Successful teams have one thing in common: they have a team culture.
The team culture is the invisible fabric that holds team members together as a cohesive unit. Team building activities help you achieve this, by building relationships, collaboration, and trust between team members.
Whether you’re a CEO, team manager or just looking to improve your relationships, you can take your team’s process to the next level by following these 8 effective team building strategies, proven to work and to get the most out of your team – even for remote teams!
Read on to more…
1. Installing and Maintaining Small Talk for Remote teams
At the coffee machine, in the elevator, or at lunch together – in everyday office life, there are automatically opportunities to exchange ideas privately.
The importance of this exchange becomes clear when it is missing. It forms the basis for building a relationship with each other.
These ideas will help you integrate the culture of small talk and create a bond with your team members doing remote work.
Plan Coffee breaks
Make your team members responsible for taking turns in organizing and hosting a coffee break.
For remote teams, coffee breaks can easily be taken to the digital world thanks to virtual coffee. This provides an opportunity to get together over the computer, discuss team issues or just chat with team members at large.
Find common topics
To work on team bonding, find out the topics on which everyone is interested. Few examples can be the latest series on Netflix, holiday plans, or even the infamous weather!
The goal is to work on team building by breaking the ice – if necessary – and getting into the conversation.
Sharing is caring
Encourage team members to share photos and videos with the entire team!
The visual impression strengthens the team bond. For example, you could loosen up your meetings or your team group chat by asking them “Everyone posts a picture of today’s workplace”.
2. Communicating with Empathy for Effective Team Building Strategies
Successful interpersonal communication is crucial for team development and cooperation. And when we talk about remote work, the risk of creating misunderstandings and making unclear agreements is significantly higher.
To enhance teamwork and team building, it is then important to work on facilitating communication between employees and collaborators.
Skill-sharing sessions
You could organize skill-sharing sessions with a specific team member invited to share his/her expertise under a short conference about a specific topic.
After this presentation, you can invite all employees to join the discussion. This imparts knowledge, opens up insights into other areas of work, and promotes exchanges between colleagues.
Company Vision Rounds
Bring the team together and strengthen the common values and goals of your company.
What’s the “best possible future” for each individual and the enterprise in the business world. What, where, and with whom do you want to work in a year? What values do you want to see emerge from the business?
Once your employees have brainstormed on those topics, a vision statement can be prepared.
Smiley and Co.
Friendly and empathetic communication is the be-all and end-all for common team success.
Since written language leaves a certain scope for interpretation, smileys are a good means of conveying emotions and preventing misunderstandings if you are working from home.
So please, keep your smile online! 😉
Listening to your collaborators
The team bond is primarily strengthened when team members share their opinions and feel listened to.
Keeping open communication and an open-door policy is one of the top effective team building strategies to make a good team and look for continuous improvement.
As a thoughtful leader, don’t be afraid to ask for feedback or conduct a team survey!
Employees are often more willing to participate in shared goals if you ask them, then apply that listening rule and pay attention to their thoughts. It encourages them to participate in common objectives, builds trust, and promotes collaboration.
Morning coffees, team lunch breaks … all in a days work in effective team building strategies
3. Establishing Routines
Routines with employees such as morning coffees, working hours, lunch breaks or happy hour drinks, represent a great way to participate in team building and office life.
Monday Rounds
In a quick round of thoughts, everyone can have a look back at the last week as well as a preview of the upcoming week.
What went particularly well? What were the challenges? Where is help needed?
This process promotes commitment and involves the other team members.
Virtual Happy Hour
Whether you’re falling for a cup of red wine, a fresh beer or a light drink, the end of the week can be sealed together in interpersonal relationship building. Cheers!
Standup meetings
Standup meetings are known to many of the Scrum management methods.
Since they’re traditionally kept standing, they’re short-lived, which is why they can be easily integrated into everyday work.
With the web app Standups, these meetings can even be held across different time zones.
4. Get to Know Colleagues
In large like small businesses, there are office areas and events made to exchange across projects and help the team development. Think about cafeterias, Christmas office parties, or even work trips for instance.
Other than those, ideas that make it easier to get to know each other can be:
“Blind Dates” with another Team Member
To connect all employees of the company, two people can meet in pairs and exchange for 15 minutes – in person or via a video call.
The content and form of the exchange are entirely up to them. The focus is on personal experience and private, informal exchange, which can then be shared publicly in a brief overview.
Space for fun off-work
You could set up a dedicated chat channel for private exchanges within the team.
How about sending the latest picture of your cute kitten or a funny meme that makes you think about a current situation at work?
Keep the conversation open, easy and fun!
5. Enable Shared Experiences
As part of effective team building strategies, we can also advise you to create some experiences that the entire team can live together and ultimately, strengthen interoffice relationships.
Company Virtual Spirit Week
A team building Spirit week that is not limited to a specific department or team can be another effective team-building strategy.
Spirit weeks foster creativity of the team members and invite them to interpret one or several teams, either in pairs or in teams.
Pajama days, karaoke, sports day… are all excellent ways to develop great team dynamics!
Organize a Corporate retreat
A team-building getaway, local or out of the country can be helpful for team members who are working remotely.
When team members are physically together, but especially, share a common experience, they feel closer to each other.
Whether it is a camping weekend, a yoga retreat, or a cruise trip, retreats can be a good idea to participate in for your team building.
Virtual Team building Experiences and Activities
At Woyago, we are specialists in organizing virtual events and experiences that are an ideal way to encourage your team to bond and to cheer up group morale.
Why not take a look at some of our virtual team building activities?
6. Apply a Selective Hiring Process
The first stage of creating a successful team is simply by hiring the right people for your team. Not everyone will be fitted to the objectives of the job as well as a match for all the personalities of the your other employees and team leaders.
Identify the personality type
Part of the hiring process is to identify the personality the candidates have to make sure they have a great chance to bond with the rest of the team.
For instance, if someone is usually more introverted and quiet, he or she will may not fit well with team members who are outspoken and excessively social.
If you are not sure how to evaluate this, don’t hesitate to involve someone from your human resources department during the interview process of a candidate.
Understand their goals and vision
When you consider a new team member, be careful to consider what the above entails for all potential new members of the team.
It’s also helpful to know how they see their professional growth and what motivates them to stay in their job for a longer period of time.
Knowing those elements in advance can help you form united teams among common values and objectives as well as limit employee turnover.
7. Teach Conflict Resolution within Team Members
To facilitate interoffice relationships, effective team-building strategies can also include conflict resolution.
Course-correction early on
If team members can naturally identify conflicts early and address them without waiting for a team leader or manager, this is a great way to strengthen team building.
Invite them to recognize their mistakes or personal issues on their own.
Not only does this contribute to creating an encouraging environment that helps team members feel safe enough to raise concerns but it also inspires trust among employees and leaders.
Conflict Management Team building activities
Engaging in team-building activities with your group is another way to make sure they remain calm, accept feedback, and can resolve any conflicts among team members while staying united.
Set Ground rules
It’s important to set ground rules and team building guidelines to make sure team members can communicate with each other in the right way.
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Building a team is not that simple, yet with these effective team building strategies many organizations use daily, you now have the right tools and keys to keep a cohesive group while also creating bonding among your employees.
So tell us, do you apply any of these? How do you create lasting relationships at work?
