Simon Cress
More often than not, if you’re running a successful company you’ll probably have at least a few employees that make up a team.
Whether you’re a company of three or 300, the ability to work together collaboratively and have a sense of cohesion as a team can impact your business growth, and determine if you have a long-lasting company or one that struggles over time. Thankfully, team cohesion is something that you can cultivate and build over the years — as long as you invest the time and resources to do so.
Below are some of the top 10 ways that you can improve team cohesion within your company.
1. Celebrate wins together
With many companies moving their teams to hybrid or remote working models, it can be easy to quickly shut off computers at the end of the working day or not get together to acknowledge the success of a project. But taking the time to celebrate wins is one of the key ways you can build cohesion within your team.
If your team is remote, book some time either in-person or on a video call to mark a project that’s gone well. That can take the form of a night out with drinks, or even just a planned Zoom where everyone has a beer or coffee and acknowledges a job well done. Celebrating wins also is motivational for team members and can get them excited about the next big projects.
2. Provide development and training
It’s important that every member of your team feels confident in their ability to do a great job, which in turn can make them feel like valuable contributors to a team. Investing in development and training can help to build their skills and improve their ability to do well at work, which in turn builds team cohesion.
3. Build trust
There’s no team work (or positive relationship of any kind for that matter) without trust. As a company, that includes trust your employees feel to their employer, and trust between one another. One of the key ways to do this is to promote transparency within your company.
Encourage your team members to be open and honest with one another and feel comfortable sharing if they are struggling with a task or personal issue.
4. Partake in team building activities
One of the top ways to create a sense of team cohesion within your company is to partake in team building activities. This encourages a positive morale and helps build bonds between team members and across different departments, as everyone can get to know each other a little better outside of a work setting.
Volunteering, team activities like bingo that can also be played online at Jackpotjoy, and more.
5. Promote good communication
Great cohesion starts with communication, which is why it’s such a powerful personal tool to promote within your business.
Promoting good communication practices and giving your team the tools to do so (platforms like Slack, for example) is a great place to start. It’s important to consistently review how communication functions with your team as it evolves over time, so be sure to check in every few months or so to ensure it’s occurring effectively.
6. Have clear values
Clear values are important for most aspects of running a business, but especially when it comes to your team. Everyone should not only be aware of your company’s values but understand how they are implemented on a day-to-day basis. Write these values down, share them and be sure to revisit them when the time’s right.
7. Make employees feel empowered
The owners of successful businesses know how important it is to empower your team. Giving people ownership over activities or tasks helps to build a sense of self worth and responsibility that has a positive impact on the team as a whole.
8. Mediate conflict
Having different personalities and people with different responsibilities in a group can inevitably lead to some degree of conflict. The ability to mediate issues when they arise and resolve challenges as a group can help contribute to a team’s overall cohesiveness.
The first step is open communication and making every employee feel they can share their opinion and that it’s valued.
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