Behind every great business is a great team, but fostering a cohesive group can be a challenge. Assessing your team and actively implementing change are both key to taking your returns to the next level.

From an early age we are taught the importance of teamwork (there’s no “I” in team!), but rarely do we delve beneath the surface to analyze the specific benefits of teamplay versus individual efforts. Understanding team dynamics and what makes them work can lead to greater innovation, increased ROI, and happier employees. Here’s why business leaders need to refocus on the engineering of a harmonious, productive team.

Why Teamwork Matters

It may seem obvious, but reminding yourself of the importance of solid team dynamics can help realign your business direction and get everyone on the same page. As a leader, it is up to you to make sure that your team stays cohesive and focused — a dysfunctional team dynamic can often be traced back to leadership, as Dynamic Teamwork Delivers explains.

That’s why it’s so important to remember that good leadership reaps tangible benefits. With well managed, diverse teams (and diversity is critical here), companies experience drastically improved organizational and financial performance, according to a report by the Australian government. Balanced and varied teams can see up to a 66% higher return on invested capital than homogeneous and disorganized ones, according to PwC.

This is because a good team, powered by diverse experiences and expertise, is inherently more innovative and driven, as Scientific American explains. This is true not only in terms of sex, race, age, and so on, but also in terms of personality and intellectual diversity, as reported in Harvard Business Review. Blending teams with a range of thinking styles will lead to the most creative problem solving.

High performance is also linked to the ways team members interact with one another. Research is beginning to shed light on just what exactly makes members click.

Communication

Communication is key. Alex Pentland of the Harvard Business Review measured team dynamics at MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory with electronic sensors. Pentland discovered that great teams communicate frequently, take turns talking and listening, engage regularly in informal communication, and connect with resources outside of the team itself.

Most importantly, how teams communicated was far and away the best predictor of success, and just as important as all other factors combined (intelligence, personality, skill, and content of discussions). Pentland and his team found that they could predict with surprising precision how well a team would perform based only on the data from their sensors.

Taking Action

These findings highlight the importance of business leaders taking a proactive role in bringing the best teams together and ensuring that they continue to perform at a high level. As is often the case, even the most effective teams can find themselves in a rut, and it falls on the leadership to reinvigorate the group dynamic in order to produce better results.

The first step is assessing the climate and morale of your team. Meet with employees and learn what is working for them and what isn’t, and why. Discuss their ideas for improving the dynamic. Make sure that the objectives and goals of the team are crystal clear, as well as your plans for reaching them, as Malik Bilal advises on LinkedIn Pulse. Empower each and every member with respect and recognition, and stay flexible to accommodate the ever-changing needs of a project.

Sometimes it is necessary to turn to outside resources, as Pentland and his team suggest. Inviting the most influential business leaders to speak to your team — no matter how big or small it may be — and to share their skills and expertise can make a world of difference. Look to speakers bureaus like BigSpeak to hire the best leadership and keynote speakers to reinvigorate your team.

Ken Sterling is the Chief Marketing Officer at BigSpeak Speakers’ bureau – the leading keynote and business speakers bureau in the world. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California and an MBA from Babson College. Ken teaches Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Strategy at UC Santa Barbara. He is a serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker, business consultant and sales & marketing expert. For press interviews, contact marketing@bigspeak.com.

(Image credit: Carollina_Li/flickr)