As a leader you work hard to develop a good team. A team that works well together, is high performing and delivers quality output, understands and believes in your ideologies and is always supportive. A good team is bundles of support and a pleasure to work with. However, the mark of a great leader isn’t building a good team – it’s developing a great team.

Getting the job done from your team is simply the tip of the iceberg. To conquer many challenges and do great things, you’ll need a great team. Here are four important things you can do to facilitate a team’s transformation into a great team.

1. Team Dynamics

Most good teams will be well gelled, synced and synergized. There’ll be great chemistry and understanding between team members and you could even say they work harmoniously.

A great team will have the characteristics of a good team but there won’t be perfect harmony all the time. To spawn innovation you need a level of agitation in your team members. A certain level of healthy and respectful friction between team members that produces meaningful debates. To come up with new ideas and strategies a great team challenges each other and doesn’t necessarily agree on everything.

2. Initiative

A good team is aligned to a cause or an objective and they understand what’s expected of them and deliver on that. The functional leader ensures that department goals are met by making sure each team member’s personal goals are aligned to the overarching goal.

But once the message has been cascaded and the overall goals have been defined, a great team will see its members proactively pursuing the achievement of those goals. They not only understand what’s expected of them, but take the philosophy and ideologies to the next level by the initiatives they take. You could say great teams go beyond the “extra mile” to a point of “new frontiers”.

3. Diversity

Good teams comprise of talented and skilled individuals. For a leader it can be quite a challenge to assemble a team of highly skilled individuals and bring them together to work for a common goal.

To develop a high performing team avoid hiring like-minded and similarly skilled individuals. A team with diverse skillsets can weather all sorts of challenges. It allows a leader to have choices on who they select for particular projects. After all, you can’t have a stable of just stallions or all work horses. A blend of both increases your bench strength of having varied talents and skills at your disposal.

4. Trust

There’s no better feeling than to work with a team of well-connected individuals who respect one another, are all looking out for each other and work well as a team. Members of good teams truly enjoy working together.

What makes these teams great is the strong bond and deeper professional, and sometimes even personal, relationships they forge working together. And it’s not just being able to work well, they know how to have fun as well. And if there’s an atmosphere of comfort, trust and friendship in a team, I believe that the team can achieve wonders because the element of negative competition has been eliminated.

While being dynamic and diverse can sometimes be disruptive in teams, they can be a positive if team members trust and respect each other. A great team knows that in order to achieve greatness the team’s contribution has to be enormously larger than the sum of each member’s contributions. It has to be a multiplier effect. As a leader who strives to build a great team you must empower your team with knowledge and the ability to achieve greatness.

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