How to Keep Your Team On Their Toes

A team can easily lose focus when the atmosphere around them becomes lax enough for this to take place. It is the responsibility of the team coordinators to make sure that each team is focused, whether they are on tasks or in between tasks. Keeping them on their toes may involve contriving situations that will occupy their mind and body wherever it is necessary.

Advantages of Keeping a Team on their Toes

• Keeping a team on their toes would always keep them sharp with a sense of being ready for the
  
  unexpected.


• There response to real situations would be in line with their state of preparedness.


• Keeping them on their toes is a form of continuous training which is a good thing


• Being a form of continuous training, keeping them on their toes can involve creating possible scenarios for the team and responses to such, training them for real life action.


• It keeps their mind on team building effort and dependence on each other.

Ways to Keep a Team on Their Toes

Team coordinators should set goals for teams that are just out of reach. They would have to focus their energies into fulfilling such goals. They should not know that they are not expected to meet with the set target. There would of course be a real target, which would be lower that the set one and in most cases, such teams would meet the real target.

Putting in Place an Effective Reward/Punishment System

The reward could be extra bonuses while the “punishment” could be a loss of bonuses. An effective reward system can be developed based on the aspirations of the team members. This can be drawn from the industry the company operates or from anything from paid holidays to unexpected off day for team members. the rewards and punishment can be individual or group.

Giving Them Less Tools to Achieve Set Goals

This is a way of making sure the team is resilient and can handle situations with limited resources. Most teams that have all the resources to achieve a set goal may not exert themselves enough to meet that goal in the way they ought. This too would have a telling effect in the end. Besides, situations might later arise where their resources are limited and they may not be able to deliver. Fewer tools may be in form of cutting the expected time of delivery, making them to work longer hours and making greater personal sacrifices to achieve the given goals.

Setting Them Up Against Other Teams

Team coordinators could allow for inter team competition and encourage rivalry by creating a team based reward and punishment system, that will get team members fired up and focused on meeting targets. This is one of the best ways of keeping teams on their toes, because it can be applied in almost every field of human endeavor. The teams can be as small as having three people in each group, meaning small organizations can also use this to boost productivity while keeping team members on their toes.

Creating Mock Battles

Mock battles can be another way of building corporate spirit as well as keeping each team on their toes. Team coordinators would have to come up with innovative mock battles that would push the team members while training them at the same time. They also have to make each team understand the importance of the mock battles and them doing well as a team.

Pressure Valves

Keeping a team on their toes does not mean they should be run to the ground. The tips above are meant to be applied strategically. They may follow a regular pattern but room should always be made to create avenues for stress release both as a team and as individuals. Having a state of war mentality may become counterproductive.

They should be able to get away from it all. This is different from the reward/punishment system. A team that is under constant pressure might eventually crack. A team can be destroyed and all the time and investment placed on them would have been for nothing. 

Therefore, keeping a team on their toes should be done with caution. There should be a measure of release and separation of issue or else members would be looking at the options. Even military teams have a way of rotating members so that they do not constantly have to face tense military situations.

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