Teamwork is important in all organizations. In many workplaces, working groups are formed across departmental boundaries and within departments. As today's organizations become increasingly flat in their structure, individuals need to take greater responsibility when it comes to leadership and implementation.

Many common soft skills make individuals great team players. While soft skills are not as quickly learned as technical skills, they can be developed with time and practice.

8 qualities that make a great team player

1, You are aligned with the Teams agenda
There Is no I in Team. Align your goals and purpose to the team's agenda. It will help the whole team to work toward the same goals. This will help both you and your team reach your goals and therefore

2, Lending a hand when needed in the team
This will help the team build trust and psychological safety. By helping others, they will help you, stand by you when you may need it. Because all of us need help or support sometimes.

3, Respectful of others
Being respectful to others is key to building psychological safety within the team. Respecting both time and opinions are fundamentals to a good relationship so make sure you are aware of your attitude in the team.

4, You understand your role in the team and organization
You understand your role within the team and work to achieve your duties to the best of your ability. Though you may offer help or solutions to other team members, you also should respect the boundaries of your position.

5, Collaboration is key to your success
When working in a team your biggest assets are your team members, and even if you are aligned on your goals and purpose that doesn´t mean you have the same opinions on how you will get there. So be open-minded to other opinions before you push yours.

6, Hold yourself accountable.
Understand how your actions impact the whole group. By doing so, you will learn from your mistakes and earn more respect from your team. So it's key for you to own up to your mistakes take responsibility.

7, Being flexible
Start thinking about how you can help the team and challenge your comfort zone at the same time. And when new problems that require special skills emerge think about how you can learn from it.

8. Happy Be Happy - Use a positive attitude
Research says that a positive attitude is contagious, so remember even when you are stressed and you are meeting difficult times, try to keep up your optimistic side.

Once you really understand why teamwork is important and the value of being a team player, you'll want to ensure you're doing everything you can to support your team members. Need more help to get you through all the uncertainty? Maybe you should try our Team training program.

Yeah, and don´t forget to smile, it looks good on you!
/ Joacim Alm
Founder of WilburFlow

Good collaborations are important in all organizations. When people work together, synergies emerge. The results we create when we work well together are significantly greater than the sum of our achievements.

By building on the thoughts of others and taking advantage of the group's different perspectives, experiences, and knowledge, the group can solve the most complex challenges.

Close collaboration in groups motivates employees while enabling them to work more efficiently, support each other, learn and develop together.

These effective collaborations are what we call teamwork and are very central to an organization in change. 

" Unity is a strength… when there is teamwork and cooperation, wonderful things can be achieved ”

- Mattie Stepanek

But first of all, what is a Team?

A team is a group of people put together to take on common challenges and strive for one or more common goals as smoothly and effectively as possible. A team can be created for a shorter project or individual tasks but with the same purpose of striving to solve the common challenges.

Characteristics of a team: 

• A group of people with at least three members and a maximum of one hundred.
• The members have skills that complement each other.
• They are dedicated to the same purpose and goal.

There are different kinds of groups, right?

The most common ways to organize people into different types of groups are:

Temporary working groups

Employees can be organized into temporary workgroups for various reasons, e.g. to fix a specific problem or deal with an emergency. The most

common temporary working group is the project group. These are working groups created to carry out a specific project until it is ready. Normally, members come from different parts of the company and also perform other tasks related to their home department. When it comes to the project, they respond to the project manager.

Functional teams

In these teams, all members belong to the same functional area and a single manager is responsible for the management of the entire group. The manager also usually handles the contact with the rest of the organization. In companies with a strictly formal hierarchy, it is very common to organize employees into functional teams such as personnel, finance departments, or similar specialized groupings.

Cross-Functional teams

In this case, the working group consists of members from different areas of

activity and its members usually have the same hierarchical level. This type of working group is usually formed to work towards a common goal, where the group members complement each other's knowledge, which often gives better and more creative results.

Self-governing teams

This grouping consists of employees who work in an extremely integrated

way with close cooperation because they do not have a formal leader. The members together define the division of work, the areas of responsibility, and the distribution of tasks, and make their own decisions in order to reach the set goal.

The high-performing team

There are many definitions of a high-performing team, but WilburFlow defines a high-performing team as a group of individuals who, with close collaboration and communication, put people at the center, complement each other's skills and with a common mindset drive innovation and achieve their high common goals.

