Maintaining the team

Sometimes a team has to be trained or at least some members have to
be trained. Then there are times when discipline of a team is necessary.
New projects may have to be implemented or a change in a procedure may
occur. There may be some problems that have to be solved. When this
occurs things need to be resolved in a productive way and as soon as
possible.

But what about the times that everything is running very
smoothly with a team that just gets things done and seems to need very
little attention. The tendency is to let the team simply function and
feel good about how they are doing. By all means feel good. When people
have aces on the team often more work is put on them and they are left
alone. This does not continue to work over time though. When people are
doing well they need to know that and to know that leadership is still
interested.

This is done by taking a few minutes each day asking
how the day is going, having a reporting system, and also noticing what
is going on, This is called maintenance of a team. The minute a team
feels that the interest and the attention has gone away for the most
part, the team performance will begin to slide ever so slightly. Showing
the pride a leader has in the team goes a very long way.

Teams
want to succeed yet also need to know that the leader notices the
accomplishments. Teams want to win and in a business environment the
cues from the leader is how this is evident. Once a team is at the top,
it is only through maintenance that this will be maintained.