Every company wants its team members to collaborate and work together effectively. While your employees certainly don't have to be the best of friends, it's important to encourage bonding among your team members to achieve this cohesive dynamic.
As a leader, you'll want to create an environment where everyone is excited about the work they're doing and feels responsible for each other's success. Team-based activities and positive leadership interactions are great ways to boost morale and promote strong relationships among colleagues.
Below, Forbes Coaches Council members share some of their favorite activities and leadership practices that bring a team together, as well as discuss why these approaches work so well. Here's what they said:
1. Action Learning
Action learning is a people development process designed to tackle real-time organizational tasks and problems, by using these challenges as a vehicle for promoting individual and team learning. AL positively impacts team morale, bonding and engagement because each team member's unique experiences and perspectives are valued and applied to resolve real organizational needs. - Melanie Ott, Leap Forward Coaching
2. Revamping Internal Communication Standards
Organizations can examine their internal communication practices to ensure people are connecting with each other beyond the surface level of simply hearing. Effective leaders understand their own personality styles and the styles of members of their teams. Team members can engage in effective communication to contribute to creating an atmosphere of respect and trust to strengthens relationships. - Edward Reed, John Maxwell Team
3. Facilitated Workshops
Morale and team building often come down to ownership and feeling heard. When an organization is facing an internal issue, bring together a diverse group of employees who are vested in the outcome, hold a professionally facilitated workshop to immerse the team in the issue and then develop solutions. Close the session by having the team present their solutions to leadership. - John Van Vleck, The Green Room Collective, Inc
4. Regular Leadership Retreats
Leadership retreats that blend working on strategic direction and team bonding are a great start. Many companies do this, but fail to keep the momentum going in between retreats. The real magic happens when teams get into a regular discipline of getting out of the business in order to work on the business. - Sheryl Lyons, Culture Spark, LLC
5. Elicit Opinions And Ideas
When companies want to build morale, it is often a top-down strategy. Human nature tends to be more sensitive to leadership behavior versus peer behavior. For this reason, one of the strongest things organizations can do is to ask their leadership to elicit opinions and ideas from their workers. - Rob Edwards, Molding Business Group
Read more in How Leaders Can Create Fearless Teams
6. Leadership Training During Onboarding
Have a strong commitment to developing an onboarding process that includes skills and behaviors around leadership. While it might seem too early to be thinking about leadership, providing an outline sets the tone for a positive corporate culture. The identification and modeling of behaviors such as empathy and skills like reflective listening will be invaluable for morale and team bonding. - Patrick Veroneau, Emery Leadership Group
7. Personal, Get-To-Know-You Conversations
Get to know your staff. Know the names of their partners and children. Remember that they sing in a chorus or play a pickup basketball game every week. You don't need to join them on the rafters or the court; it's important to maintain your boundaries. Taking the time to get to know the people who work for you will help them feel much more invested at work. - Allison Puryear, Abundance Practice Building
8. 'Asks' And 'Offers'
As part of the team meeting agenda, each member of the team shares an "ask" and an "offer." The asks are requests, like extra help on a project from a subject matter expert, or another pair of eyes to review a client pitch. The offer is just that—a specific offer of assistance to anyone on the team who may need it. This activity sets up a simple mechanism to build support among team members. - Gina Lucente-Cole, Promina Advisors LLC
9. Physically Building Something Together
Accomplishing a common task will demonstrate the satisfaction of success and the benefit of working together as a team. One activity I find that captures these positive influences on the team is building something together. Organizations like Habitat for Humanity are a great source to figure out more about such activities. - Guliz Kavuncuoglu, The Green Room Collective, Inc
