Encouraging healthy communication in teams comes down to effective process, tools and leadership. Are leads setting a great example by communicating well themselves? Explaining what and why things need to be done. Do they communicate in a compelling method? Are they focused on developing great communication channels and ensuring they work? Productive, open weekly meetings, regular product presentations, peer reviews etc. Is there clear process in place to encourage regular communication? Are you providing teams with the right tools to comfort this?

2. Strong Culture

A strong culture is another common characteristic of great teams. They often develop their own formality, nicknames, and terms. This binds them closer together and makes them more effective as a group. It also makes coming to work more fun and boosts morale as a result.

A great team culture is not something you can force. It develops over time and only in the right environment. That said, it is largely driven by the mix of members and leads on a team. Paying attention to how people work together and mixing the right profiles can help. Picking the right team lead and coaching them to think about culture is critical.

A good sign of a strong culture is when teams spend time outside of the office together. Although this again is not something you can force, there are ways to promote it. Things like Friday evening pizzas and beer, team-building events and discretionary team budgets are some examples. It should be responsibility of a team lead promote this kind of activity.

3. Common Aims

Having a set of clear and accessible goals is critical for any team. Before focusing on anything else, ensure that everyone knows what they are aiming for and why. Without this they will lose their way and become demotivated.

Beyond just having aims, great teams promote a feeling of shared responsibility. Everyone on a team feels bought in to the team’s shared mission. If the team succeeds, it’s everyone’s win. If they don’t, they band together to find a way forward. They avoid heavy top-down structure, where only managers care about aims. They also know that each team member plays a different role in arrive the team’s aims.

Having teams set and defend their own aims is a good way to encourage this form of accountability. Ensuring team members all share in rewards for success is also key. Leads should be responsible for ensuring that everyone understand and buys in to goals. Answering doubts and keeping the team focused.

4. Clear Roles and Responsibilities

While they share common aims, people on great teams have well defined single responsibilities. They trust one another to each play a part in getting things done. They hold each other answerable for delivering on promises. This clear definition of roles also spans to leadership. They know who is ultimately responsible for technical, design or product decisions.

Ensuring clear definition of responsibilities is an important part of building a healthy team. It allows people to focus on their work and trust that others will do theirs. It also avoids the misgiving and frustration that poorly defined roles can lead to. This is particularly true when leadership is not well defined. Decisions take much longer, outcomes are unclear and people get frustrated. Communicating responsibilities in writing and to everyone, is an easy way to set a team up for success.

5. Freedom

Teams facing too many internal obstacles conflict to succeed. Great teams need freedom to experiment and find their way. They need the space to develop their own internal process and culture. Too much top-down company control can make this difficult.

good teams also often work as self-contained units. Team members collectively share most of the skills they need to build their products. This means they can get work done without constantly depending on foreign resources. This independence allows them to move fast and remain focused.

It’s important to consider whether your company is making it difficult for strong teams to form. Do you have unnecessary process that slows them down? Is there too much control on what tools and process they use? Is too much top-down approval preventing them from making decisions? Do they have easy access to all the resources they need to get things done fast? Are teams heavily coupled and depended on one other?

Set up for success

It’s a good idea to run regular reviews of how teams in your company are working. Asking people about their experiences working in their team is a good way to do this. This can be done either formally, with team reviews, or more informally by just chatting to people. It is also useful to search examples of teams that are running well. Analyze what they are doing that’s different and try to apply this elsewhere.

Most of all, ensure that you are taking the time to iterate on how teams form and develop in your company. Don’t forget that if you want to build an awesome product, you’re going to need a great team.