How would you characterise a winning team? Is it one that allows people to do their own thing or is it one that is bound together by shared goals and a commitment to each other? For the majority of businesses, it is the latter.

In today’s competitive market, it is important you are able to motivate your staff to come together in order to produce tangible results that lead to long-term success.

Clear rules and expectations

First and foremost, your employees won’t be able to succeed if they do not know what is expected from them and what success looks like. Thus, in order to build a successful culture, you must clearly outline what your companies rules, requirements and expectations are for your staff.

There are two ways this should be done. Firstly, in one-on-one meetings, where you are able to outline the personal details or requirements of an individual, for example, inductions, outlining future KPI’s or performance reviews. Secondly, in a group setting, either company-wide or individual departments, where each department is made aware of what their role is in creating a successful company.

Regardless of the method, you chose to employ, we highly recommend making these discussions a regular practice within your company, to ensure everyone is on the same page.  

Prioritise team first

Every business or team is made up of a collection of individuals. And, with that comes everyone’s own goals, expectations, viewpoints and work styles. However, the key to successful teams is being able to create an environment where company success comes before personal success.

For some employees, this may be hard. But, we need to reinforce the fact that personal success means very little if the project or company fails. Instead, it is important to remind your team that with team success comes personal accolades.

Accountability is key

Successful and productive teams are built on accountability. As the leader of your business or department, you are responsible for creating an environment where everyone you are responsible for is accountable for their output.

In our experience, this is something that we strongly recommend you establish very early on and believe there are three key aspects to fostering accountability within your remote team: clearly defined roles, understand expectations and the freedom to work.

If you are able to install these three elements into your remote operations, you will see substantial results, a lot sooner than you expected.

Embrace failure

No one likes failure, and as leaders, we can not stand for failure to become a regular part of our businesses. However, if there is a moment when things go wrong or the results are less than desirable, we must embrace it.

Instead of dwelling on failure or trying to pass the blame, successful teams accept it, learn from it and grow. Failures teach us how to become better, and that is how we become better as leaders, employees and as a business.

If a failure does arise, gather your team and review the project and its results, then put the processes and structures in place to ensure that in the future the risk of that failure never occurs again.

Learn to trust one another

You can not build a successful team if you do not trust every member of that team to do their job. In an environment where we are moving away from sole work and moving towards collaboration, without trust you can not produce quality results.

Trust is a critical part of operating a remote team. The reason being, trust is built up by communicating regularly with someone, seeing them work and the results they produce. While these are all viable with a remote team, the fact is, you can not simply pop over to someone’s desk and have a quick stand up progress meeting.

However, being able to trust your remote team, begins before you even meet your employees. It starts with choosing an outsourcing provider you can trust. One that understands your business’ vision, strategic goals and requirements for your remote team. Without that, you risk running into trouble in the long run.

However, by outsourcing with Deployed, you can rest assured that we will take the time to gain a holistic understanding of your business before we start recruiting. This ensures we find the right candidates for your business. This combined with our ongoing commitment to continually seeking to improve your team and helping you reach your goals, guarantees you can not only trust us but also your remote team.

Building a winning team is never easy, if it was, everyone would be succeeding. However, it is important you are actively trying to create a working environment that encourages your staff to strive for success and putting their best foot forward for the company.

At Deployed, we specialise in helping Australian and New Zealand businesses create remote teams that are capable of creating a positive impact on the business’ long-term success. If you would like to discover more about the roles we can fill or how we could help your business, do not hesitate to contact us today.