Before the World Cup began, the England football squad had been written off by many as a bunch of separate egos, not interested in playing as a team and with little hope of making it out of the qualifying stages.
The job of bringing this group of players together fell to the manager, Gareth Southgate. And, against all odds, he took the England football team to their first semi finals since 1990, uniting a team of players and a nation in the process.
Much can be learnt from Southgate’s vision of keeping a team motivated, happy and performing at full capacity and brought within the business world.
Chris Morgan, CEO of Staff Skills Training, a new online e-learning portal for businesses, has provided his own top tips for getting the most out of your staff and building a superstar business team.
• Happy, motivated staff = success! Motivating your staff is key to business success. A happy, motivated workforce not only increases productivity, but helps realise longterm achievements and goals. Motivation can take the form of showing trust in their abilities, incentivising with a prize, providing a purpose and clear career path within the company and being included in important company decisions.
• Encourage self-improvement through additional learning. It’s always a great idea to continue to add to your existing skillset by learning new skills or developing existing ones, helping to keep you ahead of the game and your business mind sharp. Thanks to technology, computer learning, or e-learning as it’s known, can be done anytime, anywhere, meaning you don’t have to sit in a classroom of other students and can learn in your own time and space.
• Keep regular performance appraisals. All staff like to know how they’re performing, and good managers should recognise and praise accomplishments, while identifying areas of development. Put together short term and long term plans, list objectives and goals and monitor and review an individual’s contribution to the organisation.
• Build a superstar team! Good employees come to work because they want to, not because have to. Their excitement and enthusiasm is infectious and will reverberate through a team. They’re at the company to learn from peers as well as helping to teach new staff procedure quickly and effectively. Let them grow by providing information and supporting their needs.
“Gareth Southgate won over the hearts of the nation, thanks to his leadership qualities,” says Morgan. “There are important lessons we can learn from him in business – and ultimately we should all aim to be a bit more ‘Gareth’!”
