Put a group of talented athletes together.
Give them matching uniforms. Hand them a playbook. Tell them what time practice starts. Give them a schedule and a common goal. Then walk away.
Would you expect them to become a great team? Probably not.
They might eventually figure some things out. Friendships would develop. Leaders would emerge. Players would begin to understand one another’s tendencies. Some chemistry might happen organically.
But, as their leader, would you stake an entire season on it? Probably not.
Yet businesses do a version of this every day. We hire talented people and put them into departments, project groups, leadership teams and cross-functional committees. We then give them email addresses to communicate, software to get their job done, and job descriptions with performance goals. Then, far too often, we hope for the best.
That is exactly why team building in the workplace matters.
We hope they communicate effectively and that they trust one another. We hope the veteran employee welcomes the new hires. And we hope the 24-year-old and the 58-year-old understand each other. We expect that the executive listens to the person three levels below them. And that the full-time employee values the contribution of the part-time employee. We hope different personalities, backgrounds, experiences, communication styles and responsibilities somehow come together.
In other words, we hope a collection of people becomes a high performing team. But hope isn’t a team-building strategy. Great teams don’t simply happen. They are built.
Why Is Team Building Important in the Workplace?
One of the biggest misconceptions about teamwork is that proximity creates chemistry. It doesn’t. Working in the same building doesn’t make people a team. Being on the same Zoom call doesn’t make people a team. Reporting to the same manager doesn’t make people a team. Having the same company logo on a business card doesn’t make people a great team.
A team develops when people learn how to work with one another in a way that fosters peak performance to reach outcomes. That takes intention.
People need to understand questions such as:
- What are we trying to accomplish together?
- What does each person bring to the team?
- How do we communicate?
- How do we handle disagreements?
- Who needs what information?
- How do we make decisions?
- What happens when somebody makes a mistake?
- Can I ask for help?
- Can I challenge an idea without challenging a person?
- Do people notice my contribution?
- Can we hold each other accountable?
- Do I belong here?
- Am I getting the feedback I need to succeed?
These aren’t “soft” questions. They are performance questions. When people understand the answers, they can spend less energy navigating each other and more energy accomplishing the work.
What Does the Research Say About Team Building and Team Performance?
I have not found a simple research category that divides organizations into “companies that do team building” and “companies that don’t.”
But there is extensive research into employee engagement, collaboration, team effectiveness, trust and the role leaders play in creating high-performing teams.
And the findings are difficult to ignore.
In a Gallup article entitled, “The Science of High Performing Teams,” their research on more than 183,000 teams found that teams in the top 25% of employee engagement significantly outperform those in the bottom 25%. Highly engaged teams were 18% more productive in sales, 14% more productive based on production records and evaluations, and 23% more profitable.
Meanwhile, research reported by SHRM found an average 39% productivity loss among teams because of poor collaboration. Among the least effective teams, that loss climbed to 60%.
Atlassian’s 2024 State of Teams research estimated that Fortune 500 companies lose an astonishing 25 billion work hours annually to ineffective collaboration. In the same research, 93% of executives said their teams could achieve similar outcomes in half the time if they collaborated more effectively.
Think about that. It seems that these statitics would support build in team building efforts.
What Are the Benefits of Team Building in the Workplace?
The best team building does much more than give employees an enjoyable afternoon away from their desks. Done intentionally, it can strengthen the way people work together every day.
Team Building Can Accelerate Trust
Trust can develop organically over time. But why leave it entirely to time? Leaders can accelerate trust by creating opportunities for employees to understand one another beyond job titles, departments and responsibilities.
When I understand how you think, what you value, what you’re good at and what you need from me, it becomes easier for us to work together.
Team Building Improves Communication
Many workplace problems that appear to be performance problems are actually communication problems. People make assumptions. Messages get interpreted differently. Some employees want details. Others want the bottom line. There will be team members who process ideas by talking, where others need time to think.
Strong teams learn these differences instead of becoming frustrated by them.
Team Building Can Strengthen Psychological Safety
Employees need to know they can ask questions, admit mistakes, share ideas and respectfully challenge assumptions. That doesn’t mean everyone agrees. In fact, great teams don’t avoid disagreement. They learn how to disagree without destroying trust.
Team Building Helps New Employees Integrate Faster
A new employee isn’t simply learning a job. They’re learning a culture. Who talks to whom? How are decisions really made? Who has the information they need? What happens when something goes wrong? What does “urgent” mean around here?
