Team building trust activities in the workplace

Trust is the foundation of leadership. Any winning team has worked and established trust towards each other and the teams´ ability to accomplish results. Your result as a leader is in direct proportion to your skills in creating strong, collaborating teams.

To illustrate the power of teamwork in a five-member team:

10+ 10+ 10+ 10+ 10 = 50 (Not working together)

10* 10* 10* 10* 10 = 100 000 (Working together)

You will go from an additive to a multiplicative team, and the difference is huge. Studies have shown that a team’s ability to solve complex problems increases with the amount of openness and trust in a group.

This is especially essential when It comes to putting together and developing your management team.

There are numerous ways how you can develop a strong management team, and here are some tips:

Do a check-in

Introduce a check-in at some meetings where everyone can talk for 5-10 min about basically anything (personal life, work, expectations, how is everything working out for you, etc.)

This enables each and everyone to feel listened and also allows everyone to get a better understanding of where specific behaviors are coming from.

Invest time and money in teambuilding

If you are new in building teams, I recommend you hire a coach. As the leader, you need to introduce guidance and direction, and the person you are hiring can provide the tools. It is not possible to let someone else develop your team because you are the one why will eventually lead the team.

Have the right members on the team

If there are members in your management that you feel is not contributing to the team result, they need to change, or they need to go. Sometimes you´ll have very high performing people on your them, but they are not contributing to the team.

It is like when Michael Jordan (great basketball player) was put on the bench, and he came up to the coach and asked:

“I am the best player on the team, why do I have to sit on the bench.”

The coach responded:

“Yes, you are the best player on the team, but you don´t make the team better.”

Establish a growth mindset

Let the group understand that the result for everyone as individuals is dependent on the growth of the team. Therefore everyone needs to develop and contribute to the teams’ growth.

If you are number one, you should work as if you were number two.

Work with values

Have the team understand and work according to the team and corporate values. Leadership is visual. You cannot expect the coworkers to cooperate if the management team cannot cooperate. “

Give each other feedback

Feedback and self-reflection are the foundation for learning. To have an open and trustful environment will foster an influential feedback culture.

One vigorous exercise you can do is having the group talk about what is talkable, what is nearly talkable, and what is not talkable. The trick to this is by talking about what’s not talkable, it will become talkable if you understand what I mean.

Get to know the teams’ different colors.

We are all different when it comes to personalities. Do an assessment to see your team colleges strength and blind spots. Have the team appreciate and focus on each other advantages rather than one other shortcoming.

Various assessments can be used. One famous is the DISC model.

Do something fun together.

Do something with the team outside of work and get to know each other more. Learn more about the person and what their interests are. The cooperation will increase.

Here you can do everything from cocking, go on a sailboat, bowling, etc. You understand what I mean.

Finally, work on building trust, and you will see amazing results.

If you want to learn a lot more about trust and team-building go to my leadership training site, here.