How to Use Individual Performance To Advance Team Performance

Each organization wishes to have many top performers working for them. Having many of these individuals’ means the company makes more profit and experiences exponential growth. However, the process involved in turning individual performance into team performance is not easy.

To fully understand how to use individual performance, it is essential first to understand what individual performance is.

Individual performance is described as the performance attributed to a single person taking into account their responsibilities and functional area. It can be assessed in different ways, which include:

• The level of creativity that individuals demonstrate
• Through peer and client feedback
• The quality of work done
• Revenue generated from an individual’s effort
• Employee’s ability to own the tasks allocated to them

Individual performance, whether good or bad, has an impact on the team. Work productivity, quality, and the morale of the team are affected by an individual’s contribution.

When an individual’s capacity is impeccable, it makes sense to accelerate that so that the team has excellent output. But, how do you turn the individual performance into team performance? Here are tips on how you can go about it:

Provide Cutting-Edge Technology

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Sometimes an individual will excel because they have access to something that the rest of the team does not have. Often especially when you are working with remote teams, technology plays a critical role. As a leader, you need to ensure that all your employees have access to the same tech tools to produce the same outcome.

There are four tools that you could give your team to ensure work consistency.

• For instance, you could encourage the use of tools such as Google Docs, where team members can edit, create, and share documents concomitantly.

• At the same time, you could promote the use of zip files created using software, such as WinZip. This format is great when working with large files, and the documents can be easily extracted. This software facilitates the sharing of the same data across teams, thereby enhancing team performance.

• You could provide them with screen recording apps such as Loom so that the team can share real-time information on the challenges that they may be facing.

• Additionally, you can have them make use of video calling applications and task management applications such as Slack or Trello to help them keep tabs on their duties.

Enhanced Communication

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Teams who communicate effectively are bound to work efficiently and complete their projects in a timely fashion. You need to ensure that there are clear communication channels in the workplace so employees are clear about their roles and duties.

When people know what to and when to do it, their overall performance is enhanced significantly. Bad communication is what has other people excelling while some fail. Some of the tools to leverage to improve communication among your employees include:

• Encouraging reciprocal feedback among members
• Boosting employee morale
• Relaying information about duties and responsibilities in a clear and concise manner
• Conducting regular communications training in your organization
• Encouraging creativity and innovation among employees

Acknowledge Team Performance

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Recognizing individual performance is good. However, when you make it a culture to acknowledge teamwork, you are bound to enhance their performance.

Top individual performers always want to be associated with the winning team. While you appreciate and reward individuals, it would be productive if you did the same with teams. This tactic will foster expert individuals to work efficiently with their colleagues and be considered as a team.

While at it, you may also want to evaluate team performance holistically. By so doing, you will be able to identify their strengths and weaknesses then provide recommendations on how to improve. Evaluation can be through:

• Reviewing project/company goals
• Interviewing team members individually
• Paying attention to member’s needs
• Identification of problems and possible solutions
• Planning for the future
• Routine team evaluation will work to double the team’s productivity immensely.

Conclusion

When you have a few people excelling while the rest are not productive, you stand a chance of not achieving your company goals. Turning individual performance to team performance will get you the desired results, enhanced productivity, and improved bottom-line.

To succeed in making this transition, you need to understand the other employees’ needs to help them become top achievers in the workplace. Most importantly, you have to exercise patience while executing this plan because it will take time for your employees to adjust.

This article is written by Valerie who is an SEO specialist that helps professionals to improve their SEO game. In the meantime, she is focused on sharing her expertise in SEO, business development, and digital marketing with a wider audience through her writing. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com.