• The key to ensuring progress & accountability is to have shared buy-in from your team on what they need to do and why. It is your job to set clear expectations, responsibilities, goals, & paths to success for each of your team members.

• When you communicate expectations, you define what level of performance and results you require, and as a result, your team has a better idea of their requirements, what success looks like, and a path for achieving it.

• The SLA program has basic outlines for minimum requirements for team members, but you can define expectations and goals that are specific to your team and culture.

A team's culture is defined by the beliefs, values and attitudes set by the company (or team leader), and how these factors interplay to influence the behavior of its members. It sets shared guidelines for how your team members will work together, how decisions get made, what behaviors are rewarded, and how tasks and goals are achieved.

Defining a universal culture (with a corresponding behaviors and values) is crucial because it drives high performance and gives team members focus and agency to achieve results that align with your shared purpose. 

Great cultures leverage their organization's unique mission, purpose and values to strengthen their identity, inspire their employees and deliver on their brand promise to customers. It should manifest itself across all aspects of your campaign, and is what sets you apart from the competition. 

1. Envision your perfect, ideal team environment. What would it look like to have your team working at its absolute best?

2. What are your team's core values and shared attitudes? What would it look like to have your team exemplify these on a daily basis?

3. What would a successful team look like? What about success on an individual basis? 

4. Why would a team culture like this work?

5. What steps do you need to take to make this a reality?

A strengths-based culture recognizes and celebrates the innate talents that make each member unique, and allows them to showcase their strengths in the day-to-day work they're doing. 

Every team member brings their own unique set of experiences, backgrounds, values, visions, hopes, and perspectives to the group. When you were brainstorming, you considered how to build the strongest team possible by identifying strengths, skill sets, and strategic additions to round out the weaknesses identified in your SWOT. 

The diversity of thought and perspective of your team members is an asset - these differences can lead to new, innovative ways of enhancing your efforts and achieving your goals. 

In a strengths-based culture, each member is known for their strengths, and the efforts of the larger team is amplified because each person contributes based on what they do best as they achieve their company's mission together. 

Sample Vision for Optimal Team Functioning

• All members attending team meetings

• Each member is sending 1 email blast per week, and sending 5 - 10 individual outreach to their list

• Each member is brainstorming 5-10 high impact asks

• Each member goes on 3-5 high impact ask meetings

You can build a shared vision for success by empowering your team to take ownership of developing their own goals, and giving them the autonomy to make decisions and take ownership over their work.

• What are the different strengths and skillsets of your team members?

• What goals do your team members want to set for themselves (ie how much fundraised, how many meetings they want to go on, how many people they want to reach out to)?

As the leader, it's your job to consider what will drive your members to work hard, produce quality work, collaborate with the team, and consistently meet deadlines. 

Each person is different & will have their own distinct motivations - your job is to identify what each member will be motivated by, and to develop systems that will resonate each member.

Internal Motivations: Doing something for personal or internal reasons, such as striving to go on sponsorship meetings because mastering the skill is a personal goal. 

External Motivations: Doing something for external reasons, such as earning a reward, such as raising $5,000 to earn the associated SLA service hours, recommendation letters & internships.

Implement reward systems that emphasize both external and internal motivators, as well as tangible and intangible factors, such as:

• Praise & celebrating wins in the group chat / in team meetings

• Offering incentives, like gift cards or pizza parties

• Utilizing rewards, like SLA-offered benefits

• Awarding titles for strength areas, like Head of Marketing or Recruitment Chair

Consider what responsibilities and tasks you can delegate, or assign, to your team members to ensure the day-to-day planning and execution is moving forward so you can focus on broader management and execution.

Use your team's diversity of skills to your advantage by delegating tasks to the right person or people. 

• People perform better and are more engaged when they feel they are employing their best skills, so delegating based on strengths will have a significant impact on productivity.

• Know your team's abilities / skills so that everyone has tasks they can confidently complete. 

• Consider compiling a chart or graph with an overview of the project and a breakdown of tasks so that you can more effectively match employees to their skills. 

To encourage collaboration and participation, increase efficiency, and diminish redundancies in team output, consider assigning roles to your team members.

Assigning leadership roles to team members provides them with a sense of ownership & pride. It allows them to be the expert in a given area, makes them feel special, and allows you to delegate the tasks associated with this role so you can take a managerial and strategic role. 

You can delegate leadership roles once you recognize the strengths within your team, choosing individuals to contribute to the group in a way that uses their innate abilities. 

Consider which unique characteristics a member offers to the team and how it might help with collaboration.

Sample Team Member Roles:

• Campaign Manager

• Marketing Director

• Graphic Design Manager

• Recruitment Chair

• Events Coordinator

• Business Development Lead

• Finance Lead

• A good manager leads through actions, as opposed to just giving orders and delegating tasks. If you want your team to act professionally and deliver great work, you should take a hands-on approach and set an example for what you want to see. 

• Team managers who work alongside their teams develop mutual respect and trust. When employees know their leaders work as hard as they do, it motivates them to succeed as well. Build trust in team members by filling gaps or offering support to complete a task. 

• This means helping with drafting outreach. connecting with their parent, reviewing their materials, joining meetings, and helping to strategize and plan outreach

Once your team has set goals, it's important that you keep them accountable! Utilize the motivation and reward structures in place to help remind them why they got involved in the first place.