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Teamwork gets paid a lot of lip service in business. And for good reason -- teamwork often provides the crucial element that separates winners from losers in the world of business. But bringing your team together can be a challenge.
Teamwork Exercises
Teamwork exercises can help establish a team feeling. You can find teamwork exercises all over the Internet. Of, if you prefer, you can bring in an outside consultant to pick the best exercises for your team. It’s not a magic bullet by any means, but it can lay the groundwork for increased cooperation.
Retreats
Retreats can provide a number of benefits for your team. They can get your employees to feel a greater sense of personal connection to other members of the team. They also often include a healthy amount of teamwork exercises.
Philanthropy and Volunteering
Picking a charity for your business to get behind can create a sense of teamwork by sleight of hand. While it can be difficult getting people to cohere as a team around business, it can also be far easier to get people to come together as a team for a good cause. All such ventures must be strictly voluntary. However, once you find a good cause for everyone to rally around, you’ll find that even people who might have personal or professional disagreements can set aside their differences to achieve a common goal. This sense of teamwork can translate to increased cohesion on the job.
Openness and Communication
Many times, unstated resentments and disagreements can conspire to make your employees less than a team. One way to combat this is to have open, professional lines of communication. Rather than allowing problems to simmer, an open environment of communication can get such problems resolved quickly and professionally.
Company Lunches
You can’t expect everyone in your organization to get along and be friends all the time. However, you can foster a sense of camaraderie with things like company lunches. Once a month or so, go all out. Have a big company cookout. Take a couple hours for lunch and other fun activities. While you might bristle at the idea of socializing on company time, remember that, after their family, these are the people your employees are going to spend the most time with. A sense of intimacy personally can translate into a closer-knit team.
Support
One way that people will feel an instant sense of teamwork is when they get support from other members of the team. While you can’t enforce support in your team, you can express to your team how important it is to support the other members. When someone needs a little help, team members should be willing to provide this support. They’ll almost certainly have it repaid in kind when they need the same support.
Fostering a Sense of Teamwork
A sense of teamwork can make or break the success of an organization. Unlike other qualities, it’s hard to “require” a sense of teamwork in your employees. The very act of “requirement” is self-defeating. You can, however, engage in a certain set of behaviors that trend toward a greater sense of teamwork. While the results won’t be instant, they will grow over time. With just a little attention in the right places, you can bring your organization to a new level through the power of teamwork.
Photo courtesy of woodleywonderworks via Flickr