We see high-performing teams as close-knit teams that work on the basis of processes that give all members the opportunity to meet all the challenges they face to achieve the team's goals in a team climate characterized by trust and mutual respect where people are comfortable being themselves.

High-performing teams create results by sharing the same values, mindset, tools, purpose, and goals. They are aligned and create cross-border collaboration through a shared set of understanding of actively seeking feedback and learning and growing together and as individuals.

The benefits of high-performing teams

Studies clearly show that when organizations invest in training their leaders and employees by developing high-performing teams, it provides significant gains and returns on investment.

These benefits apply not only to those for the individual working groups but also to the organization as a whole.

Performance is contagious and the outcome is simply committed and happy employees who learn more, communicate more effectively with other parts of the organization, and produce more. This can be seen in a study from Gallup that shows in comparison with non-high-performing teams what advantages high-performing or committed teams have.

Conclusion

The benefits of having a high-performing team are numerous. Not only does it make sure that the projects that you work on are successful but it also ensures that your employees are happy and engaged in their work. When everyone is working toward the same goal, each satisfied with the work he or she is doing, there is nothing to complain about. You can´t ask for anything more than that.

Are you starting up a new team, getting more teams to join your unit, or just wanting to understand more about building high-performing teams we recommend you to subscribe to our monthly newsletter, it will be filled with DI Y tips and tricks for building high performing teams.

Yeah, and don´t forget to smile, it looks good on you!
/ Joacim Alm
Founder of WilburFlow

Building great products that customers want to use starts with building the right teams. 

Without a strong, engaged and happy team, you will probably not be as successful as you want to be. You can manipulate all your set goals and objectives but your efforts will still be unsuccessful in the eyes of the customer. And it all comes down to building an innovation team accountable to the users. 

First of all -What makes a great product? 

Great products don't suddenly appear out of nowhere. They are built by people, people who can understand the needs of the user and customers. They are in fact grown with passion, perseverance, and focus. 

To help build these products we use processes, co-creation, and insights to guide us in our decision making. With the goal of providing a useful, usable, compelling, and awesome experience for the users. 

They are delightful experiences, easy to use, and beautiful to look at, providing outstanding value to their users.

What makes a bad product? 

There are several reasons which can be attributed to the failure of a Product. One that seems to be one of the biggest moments of truth for customers is poor User Experience. Customers' awareness of great user experience has shifted to fundamental need in the last 10 years or so and if the products don’t measure up, the products are a failure. 

So how do you build great customer experiences? 

In short, a good customer experience can be achieved if you: Make listening to customers a top priority across the business. Use customer feedback to develop an in-depth understanding of your customers. Implement a system to help you collect feedback, analyze it, and act on it regularly.

Are we starting to see a pattern here? Experience seems to be the secret sauce of a great product experience.

So let’s talk about the people that work with building and growing that great product experience needs to have in place! 

The High Performing Innovative Product team

High Performing Product teams are small, collaborative, cross-functional teams that work to achieve the common outcome of creating an exceptional digital product. They are customer-obsessed. They interact with their customers directly to get first-hand feedback. They bring the voice of the user right into the heart of decision-making at every stage of the process. They share their insight and knowledge about the product with others outside the team. 

So what can you do to build your dream high-performing team? 

Stop focusing on the simple solutions in the transformation on investing in tech, invest in the people and the tech will adapt to it. Start now by onboarding your team into a creative culture that high performers strive in. Below are some examples of where to start. 

The right conditions for an innovative team.

• Creating a safe environment
• Encouraging people's passions in context to the team's mission
• Aligning the team's agenda to individual goals.
• Explore different mindsets that will help your team understand customers, your team, etc. 
• Using the same collaboration tools will help you skip the busy work and jump right into problem-solving and meeting your customer's needs. 

Innovation is like dieting, you just need to fucking start! Do you want to support your team training journey, drop your contact to the team and we will get back to you? =) 

Have a good one! 

Yeah, and don´t forget to smile, it looks good on you!
/ Joacim Alm
Founder of WilburFlow

Wilbur comes from Wilbur Wright. 

Wilbur Wright is best known for developing the first successful airplane with his brother, Orville. Before they succeed in flying 620feet with their Airplane they created hundreds of smaller experiments based on sup problems at a time leading to finally conquering the air. 

Flow comes from the state of flow.

In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.

When you combine the Both 

Wilbur and Flow you get WilburFlow, what lies in the foundation of our beliefs. Hundreds of small experiments lead up to creating a flow for people.