team players: how they affect your business

When a company is successful you typically see a unified group of people working towards the same goals.  Employees know the goals, they have buy-in to those goals, and they are often team players.  Being a team player is hugely important when working in most any business.  Well, what does it mean to be a team player? 
Team players are those individuals that will help others, pick up the slack, take pride in their job, care about how their work reflects on them, and want to see the workplace succeed.  They tend to be on time, work hard, and rarely call out unless they must. Often they don't seek out recognition, but they do appreciate hearing it and will be secretly hurt if someone else gets all the credit. 
They are not "Freddy Freeloader" who pitches in his two cents, contributes as little as possible, and then wants all the credit.  Knowing who your team players are in any business is crucial.  However, you can encourage other employees to be team players as well.
Some of that may come about when you truly understand who your team players are and give them accolades or recognition when they are doing a great job.  Sometimes you cannot just go off of appearances or results but have to dig into your culture and communicate with your team to really understand who is doing the bulk of the work.  Sometimes a manager or supervisor can appear to be putting in the time, but in truth they are utilizing their team's work to elevate themselves. Occasionally this happens in equal positions as well where one or a few employees are carrying the majority of the load. 
If you want to lose good employees, you can ignore their effort and praise the wrong people. If you want to retain good employees and encourage others to emulate the behavior, you must carefully assess the facts and correctly handle the situation.
Employees need to be shown the benefits of being a team player, what the consequences will be if they are not, and how to go about embodying that level of character.
This can be done in house, through training and communication with the team, but a great way of illustrating teamwork, and how it is crucial, is to do team building activities that take you outside the workplace.  Much like the teen who listens to anyone but Mom/Dad about life lessons, sometimes staff need a similar approach.  The "boss" can say it all day, but seeing it in action, and hearing it outside the workplace, can make it stick.
Think about Equine Assisted Activities as a way to enhance the team you have and directly show them the benefits of teamwork.  Horses exist in team units called herds, and the members of that team are crucial to their survival.  Working with horses is an experiential learning experience and a great way to see the benefit of working together. If we are too overbearing, the horse may fear us and we will not get the results we want. If we are not confident, the horse will take over and rule the partnership.  To learn more about how Equine Assisted Activities can help you business, contact us today!