In this disruptive world of work, leaders are responsible for creating winning teams that contribute positively to the organization’s bottom line. While there is no secret sauce for building such a team, some proven principles can act like the Holy Grail that can aid this process.
One of the most important things when building winning teams is to accept that there is no perfect employee or perfect team. There are only great managers who know how to bring out the best in each of their team members. Winning teams are then an outcome of great management.
Leadership is no longer about glorious acts but more about keeping the teams motivated and engaged. Instead of focusing on individual greatness, it is about lifting the people around you.
With this in mind, the four must-have KPIs for leaders looking to build winning teams must be as follows:
Keep People Imaginative!!
Leaders have to now look at ways to build imagination and creativity within their teams. Identifying pathways to build the intellectual foundation of the organization is KPI-worthy as this has a direct impact on innovation.
One of the most important things to keep people imaginative is to remove judgment and build understanding. Leaders who create an environment where new ideas are welcome, and no idea is shunned can build teams that go all out. These leaders believe and know that all good ideas start as bad ideas and the best way to a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.
Putting the right processes in place and building a culture where creative ideas are realized as actual innovations are essential leadership tasks. Leaders must simultaneously also identify the individual barriers to these qualities, employ data-backed methodologies to identify these barriers, and coach their team members to navigate the chasm.
Coaching leaders play a crucial role in keeping teams imaginative and engaged. This is because they help people push their intellectual capacities, engage without judgment, and enable their teams to bring their ideas to fruition. High performance in teams then becomes a willing effort.
Keep People Inclusive!!
Winning teams are inclusive. As such, a laser focus on inclusivity becomes a critical leadership KPI. The business case for diversity and inclusiveness has already been established.
Read: Diversity and Inclusion – A Necessity for Creativity, High-Performance, and Innovation
Reports prove that inclusivity is critical for business recovery and building organizational resilience as we emerge from the crisis.
Leaders must become hyper-aware of driving inclusivity in remote and hybrid working conditions as these may erode inclusion by reinforcing existing exclusive behavior and biases and undermining inclusive workplace cultures.
Keeping people inclusive establishes psychological safety, builds trust bridges, and allows organizations to access a broad range of different ideas and perspectives.
A report from Gartner highlights that “Through 2022, 75% of organizations with frontline decision-making teams reflecting a diverse and inclusive culture will exceed their financial targets. And gender-diverse and inclusive teams outperformed gender-homogeneous, less inclusive teams by 50%, on average.”
Inclusivity drives inspiring and meaningful purpose and helps build a sense of shared investment. Leaders must focus on building inclusivity by promoting it. They should identify their own and their team members’ unconscious biases that impede this effort.
Keep People Impactful!!
Keeping people impactful in the new world of work must become another important leadership KPI. For this, leaders must learn how to build their influence and guide their teams to action without coercion.
Building influence is all about building trust. Influence expands in proportion to the amount of trust in any relationship. As such, leaders today must establish their credibility as authentic and trustworthy resources who are invested in augmenting their team’s career paths.
Additionally, leaders have to focus on driving a growth mindset across their teams. High-performing and winning teams are those who view all hurdles and roadblocks as opportunities for improvement.
A growth mindset asserts forward motion and encourages people to become solution-driven. Helping teams identify their strengths as well as their areas of improvement and then coaching them to success emerges as an essential KPI for the leader who wants to build a winning team.
Keep People Inspiring!!
Leadership is not a solo act. It is about inspiring others, driving engagement, and building connections such that productivity and high performance become organic outcomes of everyday efforts.
In the new world of work characterized by hybrid and disparate teams, effective leaders must move team members into action by eliciting their desire and conviction in the organizational vision and goals.
Coaching leaders to build positive influence helps them develop the right strategies to ensure that individual actions align with group efforts.
Not only must leaders be coached to develop the right skills to build influence, but they also must learn to become coaching managers themselves to keep teams inspired and engaged. Coaching leaders foster an environment of growth and learning that is free from any bias. They can drive impactful career pathing initiatives which contribute tremendously towards employee engagement.
These leaders help their teams grow and navigate their learning and developmental gaps holistically and create teams that are highly invested and accountable.
As the world of work changes and moves into a hybrid avatar, leaders realize that the rules of engagement have changed. As such, the strategy to build winning teams must evolve as well. Leaders have to now assume the role of a coach and become the enablers of team success. They must remember that “True leaders don’t create more followers. They create more leaders”.
These four KPIs allow leaders to build influence and inspire their teams to push personal boundaries, barriers, and belief systems to create an equitable environment that is conducive to growth. When done right, these KPIs can be solid pillars of employee engagement. High performance in teams then becomes a habit and a part of the organizational DNA.
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