Diversity Drives Success in San Antonio

Diversity in teams can drive creativity and productivity if the teams are functional and cooperate freely. But with diversity comes more potential for conflict and misunderstanding, as many San Antonio team managers know well. Diversity and work team performance is closely tied, and managers in racially-diverse San Antonio strive to take advantage of their opportunities to create successful diverse teams, moving past conflicts to achieve team goals.

Building teams in San Antonio is an ongoing process. Smart companies emphasize the value of diversity in ongoing team building events on- and off-site, as well as in house wellness programs that promote mind and body well-being, with specific cultures in mind.

While cultural specifics may be kept in mind for in house training and sensitivity programs, team building events such as the Amazing Race by the Riverwalk appeals to all diverse teams as it involves fun for all abilities, and provides mental challenges at which only a diverse cultural team can do well. Many of the questions and challenges address specific cultural backgrounds and the team must rely on each other to succeed.

Different work styles are prevalent in the culturally diverse workplace. Cultural sensitivity training is important for all diverse workforces to promote understanding and keep conflicts minimal and manageable. Creating a successful team takes work and dedication of all team members, not just the management.

Venture Up in San Antonio specializes in team skills and relationship building for conferences and the workplace. David Lengyel, co-founder, believes building relationships requires positive feedback from managers, as well as acquiring regular feedback from employees. For example, surveying employees every 4-6 weeks should be a minimum to make sure management and their teams are on the same page, and that small problems don’t become bigger.

Some companies, such as John Deere, elicit feedback monthly, while other companies do so annually. “That’s far too long to wait,” says Lengyel. “By the time 12 months pass, employees may already feel invisible and have one foot out the door.”

Companies who combine team building activities in their culture find the staff interaction pays off. When they outsource team building events at corporate meetings, they aim for team players to leave with an action plan to take risks, try new ideas and create new solutions back on the job, says Lengyel.

“We convey the idea that, “It’s not about you … it’s about how you can lift your team mates up,” he says. Venture Up also combines efforts with programs in CSR (corporate social responsibility) to strengthen connections with companies in the communities they serve.

Strong teams and healthy relationships are essential for a successful workplace. Employers have always valued the customer-sales relationships, but nurturing internal relationships in the workplace are taking on equal importance. Based on a recent article in the MindTools Journal, there are multiple ways to encourage positive relationships:

1. Develop Your People Skills
2. Identify Your Relationship Needs
3. Schedule Time to Build Relationships
4. Focus on Your EI (Emotional Intelligence)
5. Appreciate Others
6. Be Positive
7. Manage Your Boundaries
8. Avoid Gossip
9. Listen Actively

The key is to finding what works best in your workplace, is first to determine the overall temperature of the culture of change and think outside the box. 

 

Keeping functional teams strong means knowing the individuals that make up each team. Managers must become experts at the different personality types at work , as described in a recent Entepreneur magazine article. Understanding how personality types work will ease tensions in the workplace. Understanding the factors of emotional intelligence helps managers deal with people of wide ranging emotional makeup. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, says, “Start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.”

Otherwise, he says, "If you have the wrong people on the bus, nothing else matters. You may be headed in the right direction, but you still won’t achieve greatness. Great vision with mediocre people still produces mediocre results.”

Get the right team on the bus, make sure everyone is headed in the same direction and know that your team will need occasional maintenance in order to continue to run smoothly. The road to success isn’t an easy one. It’s filled with many setbacks, but working together on one uniformed goal and supporting one another will make the road getting there a much more enjoyable one, for everyone.

San Antonio – New Braunfels Takes Top Spot for America’s Most Engaged Employees

Smooth-running organizations require high functioning teams, and the San Antonio - New Braunfels area ranks highest with 38.1 percent of its workforce engaged, according to Gallup. The organizational culture of San Antonio is a model for building strong engaged teams across the U.S.

Gallup categorizes workers as "actively disengaged," "engaged," or "not engaged." One way to get teams actively engaged, says David Lengyel of Venture Up, is to infuse fun into corporate training and meetings. “Ongoing team building events can enrich and maintain strong relationships,” he says. Since 1983, Venture Up. has provided team development programs in San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, Austin and Midland-Odessa.

Gallup considers "engaged" employees as those involved in, passionate about, and committed to their job. Such staff members are creative, proactive and fuel growth through continuous improvement and innovation, maintaining a healthy company. Research linking engaged employees to high performing organizations is indisputable.

Companies with highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147 percent in earnings per share and realize 41 percent fewer quality defects, 48 percent fewer safety incidents, and 28 percent less shrinkage. Turnover is 65 percent less with low-turnover organizations, and 25 percent less with high-turnover companies. Absenteeism is 35 percent lower.

Staff members who fail to get engaged hurt companies. The astute manager takes notice right away to correct the behavior or eliminate it altogether in by firing staff whose attitude doesn’t cut it. Coopertive team players are the foundation of a top performing organization.

Employees who are not engaged often have one foot out the door. Whether they quit or get fired, they cost the company money and continue to damage corporate culture the longer they remain. They fail to take ownership in the company, have less concern for clients, and inhibit productivity.

Actively disengaged staff may harbor an entitled attitude, feeling the company owes them. They strive to spread negativity onto others. If management is lax or ignores these effects, the negativity can spread like a cancer and bring the organization down.

Unhappy employees may undermine the accomplishments of productive staff, monopolize the manager’s time with petty grievances, and contribute to defects in the process and products far more than engaged employees.

Gallup research shows low levels of employee engagement means high levels of active disengagement, but the two are not the same. Unengaged employees may be passively so, while others are proactive in their efforts to break the system, if they are not detected and fired as they should be before the damage can spread.

According to Gallup:

• Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Minnesota was in the middle on active disengagement, but near the bottom on employee engagement.
• Richmond, Virginia showed a low percentage of actively disengaged workers, but not among the top 10 in engagement.
• San Antonio-New Braunfels, Texas, had the highest level of engagement, but was not among the 10 lowest on active disengagement.

Gallup attributes the wide range of engagement levels to multiple factors, namely economic measures such as unemployment and underemployment. Metro areas with higher employee engagement tend toward having lower unemployment and underemployment.

A good manager is the ticket to developing happy, supportive team members, such as the team culture in the San Antonio - New Braunfels workforce. At least 70 percent of the range in staff engagement scores across business units, according to Gallup.

Corporate leaders must support continuous improvement by giving managers the flexibility and freedom to support engaged work teams. Many teams attribute the growth of the team building industry to the growing awareness that happy employees lead to profits in the end.