Team Development in the Workplace

Recently, I’ve been facilitating a number of workshops — in the corporate, educational, and social services arenas — for teams of managers and colleagues trying to develop more effective ways of working together. All good working teams share commonalities of behavior and habit. A few are listed below, as suggestions for the evolving team:

Meet Every Day

Many working teams in both the corporate and social services fields spend time and money on so-called bonding activities (such as whitewater rafting) designed to help people become more familiar with each other. Almost universally, such practices do not work: they are superficial, brief, and contrived. Conversely, effective team integration derives from the same kinds of experiences as those that contribute to good family and community relationships: time spent together every day. Ideally, the team should meet at the beginning of every day for a meeting of about fifteen minutes. This is a time to hear about personal or professional items that may impact upon the day, to hear how people are doing generally, and simply to chat. It is extraordinarily difficult for a team to work well if a daily meeting is not held.

Meet Once Every Season, and Once Per Year

Longer meetings, such as planning sessions (one day) and retreats (two or three days) are also essential. We all spend too much time putting out fires in daily work to think about the big picture, but it’s in the big picture that our vision of our work will eventually manifest. Without a sense of that vision and how it is unfolding, the work becomes drudgery.

Place Boundaries around the Work

In any environment of dedicated workers, one occupational hazard is that the work begins to find its way into all the areas (the personal and recreational areas, typically) where it does not belong. This is why the typical career-life of a social service worker in a given position is less than five years. Burnout happens (see next item). The best way to avoid this is to create clear and strong boundaries in the work (energetic reinforcement, for example: see below). Create set hours for time with students/clients/customers, and stick to them. The sign on your door should say when you are in and when you are not. Fight for your space and time. Otherwise, it will be taken from you.

Avoid Burnout

Expect some type of burnout every three to five years. This is simply part of the territory of being deeply committed to what you do. Pay attention to the warning signs — compassion fatigue, cynicism, emotional shutdown, erosion of boundaries, health problems, guilt, depression — and try to catch them early, when there is still time to take a break. Know when you need a rest. If you miss the signs, you will damage yourself and others (obviously). Consider burnout as an occupational stage, not as a disability. Simply catch it early (transforming it from a potentially crippling experience into a relaxing break).

Debrief

In any context of emotional intensity or dedicated engagement to a shared task, daily debriefing is a minimum requirement for all staff. You need to be able to go into the office of a colleague, shut the door, and talk for a few minutes about whatever’s on your mind. You also need to be able to call dependable mentors and peers (paid or otherwise) who will give you supportive and ethical feedback and advice. Without such support, you simply cannot preserve your empathy or your dedication.

Practice Energetic Reinforcement

Depending on your point of view about the nature of human interaction, you may or not believe in the energy system. But even if you do not subscribe to a model of energetic interaction, you are probably familiar with the psychology of body language, boundaries, and personal space. Use a practice (before you meet with challenging students/clients/customers, for example) that gives you the sense of being protected from emotional or energetic material you do not wish to absorb.

Practice Some Type of Health Practice

Among the consistent commonalities of effective teams is commitment, as a group and individually, to some type of health and wellness practice (yoga, Tai Chi, running, gardening, whatever). The activity itself matters little; what’s important is the intent to share and deepen team relationships by way of mutual activity.

Train Together

In the corporate and educational worlds, in social services, in psychology and counselling, things change quickly (and with many disagreements). As such, ongoing professional development is an absolutely essential requirement for professionalism. Team members who train together assist the team in two ways: personally, by way of enhanced skills and contributions; and synergistically, by way of deepened relationships.

Avoid Politics

The consistent poison in most organizations is politics: of unions, of management, of team dynamics, of “the way things are done.” The most effective way to diminish your personal sense of purpose and compromise your professional direction is to become involved in these squabbles, which do not end and which routinely fracture organizations.

Fight the “Corrosion of Character”

For reasons having to do with history, politics, and the economy, modern management and union practices have the tendency to erode traditional work values such as loyalty, commitment, and team cohesion. Large organizations have great difficulty resisting this corrosion of character (a phrase from Richard Sennett), but individual teams can make different choices: at the local level, where a high degree of daily autonomy exists. The skills for management at the local level are soft skills — effective communication and conflict resolution mostly — and should be taught to every team member.