Indicators You Have A Good Team

All leaders want to have a good and effective team.  Leaders goes through great lengths to build a good team with the best talents.  Great efforts are put into making sure the team is setup for success.  And success are often measured by productivity and outcome.  Productivity and outcome are great measurement of team efficiency.  However, they may not indicate if you have a good team or not.  To truly say that you have a good team, you must consider several other aspects beyond productivity.

Having good productivity and quality delivery is a great achievement.  You can hang your hat on the fact that you and your team is successful.  However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a good team.  And it certainly doesn’t mean that success is sustainable.  If you have a great delivery, yet your team is entirely dysfunctional, then you don’t have a good team.  When your team can’t get along, and there are conflicts between members, whatever success you may achieve at the time will surely dissipate in the near future. 

Of course as leaders we always want to have successful deliveries.  But what leaders really want is sustainable success.  In order to have sustainable success, you have to have a good team.  So here are some indicators that can let you know if you have a good team or not.

1. Common Goals – In order for your team to be successful, which is one of the key indicator of having a good team, there needs to be a common goal. A good leader must always make sure that a common goal is communicated with the entire team.  That common goal must not only be communicated, but also needs to be agreed upon.  If your team member doesn’t agree that the goal is correct or appropriate, you may have members working towards different goals which doesn’t work.  Get your team to understand and buy into the goals together and that’s a first step to having a good team.
   
   
2. Clear Objectives – Goals and objectives are commonly misinterpreted to be the same thing. But they are not.  Goals are the outcome you want to achieve.  Objectives are the actions which helps you achieve your goals.  Have you clearly outlined the objectives your team needs to take in order to achieve your common goal?  If your team doesn’t know or understand what the objectives are, they may be counterproductive in their efforts. But if your team fully understand the objectives you’ve set out, you’re on your way into having a very good team.
   
   
3. Individual Roles identified – Once you have your objectives clearly identified and communicates, they must be assigned appropriately. Each member in your team should have their own role to contribute in the pursuit of the common goal.  Members having an understanding of their role will help the stay focus.  It will allow them to have a sense of purpose and will allow them to feel good that they are contributing.
   
   
4. Talents – Being able to staff your team with competent members who are capable of doing the work is important. You want to make sure that you’re teams are well trained in order to perform the job functions.  Not having adequate skills will reduce the abilities of your team to be successful and achieve the goals set out.  Ensure that your team are up to date in skills required.  Provide any training that are needed to perform the job well.  And make sure they’re well equipped to complete their job requirements.
   
   
5. Internal Conflicts – Are you aware of any conflicts within your team? You don’t have a good team if there are conflicts between team members.  Internal conflicts, even small ones, can affect the team deeply and eventually grow to become a large issue.  Internal conflict are very toxic and should be dealt with.  What’s even more dangerous than known conflicts are ones that are unknown.  Conflicts that are unknown are dangerous because you don’t know about it to address it.  Be aware of issues within your team and keep conflicts away from the team in order to have a good team.
   
   
6. Morale – The morale of your team is key for you to have a good team. The mood of your team dictates how they will perform at their jobs.  High morale will bring great productivity and even better teamwork.  A good team must have good morale throughout.  Therefore, it is vital that you, as the leader, maintain high morale for your team.
   
   
7. Efficiency – All the prerequisites are great but they must contribute to efficiency. You don’t have a good team unless you have good efficiency within the team.  Having a mechanism to monitor efficiency will allow you to understand how good your team is.
   
   
8. Productivity – Ultimately we need to be productive in order to be successful. Taking care of the team and making sure they’re well prepared to perform their job is a great responsibility of the leader.  Now it’s up to the employees and the team to produce.  The team isn’t good if they don’t perform.  Therefore, the team must perform and be able to do so at a high level.  That is an indicator that you have a good team.
   
   

Having a good team is not just about productivity, even though productivity is a main factor.  You must have a good pulse on the health of your team and take good care of them.  This is something that a good leader must do consistently.  To maintain a good team, a leader must constantly be engaged in the team’s activities.  Only engaging with the team once in a while, you will miss out on quite a bit.  You can read more on about consistency in my blog How To Be Consistent. 

Don’t leave the wellbeing of your team up to assumptions.  Check to confirm how good of a team you truly have.  Verify each one of these items and address them appropriately and consistently.  Once you’ve achieved success in those items, you can be confident that you have a good team.  And you can also be confident that your team will achieve sustainable success for the long haul. 

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