How to lead a winning team - Business Works
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How to lead a winning team

Jason Manning, Managing Director, Superdream Your business is only as good as the team within in it. The right colleagues will help your company run like a well-oiled machine. The wrong ones can ultimately have disastrous consequences for your business’s productivity.

If a great team equates to a great business, how can you hire and lead a winning team? One that gives your clients a great service and keeps them coming back for more?

To do this, you need to hire the right candidates - candidates that share the same passions and goals as you and your existing team. Here are six steps to help you lead a winning team:

  1. Share your vision
  2. For your team to grow and thrive, they need to share your vision for success.

    Sit down with your employees and share your goals, aims and hopes for the future. Encourage them to offer up their opinions and excite them with what these goals mean for them. This should include everything from new challenges right through to bonuses, pay rises, and promotions.

    This helps your employees feel involved with the running of the business. The more involved they are, the more they’ll care. The more they care the harder they’ll work; and all this adds up to a winning team.

  3. Allocate responsibilities
  4. Once everyone knows the vision, they need to know where they fit into it. What role does their department – and more importantly them personally – play in implementing these goals?

    Give people responsibilities and ownership of certain challenges. The ‘right’ employee will rise to the challenge and really thrive. Everyone likes to feel valued in their workplace, and this is the best way to go about creating that atmosphere.

  5. Office culture
  6. Right from the off, you need to make sure your employees feel comfortable at work. You need to work together to create a great corporate atmosphere – you need to create a culture that people want to work in.

    If people enjoy coming to work, they will work harder. Obviously, the key part of your office culture is the team already in place. If everyone gels and works together well, this will happen naturally. Trying to force an atmosphere will just back fire.

    As well as creating a warm and exciting hub, you should also work to motivate your team. Offer additional training, recruitment and career progression to all add to the culture of your business.

  7. Compensate
  8. In order to make your employees want to work hard for you, you need to compensate them where possible.

    This means rewarding them when they go above and beyond their normal duties and all adding to the culture. Why not implement a bonus scheme, to encourage your employees to hit – and exceed – their targets?

    You can pay this in cash, or offer days off in lieu, whatever works best for your company and your colleagues. Compensating people for their hard work, is a simple, but highly effective way to lead a winning team.

  9. Review
  10. Holding weekly, monthly, or quarterly reviews as a team is a great way to keep your team on track. Not only can you keep colleagues updated on your common goals, but you can also encourage them how much extra is needed before you hit your bonuses.

    You should also be sure to hold regular appraisals with individual members of staff. This is a great way to make sure they’re happy at work and working as hard as they could. It also helps you catch problems early and iron them out.

    If you want to build a winning team, you need to start the ground work early and help keep staff on track.

  11. Extras
  12. The final tip for leading a winning team is to give something back.

    You can’t expect your team to go the extra mile for you, if you’re not willing to go the extra mile for them. This all adds up to creating a great office culture and atmosphere, where people are excited to work hard and over achieve. Some great touches you could implement to show you’re serious about creating a winning team include:

    • Employee-of-the-Month accolades to reward exceptional work;
    • Additional days holiday to deal with childcare concerns or on their birthday;
    • Staff nights out to build on your office moral.

Leading a winning team starts at the top and follows through to your employees. By following this six step plan, you will be able to create a team to be proud of.



Jason Manning is Managing Director of Superdream, a leading advertising agency in the Midlands. For more information, please visit: www.superdream.co.uk



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