Effective Teamwork: Do You Know How to Make it Happen?

Projects are collaborative efforts. So, if you want your project to be a success, you need to be able to create effective teamwork.

This is at the heart of your role as a Project Leader. You need to bring people together, facilitate great communication, encourage the right attitudes, and harness the best that effective teamwork can deliver.

So, in this guide, we’ll look at all of that with a practical eye, and ask:

What can you do, as a Project Manager, to create effective teamwork?

What is Effective Teamwork?

Before we get into the ‘how’, it always pays to be clear about what it is we are talking about. We need to understand what we mean by teamwork, and what makes it effective… or not.

Teamwork

Teamwork is a collaborative effort among a group of people, to achieve a shared goal or complete a piece of work. In collaborating, they rely on one another and therefore hold each other accountable.

Effective

Believe it or not, I have actually written a book about effectiveness, that applies the principles of project management to personal effectiveness. It’s called Powerhouse. In that book, I define effective as…

Causing the desired result, successful, productive, able to deliver what matters.

Powerhouse: Turbo boost your effectiveness and start making a serious impact
by Mike Clayton
Capstone, 2015

It’s important that we distinguish effective from efficient:

• Efficiency is ‘getting lots of stuff done, quickly and easily’ productivity.
• Effectiveness is ‘getting the right stuff done, in the right way’ productivity

So, Effective Teamwork…

The Keys to Creating Effective Teamwork

If you want to create effective teamwork on your project, there are five things to attend to. So, these form the structure of this article:

1. Setting up a Team-working Environment
2. Crafting a Culture of Good Communication
3. Encouraging Constructive Attitudes
4. Harnessing the Team’s Skills
5. Leading the Team

In addition to these, you will also face a number of challenges along the way. So, we have a sixth section that signposts resources to help you meet them:

• Handling Challenges to Effective Teamwork

We shall examine each of these in turn.

Setting up an Effective Teamwork Environment

This is sometimes known as ‘onboarding’ your team. It’s where they receive their basic understanding of the project, the way you work, and of who you and their other colleagues are. I have a video in which I interviewed Elizabeth Harrin on the subject of Onboarding a New Team.

Purpose

For your team to be effective and also motivated, they must know both:

1. What they are doing, and
2. Why they are doing it

Of the two, the purpose, or the why, is the more important. If they understand the meaning behind your project, then they:

• Can decide if it’s for them and, if it is…
  • will be motivated to do it
• Can figure out the how for themselves and, therefore…
  • be more committed to doing it

So, task 1: Be crystal clear about what the purpose of your project is.

To help you with this, take a look at our video: How to Set a Clear Vision and Mission for your Team | Video.

Trust

You cannot get anything done as a team without a level of trust. And your role is to build it in two ways:

Swift Trust

First, you need to establish a base level of trust quickly, so your team can start to work together. Do this by:

1. Allocating clear roles and responsibilities to each person
2. Treating everyone ‘as if’ you have high levels of trust
3. Giving explicit recognition for work well done

Long-term Trust

Then, you need to grow long-term trust. Do this by building relationships with your team members and fostering:

• Relationships among them – if you are the hub, you become the point of weakness
• Reliability – a sense of integrity and consistency between expectations and behaviors
• Respect – for each other’s capabilities
• Reciprocity – helping each other when we have the capacity to do so

So, task 2: Develop trust quickly, and then continue work to deepen it.

Organization and Operating Model

The third component of your team-working environment is the way the team organizes itself and works together. These are the ‘rules of the road’, the ‘operating model’, or the ‘norms of behavior’.

From the Tuckman Model of Group Development, we know that you will evolve and formalize these at the Norming Stage. But early on, you need to engage your team in:

• Setting goals
• Deciding strategy and approach
• Making plans

This will get people working together and learning about each other’s styles and contributions. This will be the basis for agreeing on how your team will work together in the delivery stages of your project.

