Building Leadership and Organizational Health

Building a strong workforce, with solid organizational health, is a requirement for any company seeking to achieve its goals. Progressive organizations understand that the key to an effective team is dependent on the quality of leadership.

Leaders typically find themselves managing teams with multiple layers of behavioral dynamics. This means it is paramount for leaders to effectively engage in activities in which they may have only received informal training. For example, the psychology of group dynamics and behavioral assessment.

Both of these leadership skills are necessary for effectively managing the organization and experiencing a reasonable level of success.

Collective Success

There are many foundational steps involved in encouraging employees to move forward and achieve their part of the organization’s goals. To remain competitive, companies must focus on a combination of leadership skills and training to ensure employees have the capability to work within their teams and deliver the best results.

High-performing teams are comprised of a number of different behavior types, all with the same goal in mind – company performance.  This dynamic is necessary for the collective success of the organization and is demonstrated by the ability to contribute to each functional responsibility of the team at large.

In my tenure as a corporate training manager, I have experienced a variety of team dynamics and observed countless employee interactions.

Many organizational behaviors observed are common in successful organizations, including the ability for leaders to engage in introspective assessment of performance and work through organizational challenges.

What follows is a recommendation, as seen through the lens of my experience, to get the most out of building team dynamics within borderline-performance organizations.

Building Team Dynamics

1. The first step to consider is an awareness of and how the organization behaves today compared to the desired team performance goal. Because leaders will most often experience internal conflict within the organization, it is imperative to have an assessment of the current state versus the desired state.
2. Leaders must identify the cause of conflict and what actions should be taken to improve overall team dynamics. This can be accomplished by an introspective analysis of your leadership skills and leadership qualities. An introspective look at your contribution to the current team situation (successes and opportunities) is necessary for change.
3. Growth in any organization is dependent on the ability of leaders to undergo change and enable followers to demonstrate their maximum performance. Upon identification of this step, leaders should focus on how to motivate and inspire organizational change.
4. To better understand the organizational climate, leaders should conduct individual and group meetings. The one-on-one meetings will provide valuable insight on how the individual employee views the organization, their level of flexibility to change, and what they feel is needed to move forward.  This is how the leader will uncover possible reasons for employee dissatisfaction, so leaders should avoid the desire to focus on employee performance.
5. The purpose of this conversation is to learn about how the employee perceives the organization.  For employees that may have issues not related to work that has been brought into the work environment, the individual session will provide the employee a safe environment to share anything personal that may influence team dynamics within the environment.
6. Once individual meetings are completed, leaders should work on bringing the team together and discuss items needed to move beyond where the team is today.  Since the initial groundwork will be addressed during individual meetings, leaders will be better positioned to introduce new processes to the group.
7. The team meeting agenda items may include best practices, brainstorming for organizational goals, and setting expectations for forward movement. Team meetings are constructive when the leader includes a set of guidelines for input so they don’t turn into finger-pointing sessions. Since building trust and respect is the focus, it is important to have an open dialogue with team members.
8. Leaders should concentrate on creating an environment of openly addressed topics that will contribute to improved team performance. Avoidance of hot topics seldom works. It is also important for the group to establish the team’s vision, mission, and operating principles. Each should have a clear linkage to the overarching organizational goals and include all team member’s ideas.
9. The meeting should include information on the frequency of future meetings, expectations, and roles and include team builder activities.  Employees must feel engaged and contribute to the team through ideas that improve organizational health.
10. Following the initial team meeting, the leader will need to engage the team in a series of team-building activities and recognition rewards in order to reestablish trust and improve the group dynamic. A recognition and reward system is critical and will assist employees with overcoming barriers to success.
11. From individual employee meetings, leaders will have a better idea of how employees like to be recognized or rewarded. Leaders may showcase individual and team success via newsletters, meetings, or email and focus on the competency achieved.

Influencing Team Behavior

Recommendations provided in this review have allowed me the opportunity to experience the best from team members within many organizations.  Focus on introspection, the individual, and the team yields a renewed focus on improving team dynamics.

For increased organizational success, leaders must explore the real issues that serve as barriers to team success. Your ability to lead influences team behaviors will have a direct link to the effectiveness of company performance.

For increased organizational success, leaders must explore the real issues that serve as barriers to team success. Your ability to lead influences team behaviors and will have a direct link to the effectiveness of company performance.

Building a Strong Workforce

Employees must understand company goals and take accountability for behaviors that contribute to or detract from target performance.

After all, attitude toward work and team members is a significant indicator of how the organization will perform.

The key to building a strong workforce is ongoing support provided by the senior leadership team.

Leaders that manage personal performance and team dynamics will have a lasting impact on building organizational health.

Related Articles

• 5 Ways to Improve Team Dynamics
• 4 Ways to Build a Health and Safety Culture
• Leadership Dynamics: What Is Really Going On Here?
• Managing Your Team’s Mental Health
• Leaders that Improve Interpersonal Dynamics Have More Fun

What Are Your Ideas About Building Organizational Health?

What are your ideas about building organizational health and leadership skills? Thanks for your comments!

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Florida Starks

Dr. Florida E. Starks is an Area Training Manager at Verizon. With more than 22 years in corporate higher education, her primary objective is managing new hire training, continuing education initiatives, employee on boarding, and enterprise change strategy.