It has been uncommon, in the annuls of workplace management and leadership, for the words productivity and harmony to be considered in conjunction. They have been treated and addressed as different and separate parts of the whole. As club managers, when you’re working with job specifications, KPIs and performance plans, you’re thinking about productivity. Areas such as team building, and an individual’s motivations, are rarely included in these ‘exercises’.
However, we know they are far from being mutually exclusive. Rather they are inextricably linked.
It is the role of emotional intelligence in your club, and how you cultivate it that links them and makes your team highly productive and harmonious.
To build an emotionally intelligent team, in your club, you must first create the three conditions necessary for team members to strengthen their emotional intelligence:
Trust among members
A sense of group identity
A sense of group worth
Here are the six things you can do to nurture these conditions and improve emotional intelligence within your team:
1. Strengths and Weaknesses
Your team members have a wide range of skills, talents, and knowledge that can help you and your club achieve its overall objectives. Start by getting to know each team member better if you want to get the best out of them. You should discover more about them outside the club, if possible, so you can understand what they can contribute beyond their usual club role.
Encourage them to show you elements of their skill sets, as this can reveal what they are most passionate about, as well as encourage innovation.
When a team member makes a mistake or their weaknesses become obvious, offer practical feedback and advice to encourage them to do better. Rather than being reprimanded, you want your team members to know that you have respect for them, as well as belief in their abilities.
2. Passion
As a leader, it’s important you have the right team members. This goes beyond qualifications or experience and relates to those that fit into the club culture. The right team members will be passionate about what the club has to offer, as well as the role they have within it.
Even if you've hired team members which fit this mould, you can't guarantee they won't lose motivation and interest now and then. To prevent this, you can spark their passion in the following ways:
Recognise your team members' achievements and hard work
Have a work atmosphere that is both flexible and interesting, with a strong emphasis on teamwork
Make sure your club has an objective that everyone is striving toward, so everyone feels driven
3. Behavioural Norms
Group emotional intelligence is not only about harmony, lack of conflict, or everyone liking one another all the time. Emotional intelligence also involves recognising when harmony isn't genuine and when tension isn't addressed, as well as treating others with dignity.
Therefore, make sure that your team's behavioural norms (how you choose to work together) are in line with your values. When these principles align with both your club’s and your team member's ideals, they'll be more likely to support and follow them.
4. Manage stress
Team members can become burnt out as a result of stress, and their general health may suffer as a result. Therefore, your team should be able to deal with issues like deadlines and disputes in a healthy manner.
Try the following strategies to help keep your team’s stress levels at lower and more manageable levels:
Maintain schedules: Rushing or prolonging projects might impact your team's time management abilities.
Advise team members to take breaks and unplug from work: Help them find time regularly to practice activities that allow them to relax and unwind.
Encourage them to focus on one task at a time: Multitasking is an ineffective strategy in the workplace. In fact, it has the potential to increase the time required to finish a task.
Resolve conflicts: It’s unrealistic to expect everyone within a team to get along all the time. Addressing any conflicts before they disrupt the overall team morale is the best way to prevent added stress and tension.
Be compassionate: Aim to pay attention to what inspires your team, as well as any obstacles they face. Let’s say a team member has just lost a loved one. You should be sympathetic and accept that their focus is elsewhere, and ask how you can help them.
5. Collaboration
The key to team collaboration is strong communication among team members. To help your team build stronger communication skills, encourage them to work on active listening and obtain a better knowledge of body language.
Rather than letting frustrations or worries affect the mindset of the entire team, encourage everyone to work together to solve these issues and determine the best course of action. Provide a forum for your team to express their individual views, ideas and suggestions. Don’t forget to ask and encourage your quiet team members to share their thoughts too.
6. Play together
Teams who spend time together outside of the club can be an advantage. It makes teamwork more pleasurable and helps co-workers stay motivated during times of stress. Culture is formed outside of your club’s four walls, whether it’s Friday afternoon drinks together, attending a sporting event a few times each year, or supporting each other in a corporate fitness challenge.
The most successful teams aren’t just a collection of individuals who gather in a club. Instead, they’re a true community cheering each other on for group success.
Connections outside of the workplace promote open communication, a strong work ethic, flexibility, and a greater understanding of each person's obligations. Plus, if you hire team members who seamlessly get along together, it minimises drama.
Emotional intelligence improves a worker's capacity to make sound judgments, form and sustain collaborative relationships, function well under pressure, and deal with rapid change—all of which are valuable abilities to have in the club environment. Therefore, actively working to encourage and develop emotional intelligence within teams can maximise team productivity, boost motivation, and unite everyone through mutual respect, empathy, and a shared goal.
One of the key modules in the Club Managers Leadership and Management program – “Developing Emotional Intelligence”, explores these areas and many others as part of building club manager acumen. For more information on the program and modules visit https://www.elevateb.com.au/club-managers-leadership-management
We also run webinars that provide food for thought and practical applications for clubs to tap into and develop the mutually inclusive areas of team productivity and harmony.
For more information and to register for our upcoming webinar please visit, https://www.elevateb.com.au/club-managers-webinar
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