Anyone that is an entrepreneur either admittedly or unknowingly wants to be a better boss. Many times, we find ourselves in a situation where our employee, (or at least some of our employees), are making us wonder if it is time to clean house and start again. As the boss you have to remember that you can't pay people enough to love you and every decision that you make. But there is another way to build a great team. Fortunately, one of the qualities that make successful entrepreneurs good at what they do is the ability to communicate and turn a negatively-minded employee into one of your dream team. Many employees need a little coaching when they haven't learned effective team building attitudes. Some maybe haven't even ever worked with a team for that matter.
Outside hiring of the wrong people is the most common error an employer makes and it is the employer's job to fix this error. However, sometimes, getting rid of this employee is not the answer. This "wrong" employee may just need an "attitude adjustment." One of the best ways that you can turn the attitude of the employees around is to plan skill building events as a part of the work day. Try not to categorize this plan as an, "outside of the general work day," circumstances. This variance in the regular way of your work day can become a common operation. If you want to host an event, then get one of your team members to post the event on social media, complete with the plan and the highlights. But, making a team player is part of a more relaxed, run of the mill meet up and may not need to take up more than 20-30 minutes a day or several times a week to have a great effect on your team. Make sure that it does not have the enthusiasm level of "The Dundees" on "The Office."
One way you can help all your employees is to concentrate on changing the cultural mindsets in the office, starting with you at the top. If you, yourself, bring positivity and fun into the workplace in the form of team building exercises, and provide worthwhile incentives, you can bring a lasting positive vibe to your working team. Having consistent bright optimism will bring a commonality and cohesive feel within the reach of the obvious company goals. Team building opportunities tap into a wealth of knowledge because they cater to the specific set of skills each individual has and helps the team to find common ground with each other where they can continue to build a solid working relationship. A more solid, steady, and close team relationships has been shown to up productivity on a team.
The team can learn how to make a connection between their daily work lives and the team building activities that you provide. Each activity or coaching helps facilitate a new healthy, happy, mentality. It goes without saying that each team building activities can be enjoyable and fun, but they don't necessarily have to be "enjoyable," per se, as long as the people involved can understand the take away application to their jobs and to each other. These team building experiences can afford the employees a look at and a reminder about the general work atmosphere and moral attitude of what you expect in your company culture.
Team-building activities don't have to always be right at the office. Changing it up a bit by moving the place from the workplace to another venue can sometimes accomplish more of what you are trying to get your employees to grasp. Just by moving away from the regular office status, condition, and locale can be enough to turn around a rough or downtrodden team. These activities don't have to be expensive to be effective, but they do have to be planned.
The obvious way to your employees' heart is to make sure they feel valued, both by you and by the rest of the team. Your team will be more likely to jell if they know and care about each other. Brainstorm with your team about how to show value for each other and what you do, or can do, that will tell each one of them that you are happy with them as an employee. Commit and stick to a specific timeframe for the sake of your teams sanity. Nothing is worse than attending a half hour meeting only to find yourself sitting there two hours later, away from your desk load of work that's due today. However, a small amount of time spent to up your teams cohesiveness and team playing abilities will pay off in the productivity of your whole team.