Intentional team development helps new employees understand those unwritten dynamics faster.
Team Building Helps Bridge Generations and Experience Levels
Today’s workplace can bring together people at dramatically different stages of life and career. That’s an advantage if leaders use it. The employee with 25 years of experience possesses knowledge that may never appear in a manual. The employee who arrived 25 days ago may notice opportunities everyone else has stopped seeing.
Great teams don’t ask, “Which perspective is better?” Instead they ask, “What can we learn from each other?”
Team Building Can Improve Efficiency
When employees understand roles, expectations, communication preferences and decision-making processes, there is less unnecessary friction. That leads to fewer duplicated efforts, misunderstandings, and unnecessary meetings. It also means few moments of “I thought you were doing that.”
Better teamwork isn’t simply more pleasant. It can make work more efficient. And it can lead to better than expected outcomes.
Team Building Is More Than Trust Falls and Company Picnics
Part of the problem may be the phrase team building itself.
Mention team building and some people immediately picture trust falls, ropes courses, company picnics, bowling nights or an awkward icebreaker where everyone has to share something interesting about themselves. Those activities can be fun and are sometimes appropriate. But that’s not really the heart of team building.
Real team building is the intentional process of helping people understand one another well enough to perform better together.
It could happen over lunch. Sometimes it happens through a facilitated exercise. It might happen during a difficult conversation. Maybe it’s when a manager takes 15 minutes to ask a team what is getting in their way. Sometimes it happens during an off-site workshop where people finally have enough time and space to talk about how they actually work together.
The activity, itself, is not the goal. Better teamwork is the goal. In other words, the relationship, understanding and improved performance that come from the activity are the goal.
What Happens When Organizations Don’t Invest in Team Building?
Teams will develop a culture whether leaders intentionally build one or not. The question is: What kind of culture will develop? When team building is ignored, people tend to fill information gaps themselves.
Examples:
- “She never asks for my opinion, so she must not value it.”
- “He always asks questions. Maybe he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
- “They’ve been here forever. They’re never going to listen to somebody new.”
- “Leadership already knows what it wants, so why speak up?”
- “That’s not my department.”
- “Nobody recognizes what I do anyway.”
Those assumptions quietly become walls. And the longer those walls remain, the harder they become to tear down. Eventually, organizations may begin to see the symptoms:
- Meetings become longer.
- Emails multiply.
- People stop asking questions.
- Departments protect information.
- New employees struggle to find their place.
- Experienced employees feel overlooked.
- People complain about colleagues instead of talking to them.
- Ideas aren’t shared because someone assumes they won’t be heard.
- The same misunderstandings occur repeatedly.
- People become protective of their territory.
- Talented employees may eventually leave.
Leadership can diagnose each issue separately when many share a common root: The organization invested in individuals but didn’t invest enough in the team.
Diversity of Experience Can Become a Team’s Competitive Advantage
Think about the knowledge already sitting inside your organization.
A 25-year employee knows things about an organization that aren’t written anywhere. New employees see things that longtime employees have stopped noticing.
A senior leader understands the organization’s broader strategy. And a frontline employee sees exactly how that strategy collides with reality.
A younger employee may bring a completely different relationship with technology. An experienced employee may recognize a problem because they’ve already lived through three versions of it.
The person who talks the most may generate energy and the person who talks the least may be sitting on the best idea in the room.
Team building creates opportunities for those perspectives to meet. That is where organizations begin to unlock something much more powerful than individual talent: collective intelligence.
Great teams don’t require everyone to think alike. They require people to understand how to think together.
Six Easy Team-Building Strategies Leaders Can Start Now
Team building in the workplace doesn’t have to require an enormous budget, an off-site retreat or an outside facilitator.
Managers can start with simple practices.
1. Start Some Meetings With a Human Question
Not every meeting needs an icebreaker, but occasionally ask something that allows people to learn about one another.
- What is something you’re proud of this month?
- What is one thing people here probably don’t know about you?
- Who had an impact on your career?
- What part of your job gives you the most energy?
Five minutes of conversation can change how people see the person sitting across from them.
2. Create “How I Work” Conversations
Have team members discuss their preferences.
- When do you do your best work?
- How do you prefer to receive feedback?
- What frustrates you during a project?
- How do you like people to approach you with a problem?
