If you’re like most companies, up to 80 percent of your employees’ work time is spent collaborating as part of a team. Teams can provide benefits well beyond an individual employee’s work, blending diversity and experience to create faster, more innovative problem-solving. When the team is built on a strong foundation, team members will trust and respect one another, freely express feelings and ideas, and constructively manage disagreement. But when the team is built on a shaky foundation, team members can cause tension and dissension. Are your company’s teams dynamic or dysfunctional?

To build high performance project teams, try out these five team-building strategies:

1. Determine the team’s purpose. What are you doing and why are you doing it? How is your mission influencing the company’s goals? It may seem simple, but declaring a purpose can keep your team focused on the end game. Define how your purpose should impact your daily work effort, and use it as a guideline to gauge the team’s motivation and performance.
2. Get to know your team members. This one applies doubly for the project leader, but it’s also great in a group setting for members to learn about each other. Take some time—maybe ten minutes—for each team member to share their background, perceived strengths and weaknesses, and the tasks they most enjoy and least enjoy doing. This not only helps build camaraderie, but it can help build a strong and happy team during the delegation phase.
3. Prepare a feedback schedule from the beginning. Don’t wait until something goes wrong to have feedback meetings! Determine from the get-go how often you will meet to share progress and feedback. This can be a flexible schedule as the project needs change; you can meet more or less often, or break off to meet in smaller groups.
4. Set realistic project goals. You are setting goals and a timeline to meet them, right? That’s how your project stays on track, and how everyone can see what their job is and when it needs to be completed. And these goals should be realistic, because few things discourage a team more than a missed or overly lofty deadline. On the flip side, seeing progress in the completion of regular, small goals will keep the team ready to push forward!
5. Recognize even the small milestones. Recognition is the most powerful motivator for most employees, so heap it on! Give thank-you cards, go out to lunch, or have a mini celebration for every milestone you hit, big or small. Every step brings you closer to finishing strong.

Building a high performance project team gives everyone a chance to shine, working together to create a stellar finished product!