Building a Team

“So if company picnics and similar events are usually failures because they don’t address an employee’s Belonging needs, how can the company address this level of the Hierarchy?” I hear some of you asking. “Should we just give up and let the social interactions in our workgroup go where they will?”

Surprisingly, that doesn’t work well either. If the personnel assigned to you are professionals, who are able to form relationships based on mutual respect and collaborate on projects because the understand the value of pooling skills and experience, then it may be unnecessary to foster better interactions in the group. But most of us will not be so fortunate; the average line manager will face the task of trying to develop a team out of many diverse elements.

The first thing to keep in mind is that people are not as stupid as senior management would like us to think. Trying to manipulate them into doing something is generally not going to work; trying to manipulate them into doing something counter to their own best interest is so likely to fail that I can’t really understand why people keep trying it. To create a meaningful event, we need to begin by figuring out what our people really like to do – and one of the best ways to do this is to ask them. If you are fortunate enough to have an entire group (or even a large majority) of golfers, or bowlers, or baseball fans, those events might be worthwhile. If your group is diverse in its interests, there is always the option of taking them to lunch, or an after-work beer call.

Which brings us to the second thing we need to be mindful of: do not schedule events during evenings, weekends or other unpaid time unless absolutely unavoidable. If the activity you’ve chosen is a sporting event, and the sport is only played on Sundays and Monday nights, for example, then this can’t be helped. But events held on the employees’ time will be seen as unpaid overtime, and resented as usual, particularly if the event itself is unpopular. Similarly, try to avoid events that use up other employee resources, such as money or equipment, as these will also conflict with first-level (Survival) needs. Where possible, schedule these events on company time, or use comp time (where available) to make up for it.

Also, keep in mind that activities that build team interaction do not have to be off-site, extraneous activities. Involving the employees in problem solving activities, and particularly in forward planning cycles, can get them to work together and recognize the different assets each team member brings to the table. Probably the simplest team-building exercise ever invented is what is known as the “No Ranks” discussion. Developed during the Second World War by the British Army’s technology research establishment, these conferences are discussions in which ranks are expressly not observed; in which a humble line employee should have no fears about telling a senior VP that his idea will never work. Whether any useful information will be revealed in such discussions is highly debatable; it is also completely irrelevant. Even if senior management does not learn anything new this way (and they almost always will) the effect on morale, and the cohesion of the team involved, is more than worth the effort.

Of course, part of building a good team is convincing the employees that we are listening to them, and that we value their input and consider them to be an important part of the process. This, however, also takes us into the realm of Recognition, which is level 4 of the Hierarchy of needs…