Teamwork is the most important and least developed soft skill. Arguably everything we do is dependent on other people. Performance and outcomes are dependent on how well the team works together.
Just like a flower, unless we give it constant attention and care, it will wither and die. The same goes for teamwork and relationships with teammates.
Too many talk about how important culture and teamwork are without prioritizing it and taking action. Here is a “training-wheels” edition of super simple, quick actions any size team or organization can take.
These team building activities can be done once a month or twice a month. Typically, they will take 10 minutes or less on an average size team. Human resources professionals can work with managers to execute these team building activities with their teams.
There are many more team building activities, but these are the least time consuming with the most impact.
Activities 1-4, you can go through these multiple times. In a team meeting, go around the group and have everyone do one of these in a meeting. It should take 10 minutes or less.
With 5-6, there are specific instructions below.
These four team building activities are quick-hitting (30 seconds to one minute per person) and will make an immediate impact. Research studies show being grateful and thanking others can increase team performance by 30%+.
There are TONS of research studies on this. Here is one. “The HAAS School of Business at UC Berkeley found that people who feel recognized are 23% more effective and productive, but those who feel like the people around them genuinely care are a whopping 43% more effective. Not only that, 66% of employees (76% for millennials) say they would “likely leave their job if they didn’t feel appreciated.”
1) What are three things you are grateful for? (Take 30 seconds to one minute for each person. The group leader and/or most senior person goes first).
2) Who on the team do you want to thank for helping you in the recent past? What did they do and how did it help you? (Take one minute for each person. The group leader and/or most senior person goes first).
3) Text or email someone in the organization (but not on the team) to thank them for helping you. Be specific on what they did and how it helped you. You have five minutes to email/text the person.
4) Choose one question from Cards Against Mundanity. Go around the team and have everyone answer it.
Two Additional team building activities:
5) Have everyone give each team member a Thanksgiving Day a week before Thanksgiving. Write out a personal message to thank them for something or to express your gratitude towards them. Keep it to one to two paragraphs maximum.
6) Hidden Strengths Exercise
We all have great strengths, but we may not recognize or realize them. The easiest way to calibrate how we see ourselves versus how others see us is to explicitly ask them. This exercise does that. It helps you uncover what people see as your greatest strengths.
Step 1: Have everyone write down three positive qualities they see in their team members. For each person, write it down on a sheet and give it to the person. You don’t need to write your name on it.
Step 2: Have each person read through the words.
Step 3: Pick out three words that stand out to you. Perhaps they are words that have been repeated the most.
Step 4: Each person shares their three words and answers the following questions. Other team members should provide their thoughts and feelings during the discussion.
A) Why did you choose them?
B) How surprised are you about the words that were chosen by the team? Share why you were surprised or not surprised.
C) How can you put them into action more with your teammates? What specific actions can you take?
Step 5: Write down the words and put them in a picture frame on your desk to remind you to put these words into actions every single day. You can also just tape the piece of paper to your monitor.
Board of Directors/Advisors is absolutely critical for an organization and startup to have. It’s very tricky and complex to set up, and it can be risky too. You also need very experienced, seasoned and highly-skilled professionals who can provide expert guidance, clearly identify blind spots, help you navigate through tough times, and brainstorm with. Finding these types of individuals isn’t easy!
There are some obvious challenges. First, since they aren’t involved in day-to-day operations, they’ll have a lack of information and insights into the business and personalities.
This also makes it hard on board members. The ambiguity, uncertainty, and unknowns can cause a lot of fear and anxiousness. Combinations of these elements can lead successful people to want to exert more control and micro-manage details.
Therefore, there is also a balance on how much influence to give to them and how much guidance you seek out.
There is no pyramid or hierarchical structure between a board and a management team.
Board/Management Team relationship a delicate, nuanced balance that must be nurtured and carefully crafted. Each side must “stand in each other’s shoes” and listen first and more than they speak. Otherwise poor collaboration, misunderstandings, and miscommunication will arise.
Having a great board isn’t that common and it’s difficult to pull off. Often times, the board can often derail the management team. They also can be anger, major frustrations and huge conflicts that suck up a tremendous amount of time. These things will lead to failure and/or underperformance.
How you structure it, manage meetings and maintain ongoing communication and collaboration is something you should carefully plan out.