An important part of this is fostering inclusion for the full diversity of your team. We know that a more diverse team can be more effective, but it does take work. We have two great resources to help you with this tricky aspect of team working:

1. How to Support Diversity and Inclusion in Your Team | Video
2. Building Inclusive Teams: A Conversation with Anita Phagura of Fierce Project Management

It is often well worthwhile to get your team together in a meeting to articulate and document some of the basic team ‘ground rules’ that you will all commit to adhering to. We have a full article on creating ground rules, as well as a video on defining your ground rules.

Whilst you can incorporate this into your Project Kick-off Meeting, this will only work where the team has already developed a level of mutual trust.

Often you’ll need to wait. But then, you can call a meeting and focus on this topic.

So, task 3: Start your team started working together by working together on the strategic and planning aspects of your project. Develop your collaborative approach with a more formal team agreement later on.

Crafting a Culture of Good Communication

There can be no doubt about the centrality of communication to good project management. But here, we’ll focus on what makes good communication within an effective project team.

Rapport

Team members need to get on with one another if you want effective teamwork from them. This is different to trust and is usually founded upon something people have in common. So giving people time to get to know one another is a valuable investment.

Create opportunities at the start of your project. And, during the project, be sure to give time to social interaction at the start and end of every meeting – especially when they involve team members who work apart from one another.

So, task 4: Prioritise the social interactions that allow team members to get to know each other and find common interests.

Respect

It’s hard to force respect. But you can enforce respectful behaviors.

The most effective teams are the most diverse. And diversity – especially cultural diversity – loads additional challenges on a team. As a minimum, set the standard for courtesy and respect in your own behavior. And then expect the same standards from everyone. Come down hard on any form of disrespectful behavior.

We’ll return to this topic, under constructive attitudes, below. Recognition of contributions not only makes the person we are recognizing feel good. It also encourages the rest of us to see what they can do. And so, it helps build respect.

So, task 5: Craft a respectful atmosphere by showing and expecting respectful styles of communication.

Transmission

This is what a lot of people think of as ‘communication‘… relaying a message from one person to another. Particularly in a linguistically diverse team, making yourself easy to understand is not always easy.

Ask people to take their time with written communication, and to use only jargon that is truly shared among the team. Be patient with people who don’t get it when you explain things. They aren’t stupid just because the language you are using isn’t their first language. Constantly communicating in a second or third language can be a huge strain.

To help with this, we have an article: Great Team Communication: The 10 Commandments.

So, task 6: Work hard to make communication clear and unambiguous. Encourage everyone to do the same, and t be patient with each other.

Encouraging Constructive Attitudes

Confidence, Humility, and Generosity

It’s easy to look at the extremes of confidence and humility, and to see them as opposites. But they touch at the perfect point of balance, where my confidence in my abilities allows me to use them without arrogance, and to serve the people around me. When I do that, I can be confident, humble, and generous at the same time.

So, task 7: Encourage your team members to be confident in their abilities, and to collaborate generously, sharing their capabilities.

Growth, Learning, and Development

We can always improve on effective teamwork. And one way is to keep reviewing our practices with a mindset of growing our abilities and learning new things. And there is a role for structured team training too. We have an article: Training Team Members & Stakeholders: 8 Vital Disciplines to Ensure they’re Well Trained.

This is also a valuable part of your role to motivate your team (which we’ll return to below). The chance to develop mastery of our roles and extend our abilities is one of the most powerful intrinsic motivators. And offering team members that opportunity will cost you and your project little or nothing.

So, task 8: Create a learning environment where team members can learn from each other, and use their assignments to extend their capabilities or learn new ones.

Recognition, Praise, and Celebration

This helps your whole team to see the strengths of their colleagues and therefore fosters respect. We saw this above. But it does so much more. Because we all have a strong need to be recognized for our achievements and contributions. Take a look at my short video on The Value of Positive Feedback.

