A Program That Helps You Work on Team Building
A lot of people over the years have asked me how to work on team building. This type of question points to the almost complete lack of team building skills and strategies that is pervasive in our workplaces.
The majority of people in the workforce have no idea how to build teams. At most, they might be familiar with some sort of sports-based approach where a person at the top shouts at people to supposedly motivate them to win. The standard approach to team building in our workplaces is very similar: a person in a position of authority gives orders and gets angry when things don’t go as expected.
There has to be a better way and, thankfully, there is—it’s an advanced form of team building that gets you far better results because it focuses on the underlying thoughts and behaviors that keep your people from coming together and collaborating effectively. Higher-level team building like this helps you change the way your workplace functions by practicing listening, empathy, and praise. Let’s look at how each of these vital elements work.
Listening
Listening is one of the most valuable team building skills you can possess, it means doing things like:
- Setting aside the time to listen.
- Actively attending to what the other person is saying.
- Talking less—preferably far less.
- Not interrupting or rebutting.
- Repeating back what people have said.
- Not retaliating or punishing people when they’ve shared their perspectives.
- Being there for people when they need to talk.
When you do things like these, you show your co-workers and employees that you genuinely care about them and that you’re on their side rather than looking for excuses to punish them. This approach requires a significant level of emotional intelligence and a sincere desire to help others rather than have power over them.
Empathy
Empathy helps you improve your team building efforts by putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and understanding where they are coming from. Being empathic means doing things like:
- Caring about what others say.
- Trying to understand why other people feel the way they do.
- Being open to different people, perspectives, and ideas.
- Making the time to be there for others.
- Not being afraid of emotions that aren’t anger or fear.
- Reacting positively and helpfully to what people are going through.
- Looking for commonalities.
When you do things like these, you connect with your co-workers on a much more meaningful level, you become a person they trust. These types of behaviors require that you set aside your own preconceptions and emotional baggage and truly be there for others.
Praise
When you praise people, you show them that you appreciate what they’re doing and you greatly increase the chances they’ll continue to practice positive behaviors. Praising people means doing things like:
- Putting the spotlight on someone else.
- Avoiding any comments that don’t help people feel great.
- Saying positive things about specific tasks.
- Focusing on what’s going right instead of what’s not.
- Telling people they’ve done a good job.
- Sharing how the person’s work has positively impacted you and the workplace.
- Saying kind, supportive things to everyone, not just a few people.
When you do things like these you’ll notice an increase in morale and motivation. People love being told they’re doing something well and they connect with bosses and co-workers who make them feel good.
Imagine what your workplace would look like if you regularly practiced listening, empathy, and praise. You and your employees would be much happier and you’d all get more done in a friendlier, more supportive work environment.
Advanced team building is the key to healing our toxic, unpleasant, discouraging workplaces. It’s never been a good idea to stress people out and treat them harshly, yet we keep doing it because we don’t know what else to do. The good news is that we now have the knowledge to move in a far more beneficial direction.
You can start practicing much better team building whenever you choose. All that’s required is shifting your thinking from how things have always been done to envisioning a new type of company or organization where people are highly valued and treated with great care and respect. You decide when you begin. Cheers, Guy.