6 ways to make a “team” a team

6 ways to make a “team” a team 

“Team” has sort of become an overused cliche in the world of workplace lingo… 

Just because you use the word, doesn’t necessarily mean you see your colleagues as a group of tight-knit, supportive buddies. 

Most of us were probably part of a team at one point – I’m sure we’ve all had our try at elementary, high school, or even collegiate sports (or maybe you were a theater kid, I’m sure it’s a similar environment ;)

Hopefully, you had a positive experience and were able to preserve that feeling of genuine camaraderie, supportiveness, and healthy competition. Maybe, you even remember the exact moments, ways, and kinds of people that created this atmosphere.

And if your memories of this were rather negative, well, hopefully, you were able to take those experiences and turn them into lessons on what not to do.

Besides my experience in amateur sports, I’ve got nearly a decade behind me building up, maintaining, and being a part of effective, dynamic, and welcoming teams.

So what goes into truly creating and fostering a healthy team spirit in the office?

Here’s my controversial opinion:

A great team of coworkers doesn’t need to be a gang of fit, like-minded, young guys or a clique of girls who all graduated the same year from the same university, or a group of middle-aged parents struggling with teenage-aged kids. The team doesn’t need to be the same age, same background, same gender, or even have the same interests.

Most of what goes into leading a successful group of close-knit colleagues is made up of your approach and some concrete steps I’ve outlined for you!

So, here are the 6 things that will build up a team:

Sticking together

First things first, stick together. An easy way to do that in the physical sense is to ensure a common location for your team. Either have everybody stationed in the same area for work or at least dedicate a space where you can have a daily catchup in one place. 

If you’re physically together for at least part of the day, it’s automatically going to create a sense of togetherness. Even when you have bigger, company-wide meetings – though it’s great to mingle with others – it's still a chance to show a united front with your team: be seated together during the meeting or touch base before and after. For newbies this is especially nice so they have a group of familiar faces to ground themselves.

And what’s more, it instills an automatic instinct to stick together and think of each other even in the midst of a bigger group of people. Because keeping each other in mind and being considerate is something you can’t force your colleagues to do, just encourage. 

Set common goals

Another aspect of fostering a cooperative, effective team is setting common goals. These goals primarily serve to create a common mission for everyone involved. Make sure to set a goal that everyone in your team is able to contribute to at some level. 

Aside from just creating a team mission, common goals also serve to encourage healthy competition. Competition motivates employees to be better – as long as that competition is achievable and healthy. Motivated colleagues rub off on each other and motivated employees are an essential factor of a successful team.

Common goals can be set and scheduled on a weekly, monthly, quarterly or even annual basis. It’s important that the team regularly checks in with each other to share performance and progress while discussing and reviewing the targets. 

Educate each other

Setting goals and creating competition is a relatively easy system to implement… but an additional, vital, and slightly more complex system to implement is education. Because a healthy, motivated, powerful team helps each other learn. 

Naturally, juniors will turn to their more senior colleagues when they have questions (if they feel comfortable enough). But if you’re managing a team, you have to make sure that people are continuously passing on their know-how, interacting, and sharing new knowledge.

How? Of course, you essentially have to start with onboarding programs for fresh-joiners. You can even appoint dedicated mentors so that as newbies become juniors they still have someone to confide in and turn to with questions. 

But surprise, surprise – even those who have been there longest don’t know everything ;) So, to keep things fresh, schedule biweekly or monthly knowledge-sharing meetings where colleagues can provide insights and industry updates to share. If someone attends a separate training, they can prepare a short presentation on the key things they learned.

These are just simple, practical ways to create a regular system for team-wide education and knowledge sharing, but ideally this would also happen simultaneously through everyday conversation.  

Have a sense of humor

Now the next few steps are where we get into the less tangible topics. But, if a team is functioning these should come organically. Unfortunately, you can’t usually implement some kind of system that gets everybody laughing once a day – but if you do, feel free to pass it on.

A sense of humor in the team is only going to arise if you’ve got an open and lively environment. Of course, not every day is going to be miles of smiles and rays of sunshine, but allowing for jokes and fun in the workplace is a big part of making the office a positive place to be. 

You’ve got to be able to laugh at yourself as well – make sure as a manager that you don’t take yourself too seriously and stifle your colleagues’ personalities. If a group of people can have fun together, then the team spirit will follow naturally. 

Helping out

So – aside from sticking together, and motivating, educating, and laughing with each other, a team has got to help each other. This usually comes after some time spent together as coworkers. But a team lead needs to set an example first and foremost.

Again, being helpful (and doing it willingly) certainly isn’t something you can demand of an employee, teammate, or anyone for that matter. So the first measure to take in trying to develop a team that will gladly go out of the way to help one another, starts with you. 

Another approach to take: recognizing acts of kindness and assistance. Ok, I know what you’re thinking: this isn’t a kindergarten class… True. And you don’t need to make a ceremony or juvenile rewards to celebrate kindness – generally, all it takes is recognition. 

During your biweekly one-on-one for example, make it a point to note a particular way someone helped somebody else when it comes to work. But again, with the right mix of people and personalities, this way of treating each other emerges organically.

Build relationships

Last but not least, a team has got to build genuine, friendly, caring relationships. This comes last because, in the natural order of things, a true friendship is only going to emerge after colleagues have had coffees together at the office, complained about the terrible night sleep they had, made jokes about the absurdly long meeting the other day, and talked over some of their personal and work-related goals for the future. 

Relationships are based on trust and after a team has built up that trust, there’s not much that can tear them down. And if you have that, then you’ve crossed one of the biggest hurdles of management: creating and maintaining a successful team.

If you as a team lead (or an aspiring one) make it a point to stick to these steps and approaches, your team will be close-knit, engaged, and productive. I can only hope you have the chance to build up the kind of teams and friendships I have over the course of my career!  Those 8 hours a day at work will not be a chore for you and your coworkers, but rather a pleasant part of the day spent among a group of inspiring colleagues.