Here are some questions to ask to build a board or to add professionals to help to take the organization to the next level of success and reach your ultimate goal(s):
When a crisis hits and you are in a “hell storm”, which board member would you call first? Why? Who would be second? Why?
Let’s play a game. If your board was actually your executive team, what capabilities and qualities are missing?
What specific skills does your board need overall? What do you have currently? What do you need?
How would public investors view your board? What would they applaud? What would they believe is lacking?
What’s the policy and procedures for holding the board accountable? Who enforces that?
Have you clearly defined all the roles and responsibilities for the board and interactions with the management team?
What’s the current relationships between the board and management team (and their staff)?
Learning and development is something I’ve always been passionate about. I’m a naturally curious, research oriented and understand the value of strategic training.
I work with clients (either HR and/or management team) to help them with their training and development needs. Here are a few areas:
Create and implement a strategic program for the entire organization.
Create and implement a culture development program, employee experience, and employee engagement program.
Work with HR on their onboarding process
Develop a learning and development program, manager training and/or leadership development program.
It’s exciting to take an idea and see it through execution to making a huge impact for an organization. It’s never easy, but always worth it!
Reach out to me if you are interested in these services and/or have any questions.
I had a strategy for Season 1 and it just took too long and it was too difficult to produce on an on-going basis. I wanted it to be an in-person audio/video interview where I interviewed game-changing professionals all over the US. It seemed like a great idea in my head and when I spoke to people, but the execution of it became overwhelming.
It took me a while, but now I’m going to be audio-only and focus on it not being perfect in everywhere.
Like life, it’s a learning process.
Here is what you will be in store for….
What is the Executive Breakthroughs Podcast?
It’s where high-performing executives, entrepreneurs, and rising stars, just like you, come to learn from their business heroes on how to make your unique mark on the world, maximize leadership and performance, create a culture of rockstar talent (i.e. be an expert team builder), become a great manager, and more. HINT: It takes more than bean bag chairs, a waffle bar, and all those perks on “Silicon Valley.”
We’ll talk visionary leadership, bold entrepreneurship, building epic teams and winning management styles. Wild creativity paired with disciplined productivity and great teamwork. Embracing fear, and stamping out impostor syndrome and limiting beliefs. Tiny missteps, and epic misfires. Mistakes you can skip, and strategies you can steal. (Because stealing pens and Post-it notes is for amateurs.)
This show will make you a better leader, manager, team builder, investor and — most important — a better thinker and problem-solver.
Executive Breakthroughs Podcast will teach you to:
Build the highest performing & most engaged teams to significantly increase your bottom line (i.e. you’ll become a team building expert!)
Identify & dissolve your hidden (& unconscious) patterns that are sabotaging your success (i.e. blindspots), and replace them with a new game-changing mindset and self-awareness
Maximize your leadership potential & performance, & find your unique superpowers to become the best version of yourself
New managers will learn strategies, best practices & tools to increase their effectiveness
Human resources professionals will learn how to maximize employee engagement and experience, resolve and mediate conflicts, create “world class” employee onboarding & new hire processes, deal with difficult employees, & much more.
Sales leaders will learn how to build the highest performing sales teams, skyrocket trust and rapport with customers & podcasts, more successfully manage others, work across the organization with other groups much better, & much more.
Master relationship building (and business networking) with reborn confidence, authenticity & charisma to create valuable social capital
On the HR Works Podcast we discuss how leaders can successfully step into vulnerability, how to build high performing teams and how to skyrocket employee engagement quickly.
“With organizations losing unbelievable amounts of money to poor employee engagement, I always wonder what stops leaders from properly addressing this problem. In this episode of HR Works, we find a critical ingredient to successful leadership and employee engagement: vulnerability.”
We also discuss how to use my free team building game, CardsAgainstMundanity.com, that more than 20,000+ employees are using to skyrocket trust, engagement, teamwork and performance.
This episode’s guest is Jason Treu, an executive coach who helps executives, managers, and employees to maximize their leadership and management abilities and perform at the highest levels. He provides coaching, workshops, keynote speaking, and other training services.
Jason also has “in the trenches experience” helping build a billion-dollar company and working with many Fortune 100 companies. He spent 15+ years working in marketing leadership positions in Silicon Valley working with influential leaders such as Steve Jobs (Apple & Pixar), Reed Hastings (CEO at Netflix), Mark Cuban, Mark Hurd (CEO at HP), Paul Wahl (President of SAP), and many others.
