. This step is a must if you are searching about how to encourage teamwork?

Share the credits in the same way as you share failure

This is a very common mistake that a lot of people make while working or controlling a team. When the team succeeds in doing something, you try to take the whole responsibility for that. 

And when the team fails at doing something, you start blaming everyone except for yourself. Such behaviour is enough to destroy the team spirit and the team member’s trust in you. Say they were meant to update anti-virus software or keep your CMS up to date, however for some reason, it fell behind. Did you schedule it? Who is to blame for the oversight?

You should do such things very transparently irrespective of the fact whether the team failed or succeeded. You should be equally accepting of the responsibility for failure as you are for success. 

Reward the team members after each success

In a firm where a lot of people are working together, it is very necessary to keep them motivated. There is no better way to do it than to reward the team members for their success with personalized thank you notes. There is no better way to do it than to reward the team members for their success. 

“I make a concerted effort every month or so to reward my development team” says Jon Yau, founder of stock photo library, Stockphoto.com “It is important to me that they understand how they help with the overall mission of the company” he added.

Whenever your development team achieves something good, organise a special lunch for them or something like that. Such a nice gesture will encourage your team members to work even harder thus making your firm even more successful. 

If some member of the team has done a remarkable job, first, empower them by verbally acknowledging their contribution, and then give them a chance to introduce the company to their success story. It would inspire other team members in your firm. It has been found that such gestures are very helpful in enhancing the growth of a firm. 

Final words

We have discussed several steps that would help you if you are searching for ways to encourage teamwork within your development team. 

But you should always keep in mind that these are not the only things that you can do to achieve better team coordination. There are a lot more things that you will learn about once you start observing your team very carefully.