Don’t build a raft! 5 alternative ways to do team-building.

Whilst team-building events are great way to develop relationships within a newly formed project team, they also need time and budget. So, here are five simple, free, cynicism-proof ways to have your team working more cohesively in record time. Clearing the way for you to focus on what you want to get done.

1. Tell me about you

A big blocker to working together well is not understanding each other’s preferred working styles, communication preferences or natural roles we might adopt. There are plenty of free online tools to help you identify yours, including the VIA institute's character strengths survey and the free online archetypes quiz based on Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung’s analysis of human behaviour. Get everyone to complete one and have a chat at your next team session about what you learnt about yourselves.

2. Listen

Obvious right! We can often be on transmit as we steam towards completing project tasks. Taking a moment to listen to a colleague as a coach and human being can make all the difference to how you relate to them, and they relate to you. Allow 5 minutes at the start of group conversations to check in with everyone. Not to ‘fix’ anything, just listen.

3. Ask what we are committed to?

We typically think of relationships as something personal. We try to build relationships by spending time together, seeking common ground, building rafts! But if we relate to one another based on what we’re committed to it allows us to break-free of “whether or not we like each other” and stand in the shoes of the other person. Our commitments drive our actions and behaviours. Everyone is committed to something, we just need to find out what it is. By unearthing commitments, we can have real conversations about what we want to achieve together or how we can help each other to achieve our individual objectives.

4. Radical truthfulness

Giving feedback, no matter how clumsy and (brutally) honest, makes a difference. So get into the practice of giving feedback and being open to feedback as a team. Not just any general feedback, like “please can you not heat up smelly food in the staff kitchen”. But feedback that would make a difference to the growth of a person or the quality of your relationships with one another. Many years ago, I was set this task by our organisational coach. “Go and give feedback to your colleagues” One word of caution, he said. “If the feedback is more about you, than them – let it go and ‘move on’”. It made a difference, knowing that there was nothing we couldn’t say to one another.

5. Look at mood

Ever seen a team that’s stuck in a rut? Moods are contagious. Yes, they can be a helpful mood, but when they’re bad…! In organisations little attention is paid to a team’s mood. Developing our awareness and our ability to choose around this is key. Yes, you could run a whole pulse survey and do some root-cause analysis, or, you could just check in with the team – what’s been our mood this week, how has is helped? How has it got in the way? What do we want to do differently?

And if all else fails….we’ve got some bamboo sticks, canvas and string we can lend you for a ‘build a shelter’ teamwork session!