Team Building for Small Business

March 9, 2008 By Mary White

As soon as you add the first employee to your small business, you need to start focusing on cultivating a culture of teamwork within your organization. It’s much easier to maintain a true team environment when you start out on the right foot. It’s much harder to transform a group of people who have been pulling the rope in different directions into a cohesive team than it is to train your employees to function as a team from the very beginning.

In order to cultivate a culture of teamwork in your organization, it’s important to understand what it is that makes a group of people come together and function as a true team. Many business owners make the mistake of thinking that as long as their employees manage to work together without arguing and fighting that they are functioning as a team. However, it’s a fact that working together is certainly not the same thing as teamwork.

What Makes a Team?
The fact that people work for the same company, even in the same department, is not sufficient to make them a team. A team is defined as a group of people (two or more) who are engaged in working cooperatively toward a common goal.

As a small business owner, it’s important for you to understand what makes a team. Work teams are characterized by cooperation and collaboration. If you want your employees to function as a team, you have to set an example for them to follow. Many managers and business owners make the mistake of thinking they can tell their employees how to behave, and then expect them to act accordingly.

Small business owners are well served to remember that actions speak much louder than words (Just like how creditors like you a lot more when you pay your loans then when you say you’ll pay your loans). The behaviors you model for your employees, whatever you tell them to do, will be the behaviors that they perceive as being desirable traits within the organization. If you want your employees to work collaboratively in an environment of open communication, it’s up to you to create a work environment that demonstrates, welcomes, and rewards these behaviors.

Team Building For Your Small Business
No matter how small or large a company is, cultivating a culture of teamwork must start at the top of the organization. Don’t make the mistake of telling your employees they have to go to a seminar to learn how to function as a team. As the manager, you may need formal training in teambuilding. After all, you’re the one who has to set the stage for teamwork. Your employees may benefit from teambuilding seminars later on, but first you have to learn how to establish a team environment from your seat at the table. 

Small business owners must accept the fact that their actions set the tone for what is and is not acceptable behavior within their own organizations. No matter how busy you are trying to build and operate your business, engaging in ongoing teambuilding efforts is a must. Otherwise, you may end up with a group of people doing work, but you’ll never truly have an organization that benefits from the efficiency and synergy of true team work.

Posted in Human Resources, Management