Trust is vital to the success of a team and to the health of the culture. When teams trust one another, they can create a sense of psychological safety, which means the group is safe enough for people to take risks, speak up, make mistakes, resolve conflicts, and be themselves – knowing that they won’t be ridiculed, shamed, or kicked out for any of these things.
In order to build deeper trust, connection, and psychological safety, it’s important for teams to take time, even in the midst of their tasks, challenges, and goals, to focus on their relationships with one another and the dynamics of their group. Over the past eighteen years since I started my consulting company, I’ve delivered and facilitated hundreds of team building programs for our diverse clients – companies of various sizes and in all types of industries (technology, finance, retail, healthcare, education, government, non-profit, and more).
I’ve learned the hard way that there are lots of ineffective team building activities that can be boring, cheesy, and a waste of time. However, there are some specific team building activities that can be really useful and valuable, which not only bring the team closer together, but create the conditions for them to perform at the highest level.
In this video, I share three team building activities that I’ve used successfully with our clients to enhance their trust, connection, and performance. Feel free to check out this video and see how you can use these activities at your next meeting, offsite, or team gathering.
I like the idea of taking some time to focus on the relationships between you and your co-workers. I would think that you would function better as a team if you all were comfortable with each other. I might have to set up some activities for my team to get to know each other a bit better.