- What do you need from teammates when you’re under pressure?
Imagine how many workplace conflicts could be prevented if people simply knew these answers.
3. Rotate Leadership Opportunities
Give different employees opportunities to facilitate meetings, present updates or lead small projects. This develops people while helping colleagues see capabilities they might otherwise miss.
4. Celebrate Teamwork, Not Just Individual Results
Most organizations are very good at measuring individual performance, and of course that is important. But make sure you’re also recognizing collaboration.
- Who helped someone else succeed?
- Who shared information?
- Who made another department better?
- Who stepped into a gap?
- Who demonstrated what great teamwork looks like?
What leaders celebrate gets repeated.
5. Build Cross-Functional Connections
Pair employees who normally don’t interact. Invite another department to lunch. Create short-term cross-functional projects. Ask employees to teach one another something about their roles.
Many organizational silos aren’t created intentionally. They’re simply never intentionally dismantled.
6. Conduct Regular Team Checkups
Ask three simple questions:
- What’s working?
- What’s getting in our way?
- What should we do differently?
Then, and this is the important part, do something intentional with the answers.
When Does a Team Need a Team-Building Workshop?
There are also times when a team needs more than a 15-minute exercise at a staff meeting.
Maybe the organization has grown rapidly, or two departments have merged, or that leadership has changed. Maybe communication has deteriorated, or there is an unresolved conflict. Or maybe it’s the fact that employees are working hard but don’t seem to be working together. It could also be that things are going well and leadership recognizes that “good” teams don’t automatically become great teams.
That’s when it can be valuable to step outside the normal work environment and intentionally work on the team instead of simply working as the team.
Here are some examples:
- A half-day workshop.
- A full-day retreat.
- A leadership development program.
- Team assessments.
- Facilitated conversations around communication, accountability, trust or conflict.
- Cross-functional problem-solving sessions.
- An ongoing team-development process.
This is part of the work we do at Courtside Leadership. But whether an organization works with us or another skilled facilitator, the objective should be the same:
Create intentional space for people to better understand themselves, better understand their teammates and practice working more effectively together.
A successful team-building workshop shouldn’t simply make people feel good for an afternoon. People should return to work doing something differently.
What Sports Figured Out About Team Building a Long Time Ago
There is something almost every successful sports organization understands that businesses occasionally forget. Practice isn’t only for improving individual skills.
Teams practice being a team.
- They practice communication.
- They practice roles.
- They practice responding to pressure.
- They practice helping.
- They practice recovering from mistakes.
- They practice adjusting when the original plan doesn’t work.
- They watch film together.
- They talk about what happened.
- They develop shared language.
- They celebrate.
- They challenge each other.
- They recieve feedback.
And coaches continually watch how the pieces fit together. A coach wouldn’t say: “We hired talented players. They’ll figure out teamwork eventually.” The coach knows that talent alone doesn’t win.
Talent has to become:
- Coordinated.
- Connected.
- Trusted.
- Accountable.
- Aligned.
That is just as true in a business conference room as it is in sports.
Great Leaders Don’t Leave Teamwork to Chance
There will always be an organic part of team chemistry. Some colleagues will naturally connect. Many personalities will immediately click. Certain groups will develop rhythms faster than others. That’s wonderful.
But leaders shouldn’t outsource team performance to chemistry and chance.
Organizations train people to use software. They train them on compliance and policy. Companies train employees on products and procedures. And leaders train managers to understand budgets and operations.
Why wouldn’t they also spend time teaching people how to work effectively with the human beings beside them?
Team building isn’t time away from the work. Team building is part of the work.
Because when the new employee and the veteran trust each other, work moves faster. And when different generations value what each brings, the organization gets smarter. When executives listen to frontline employees, decisions improve. Every time departments stop protecting turf, customers benefit. If people feel comfortable asking questions, mistakes get caught earlier. When teammates understand each other’s strengths, they stop duplicating effort. And if people know they matter to the people around them, they bring more of themselves to the mission.
Great teams rarely happen by accident. No doubt, some chemistry may happen organically. But great leaders don’t simply hope their people will figure it out.
They build the conditions that allow teamwork to happen.
And then they keep building. Because whether you’re trying to win a championship or build a great organization, assembling talented people is only the beginning.
The real advantage comes when those people learn how to become a team.
culture, Healthy Teams, High Performing Teams, Teamwork Strategies