08 Mar Tips To Form A Team of Opportunity Makers
“Let’s be greater together.” – Kare Anderson
Whether you are building a team for a project, to lead an event, or to achieve the highest sales, your team needs to be the best combination of people who together can achieve maximum results, create opportunities and be a top team.
Kare Anderson’s shares the philosophy of her professional and personal life in her TED Talk Be An Opportunity-Maker encouraging others to share this culture – “to use our best talents together more often for the greater good and accomplish things we couldn’t have done on our own.” That could be the definition for the most effective team achieving beyond its original potential!
Kare suggests three key attributes in an Opportunity-Maker:
- They keep developing their main strength, and seek others who complement this strength
- They are open to new people and cultures, building trust in new relationships, therefore, creating strongly defined links together
- They are strong communicators who seek to build communication and create new links to improve on their goals.
Being an Opportunity-Maker ensures your attitude and behaviour links to your team rather than simply your individual goals, to ensure that every team member and the whole team can be its most effective.
Be specific in the team’s goal
There needs to be a definitive purpose in creating a team – a project to be achieved, a sale to be secured, an event to be held. When you form your own goals, you write your personal affirmation. When the team goal is established, ideally a team affirmation should be created so that everyone is clear as to where they are heading.
Select the most effective team members for a task
Explain to your team why you have chosen each team member, and what their individual talent and experience brings to the task. Every colleague has their own particular skill and strengths. Individuality contributes to the team and goal as a whole.
“Bring out others’ better side and they’re more likely to see and support yours.” Kare Anderson
Emphasising each team member’s individual talent will encourage their positivity even when their part of the task may be difficult. Encouraging support and recognising each other’s strengths builds support and trust in the team.
Build new relationships within a team
Everyone has their comfort zone, and this includes within working relationships. Often we bounce ideas off one person because we have a shared experience, however, to improve team dynamics it is vital to take risks and bring in different people to share ideas, develop practical skills and stretch boundaries.
Creating the opportunity for different people to work together, encourages the culture of Opportunity-Makers who can discover each other’s talents, ideas and experience, therefore building trust in new working relationships.
Praise team members and build better communication
As a leader, take time with your team to collectively revise your original goal plan so that you can praise the achievements of the team and recognise individual contributions. Listen to individual ideas and encourage a culture of praise, endorsement and value between team members to empower the members to achieve. This will ensure the team as a whole achieves beyond its original potential.
Being an Opportunity-Maker, elicits the best in individuals to form the most effective team. As part of this culture, team members are empowered to share their talents and recognise talent in others to achieve. This in turn motivates colleagues to accomplish more successful together, which gives each individual and the team additional satisfaction and drive to achieve in the future.
For more information on Kare Anderson’s work check out her website and you can also read her regular articles in Forbes magazine or on the Huffington Post.