Your team is built on team spirit. It is the foundation for their success, and you need that foundation to be strong.
If it isn’t, whatever is built on top of it will be unstable, or it may even come crumbling down. You could still get good results, but in general your team performance will be mediocre at best. It may look ok from the outside, and you may not have that many obvious problems. But your team will not grow or develop.
So to make sure they operate at their best, you need to nurture that team spirit. And now, let’s see how you do that.
Team spirit is built on trust, safety, and appreciation
Team members need to be seen as individuals, and feel that their personalities are appreciated.
The most important thing in this is trust. Trust allows people to feel safe to express and realize their own ideas. It encourages you to keep trying and remain curious. It gives you the courage to own up to your mistakes and share your successes.
In a safe, trusting team, any issues are brought up instead of sweeping them under the carpet.
Team members are seen as individuals, and their personalities are appreciated. They are given space to be themselves while working towards the same goal. Appreciation can be expressed by the small gestures we have learned in kindergarten. Gestures like:
- saying thanks and hello
- giving feedback
- listening to others
- looking other people in the eye.
Being in a hurry is often used as an excuse for not doing these things, but it is also the most typical factor that eats away at appreciation. Express appreciation: look other people in the eye, listen to them genuinely, say thanks – even if you were in a hurry. All good things you give your team will come back to you in the form of a nice work environment.
Good teams communicate
To improve team spirit, start from the basics: a shared vision, distinct roles, fair and available leadership, understanding and acceptance of diversity, and clear communication.
Some teams can communicate without saying a word. Outsiders can feel their strong team spirit without understanding their communication. Trust, appreciation, and safety have reached perfection.
But you do need words to communicate within and outside your team, so consider what and how to communicate, what media to use, and who to reach.
In everyday interaction, you might not need to give much consideration to communication, but the more important or complicated the matter, the more effort you should put into it. As a general rule, colleagues rarely discuss important matters too much. I have never heard anyone blame their co-worker for explaining something too simply and clearly.
Good team spirit can be seen and heard
When visiting other companies, do you notice what kind of atmosphere they have? If you pay attention to it, even as an outsider you can draw conclusions about the quality of their team spirit.
In a good team, positivity comes naturally and can be felt outside the team. In one company, we helped a team communicate more openly and fluently. We challenged them to say hello to their teammates and other teams. Later, at a more advanced stage, we asked them to give positive feedback to each other.
For a while, the team stood out from the others due to its positivity, making them seem even slightly odd. But as the team members continued doing this, their positivity also spread to other teams. Natural positivity has immeasurable power.
“A hundred small fish can overpower one giant fish”
A functional team doesn’t have superstars, but rather a cheerful attitude to work. Everyone is a specialist in something. The team’s functionality and productivity are based on how well it works together.
I often compare a good team spirit to a group of fish which can, together, overpower a big fish.
Start improving team spirit by looking around you, saying hello, and giving feedback to others.
Published: Mar 31, 2022
