Currently, I am part of a credit consultant team. We are a team of 11 members at our credit union. Usually, our roles revolve around reducing delinquency levels and protecting the credit union’s assets. This involves safeguarding the investments, valuable possessions, and other financial resources owned by the credit union. We take measures to ensure responsible financial management, mitigate risks, and prevent fraud. Delinquency is a significant challenge for many credit organizations; however, our team has been effective in ensuring that payments are made on time, thus reducing the percentage or number of accounts that are in default or overdue. Strategies that we have applied to lower delinquency include financial counselling, enforcement actions when necessary, proactive customer communication, restructuring of loans, and financial counselling.
Good teamwork is a significant part of leadership. Leaders can use teamwork to pull together the skills and strengths of individuals, enabling the team towards shared goals in a unified direction. To encourage teamwork, a leader must establish clear goals and objectives, encourage open communication, and promote trust and collaboration; these are the cornerstone for fostering teamwork in a workplace.
Establishing clear goals and objectives
To establish a solid foundation for a company, leaders must set clear goals and objectives that align with the company’s vision. They help break down the mission or vision into concrete, time-bound, and achievable actions that can be measured to track the progress. Clear goals and objectives are critical to the improvement efforts process (Chhotray et al., 2018). I believe clear goals and objectives can help our team protect the credit union’s assets and further reduce delinquency levels. For instance, we can have a meeting to discuss and collaboratively come up with SMART goals. We can review the progress regularly to ensure motivation and alignment.
Encouraging Open Communication
Open communication entails the ability to express one’s thoughts freely when interacting with other people. An organization that encourages open communication demonstrates that they are willing to listen to employee’s feedback and concerns (Lacerenza et al., 2018). We can apply this to our team by fostering transparent communication channels among team members to encourage problem-solving and collaboration. Furthermore, in our regular team meetings, we can encourage all members to share suggestions, updates, and challenges. I believe using tools like anonymous suggestion boxes can ensure confidential feedback.
Promoting Trust and collaboration
The best way to build trust and communication in a team is through communicating clearly and frequently. This entails sharing feedback, expectations, recognition, and goals with your team members. Trust is important for establishing a culture of open communication; this fosters collaboration in the workplace. Teams cannot be effective without open communication. In high-performing and fully collaborative teams, individuals need to understand that they can be vulnerable with their team members (Klaic et al., 2020). To apply this tool in our team, I would encourage an atmosphere of cooperation and trust to enhance creativity and productivity in problem-solving. We can achieve this by organizing workshops and team-building activities to strengthen bonds among team members. Moreover, it encourages recognition of individual contributions and mutual support to promote shared purpose and a sense of belonging. This can encourage members to perform at their very best, which in turn increases productivity.
Conclusion
To sum up, it is important to note that psychological safety in teams results in creativity, innovation, and more engagement. Team members can learn from each other since individuals have different sets of skills and strengths, and when they work as a unit, everyone has an opportunity to learn from their colleagues. Moreover, collaborative problem-solving results in better outcomes. Individuals are open to taking calculated risks for better outcomes if they have support from their team. To encourage teamwork, leaders must promote trust and collaboration, encourage open communication, and establish clear goals and objectives.
References
Chhotray, S., Sivertsson, O., & Tell, J. (2018). The Roles of Leadership, Vision, and Empowerment in Born Global Companies. Journal of International Entrepreneurship, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10843-017-0201-8
Klaic, A., Burtscher, M. J., & Jonas, K. (2020). Fostering team innovation and learning by means of team‐centric transformational leadership: The role of teamwork quality. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 93(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12316
Lacerenza, C. N., Marlow, S. L., Tannenbaum, S. I., & Salas, E. (2018). Team development interventions: Evidence-based approaches for improving teamwork. American Psychologist, 73(4), 517–531. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000295
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