We can take this a step further too. If your project’s atmosphere is predominantly positive, with significantly more praise and celebration than there is criticism and blame, then it brings out the best performance from your team members. You can also boost productivity with employee recognition strategies, another benefit that shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Couple this with the observation that the opposite creates a toxic environment, and I hope you can see why prioritizing this can really contribute to effective teamwork.

So, task 9: Role model recognition of contribution, praise for achievement, and celebration of successes.

Formal Feedback

But it is also important to cultivate the skills of giving effective feedback. To help you, take a look at our article: Performance Feedback: How to Turbo-Charge Your Project Team Members. Better yet, I also have a free video course about giving and receiving feedback, on my Management Courses YouTube channel and on the Management Courses website.

Harnessing the Team’s Skills

Now we are getting to the nub of things. You want effective team-working to get things done. So what are the skills you can focus on to achieve that level of teamwork? I’d select three…

Creative Conflict

Creativity never arises from everyone thinking the same. Neither does it emerge from out-and-out conflict.

Creative conflict is where team colleagues are confident in challenging one-another’s ideas in a respectful manner. They can put their own points of view robustly and expect others to listen to them In return, they will listen when those others put their own ideas to the group.

So, task 10: Engineer debates and discussions to find creative ideas and test them among your team. Where necessary, impose structure on the process to ensure everyone is heard.

Destructive Conflict

Creative conflict is, by the way, very different from the kind of conflict that can rapidly erode team performance. If you are concerned about dealing with this, we do have you covered:

• How to Understand the Stages of Conflict | Video
• How to Understand the Sources of Conflict | Video
• Managing Conflict: Everything a Project Manager Needs to Know
• Conflict Management: Ways to Get it Right | Part 2
• Conflict in Project Management: It’s Your Fault | Video

And, for a masterclass in dealing with conflict, take a look at our full course: Dealing with Conflict in Projects.

Problem-solving

Problem-solving often needs a structured process too. But it starts with good access to raw information.

I am a big fan of the idea of ‘going to the Gemba’. This is a Japanese term that, in my terms means:

Get off your chair and out from behind your desk. Go as a group to where the problem exists, and examine it from every angle

There’s something special about being where the solution needs to happen. Then you can apply your favorite problem-solving method.

So, task 11: Engage team members in active problem-solving. Point them at the problem and facilitate the process.

As you would expect, we have a wide range of resources to help you with your project problem-solving:

• Problem Solving: A Systematic Approach
• Two Approaches to Solving Project Problems | Video
• What is Design Thinking? Human-centered Problem-solving | Video
• Could You Survive on Mars? Problem-Solving | Video

Decision-making

Good decisions need the best information, the right people, and a sound process. So, once again, engage a diverse cross-section of your team in debating important decisions.

It’s often tempting for people in a leadership role to think they need to make every decision. The truth is that your leadership role means you need to endorse every decision, and take responsibility for them. But the more you can devolve decision-making to the people who know the details and need to be in the lead when they implement it, the better. Their different perspectives are valuable.

So, task 12: Take a variety of input before committing to decisions. Let your team tell you what they think, before you weigh their reasoning and either endorse it or make your own decision.

Here are our decision-making resources:

• The Essential Guide to Robust Project Decision Making
• Rapid Decision Making in Projects: How to Get it Right

Leading the Team

Arguably, this is the least important of your five keys to creating effective teamwork.

‘Why’s that?’ you ask.

I’ll tell you… It’s because if you do the other four sets of things, you’re already leading effectively. So, this is just the icing on the cake.

Facilitation

Effective teamwork needs light-touch leadership. So the major part of your role is facilitation – literally, making it easy for your team to do their work.

Aspects of this role include:

• providing information
• handling interruptions and distractions
• ensuring they have the facilities and resources they need
• resolving conflicts and arbitrating on disagreements
• chairing discussions
• helping and supporting people in learning
• sometimes providing coaching or mentoring support

I have a short video guide to How to Facilitate a Meeting and also a longer interview: How to Facilitate Productive Project Meetings – with Rich Maltzman.

