Joining extracurricular clubs and teams is a great way to meet new people, create friends, and learn soft skills which can be helpful throughout your lives. One of the main things to have a successful extracurricular activity is having a good team. Without a good tem, the extracurricular becomes a job rather than an interactive and enjoyable club.
Effective teamwork and leadership is the key to the success of any project as it helps to maximize capabilities of each member, and promote creativity, which can increase motivation and work ethic (“Teamwork and Leadership: Must-Have Soft Skills for Career Success”).
There are many strategies to optimize the effectiveness of teamwork and leadership, here are a few most important ones:
Set Clear Goals
Goals are set for a definite purpose, which is the reason for the team’s existence. With goals, you can start to involve the team and allocate work and resources. To be successful, goals must be set. Without goals, everybody is confused about their jobs and the team becomes chaotic and disorganized. Also, goals can be used to measure performance. Without a clear criteria of the future, the team does not know where they are currently or where they should be in terms of their success. Moreover, setting goals can act as a method of communication between team members. Knowing the end game, team members can talk to each other and determine what their next steps are going to be; without goals, there is no particular reason for a team to exist (Keen).
Encourage Collaboration
Collaboration is one of the most important things in a team. Without collaboration, people do not feel respected, which can make them quit or burnt-out. Having good collaboration includes openness about new ideas and perspectives, listening to feedback, and encouraging healthy debate rather than destructive conflict. Being open to new ideas and perspectives tells members that you are willing to understand them. This encourages them to calmly work out their conflicts with you rather than keep them bottled up and destroy their motivation and work ethic. However, sometimes it is good to have conflicts (healthy debates) as this helps you with emphasizing with people. Healthy debates can help people understand each other on a deeper level. People start to know what their team members are going to do and why (Keen).
Promote Conflict Resolution
Having conflicts is a part of a healthy relationship. It can help you understand the importance of empathy and compromise. However, dragging out a conflict is bad. To run a successful team, you must be able to resolve conflict in a way in which no one gets hurt and everyone feels a fair solution has been reached. To do this, you can create a safe environment where people can be honest about their feelings and thoughts without fear or rejection. Communication and talking is the best way to resolve conflict; if you know what the other person wants, you can try to work towards ensuring they are happy. This MUST be a two-way street. Also, as a leader, your job is to stay neutral when a conflict does arise as picking sides might make someone think they are not valued in the team (Keen).
Celebrate Success
Celebrating success gives team members a sense of satisfaction. Having their work valued and celebrated encourages people to continue producing hard work, so celebrating the small or big achievements, and holidays can make a big difference in motivating the team to continue achieving goals. These celebrations do not have to be huge, they can be as small as game night with all the team members or a lunch on a random Saturday (Keen).
Final Notes
In conclusion, building an effective team and having good leadership depends on member motivation. To get high motivation, you should set clear goals, encourage collaboration, promote conflict resolution, and celebrate success. The combination of these strategies result in a good, effective team.
Written by: Krisha L
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