So, task 13: Adopt a facilitator mindset. Ask yourself: ‘what else can I do to make life easy for my team?’

Motivation

One role that you should actively take the lead on, is motivating your team. Create a routine that will let you evaluate levels of morale, and build motivation and confidence-building into team meetings, team events, and your everyday interactions with colleagues.

Be with people and share their load. When the most junior person is overworked with an urgent deadline, drop your ‘big-boss’ workload and help them out. And remember what I wrote above about recognition, praise, and celebration. These too, are vital aspects of motivation-building and maintenance.

Our guide to motivation is titled: Project Team Motivation [Everything You Need to Know]. But, if you want to go into this in detail, I have a free course on Motivation on my Management Courses YouTube Channel and on the corresponding website.

So, task 14: Your formal role title may be Project Manager. But make yourself the Head of Motivation. And I don’t mean a cheesy Ms/Mr jokes and jolly: I mean being there to provide encouragement and support.

Allocation

The nearest I’ll get to the ‘traditional’ project manager role in this article is to note that one aspect of your leadership role is to determine (at the top level), who does what on your project. You need to allocate responsibilities.

This also means you need to track the way your team members discharge those responsibilities. Because remember, they all track back to you.

Allocation is a little different from delegation. See how in this 5-minute video: ‘What is Delegation?‘ But it is similar enough that the process for delegation will help you. You can see that in this companion 5-minute video: ‘How to Delegate’. If you want more, do take a look at our course: ‘How to Delegate without Stress’.

So, task 15: Hand out appropriate work to the right people.

What about Leadership Skills?

We have so much material on Leadership that this is, necessarily, a selective list:

• The Four Essentials of Project Team Leadership
• How to Get the Best from Your Project Team with Situational Leadership
• Project Team Leadership: 5 Tips for Leading Your Project Team | Video
• Top 7 Leadership Tools and Methods for Team and Project Leaders | Video
• How Coaching Skills will Make You a Better Project Leader
• Project Manager to Project Leader: How Big is the Step?
• Leading without Authority: How to Manage and Lead People | Video
• LEAD: Your Four Project Leadership Priorities

And, of course, there is my fantastic (if I do say so myself) course: Day-to-Day Leadership that Gets Results which will teach you how to select and apply the right leadership style for every situation.

Handling Challenges to Effective Teamwork

Here is a series of great resources that will help you tackle some of the challenges that can get in the way of effective teamwork:

Team Not at its Best

• How to Spot and Deal with Stress in Your Team
• Project Team Burnout: Do You Know How to Prevent Employee Burnout?
• Team Refresh: 10 Ways to Give New Life to a Tired Team | Video

Team Working Remotely

• Managing Remote Teams: How to Meet the Challenges
• Lessons I’ve Learned about Productive Web Calls: Zoom, Teams, Webex, Blue Jeans…
• Lessons I’ve Learned about Virtual Working | Video

Other Challenges

• The Essential Guide to Handling a Team Member Leaving Your Project
• Great Team Communication: The 10 Commandments

What is Your Experience of Effective Teamwork?

We’d love to hear about your own experiences, ideas, and questions. Please comment below, and we’ll respond to every contribution.

More on Teams and Teamwork…

I have to start by pointing you to my free course on Teams, on my Management Courses YouTube channel, and on the corresponding Management Courses website.

But, for Project Management-specific content, may I also recommend:

Essential Ideas

• What You Need to Know about Building a Great Project Team
• Build High-Performing Project Teams – Conversation with Charles Vivian
• The Single Best Team Effectiveness Tool | Video
• Ten Ways to Win Team Commitment on Your Project
• Real Project Team: What Will You Do to Create One? | Video

Valuable Models

• Get Better Results from your Team with Tuckman
• What is the Belbin Team Profile? | Video

Specific Team Skills

• How to Run a Great Project Team Meeting | Video
• 10 Ways to Say Thank You to Your Team | Video
• Boost Your Project Team Performance with these Hacks