Are Your Employees Bringing Out the Best in One Another?

How to encourage better teamwork

Leaders should engineer an environment that empowers employees to motivate and support one another. Here are six starting points.

1. Create conditions where trust wins.

Teamwork frequently creates an atmosphere of trepidation rather than trust. Employees are often scared to share their ideas, fearing they’ll be misunderstood or face poorly phrased “constructive” criticism.

Leaders create a safe atmosphere that encourages team members to openly share their ideas and perspectives. One way to do this is by opening up your workplace to feedback. Enact a system of regular, structured feedback where you ask everyone on the team to share something. Appreciate and listen to their thoughts and ideas — positive or negative. This will gradually increase feelings of trust throughout the team.

2. Manufacture team-building opportunities.

Healthy collaboration doesn’t just happen; you must create opportunities for cooperation. Don’t let your employees develop ideas in isolation. Instead, encourage workplace collaboration by scheduling fellowship sessions during the workday.

Take a collaborative approach to every issue your company faces. Consider hosting weekly brainstorming sessions with various team members to discuss solutions. Additionally, make collaboration social by alternating quiet work time with open Q&A time.

Most successful problem-solvers don’t find answers immediately or in isolation. They’re often curious and ask questions in a group setting. Create an atmosphere where this can happen.

3. Prioritize diversity on your team.

Leaders sometimes place employees in groups according to similar backgrounds, skill levels or personalities. While it’s natural to want team members to see eye to eye, assembling more diverse, counterintuitive groups can lead to more productive collaboration. Diverse teams motivate each other to think independently and dive deeper into issues.

With each new opportunity for collaboration, ask yourself how you can mix up team members to challenge the status quo. Consider gender, ethnicity, age and personality types. Get your employees out of their comfort zones — that’s where they’ll grow.

4. Use tools that foster collaboration.

Tech tools can help improve communication and collaboration even when employees aren’t in the same physical space. “It’s important to foster a sense of community and camaraderie among your team members in order for your organization to run efficiently,” explained Brad Hall, co-founder and CEO of SONU Sleep. “You may have a lot of top talent on your team, but nothing good will come out of that if your team isn’t communicating.”

Intuitive collaboration tools that help keep employees engaged include Slack, Microsoft 365, Asana and Trello. “Slack, Trello, Google Docs and Asana are among the most popular [collaboration tools],” noted Kyle MacDonald, VP of marketing and business development at Mojio. “Any tool or app that allows your team to easily communicate with one another, keep track of project status and share files with each other is going to help foster a teamwork environment.”

Your organization can only run smoothly if your team communicates effectively; consequently, it’s crucial to encourage collaboration both in and outside the workplace.

5. Clearly define team members’ roles.

Having clearly defined roles within their team helps employees feel valued and more comfortable contributing.

“While it might not seem connected, your team will function much better as an actual team if each member knows what their individual role in the team is,” MacDonald shared. “This way, each team member can fulfill their duties and then help out other team members that might need it.”

MacDonald added that with clearly defined roles, each team member can get their work done more efficiently. “Your productivity and performance stats will increase by being clear on each individual’s roles and responsibilities,” MacDonald explained.

6. Set mutual, attainable goals for your team.

Setting and tracking goals as a group fosters a sense of teamwork and encouragement. “If employees are all working toward the same thing as one, they are much more likely to help each other out, communicate and work together to reach the goal, especially if it benefits everyone as a whole or there is a shared reward,” explained Joanna Zambas, content and social media manager and career expert at CareerAddict. 

Individual goals can be valuable, but they’re not conducive to team building. For example, say you’re building a sales team and create a contest for the top salesperson. People may be encouraged to attain a sales goal, but it won’t foster teamwork. Zambas noted that — if anything — that type of goal creates gaps among the team.

Benefits of collaboration and teamwork

Teams that stick together and learn to collaborate can create a stronger business. The team’s collective intelligence will boost performance and allow team members to soar.

Here are three top benefits of effective team building:

• Teamwork creates a positive work environment. Employees working together tend to be invested and optimistic. “When [team] members feel appreciated and supported, they are more likely to be engaged and productive,” said Joey Sasson, VP of sales and logistics at Moving APT. “Additionally, if there’s open communication among team members, everyone will be more likely to understand each other’s goals and how they can best work together to achieve them. Celebrating successes together can help to build team morale and keep everyone motivated. This could be as simple as providing positive feedback or thanking team members for their hard work.”
• Teamwork fosters multiplied motivation. Accountability and respect create additional motivation in teams. “People work harder and faster when they’re accountable to teammates they respect,” said Dave Wolovsky, career growth engineer at EffortWise Coaching. “They also progress faster when learning new skills with other people in real time.”
• Teamwork prompts efficient problem-solving. Teams create a structure to handle issues systematically. “When things go awry, or the team needs to pivot quickly, the systems and relationships are already in place to allow that to happen,” said Emily Guthro, program manager at McLean & Company. “All teams go through internal and external rough patches, but teams who have put effort into defining key processes and actions that created an environment to successfully operate, as opposed to falling into traps of blame and unhealthy conflict, are often more effective and higher performing.”

Team-building mistakes to avoid

Team building is one of the most crucial yet undervalued aspects of emotional intelligence in the workplace. Business is an inherently social environment. People must access collective energy and ideas to innovate.

Without effective teamwork, you’re missing out on creativity. When employees feel disconnected, their ability to think outside the narrow confines of basic tasks is impaired. However, when your staff is part of a healthy group, their work life is eased and empowered. It’s a phenomenon that James Coan, a neuroscientist and researcher at the University of Virginia, calls “load sharing.” When individual pressure is reduced, creativity thrives.

Here are some common team-building mistakes managers make that you should avoid at all costs:

• Choosing the wrong team-building strategies. While traditional icebreakers can be fun, they’re often less effective at developing long-term team cohesion. Instead, implement relevant team-building strategies and engage employees in discussions and projects aligned with your business’s mission. By encouraging teamwork through collaboration on things that matter most to your business, you can develop a more connected and motivated team equipped to handle organizational challenges.
• Wanting teams to be best friends. Leaders sometimes assume that all their employees should be best friends — as if employees who don’t sprint out of work to get together for happy hour are doing something wrong. Though employees must respect one another to work effectively, the best collaboration often takes place between people with vastly different perspectives who would rarely socialize outside of work.
• Assembling the wrong team. When assembling teams, leaders often overvalue skills and undervalue motivations. They pair their best employees with their lowest performers, assuming their top employees will lead and motivate those who need it. Instead, the low performers tend to demotivate the more dedicated employees, undercutting the very people who give the business the most value.
• Not making team building a regular focus. If your team-building efforts end with the employee onboarding process, this can indicate a lack of interest in maintaining a healthy company culture. While early efforts can help co-workers develop relationships, encouraging teamwork throughout an employee’s tenure demonstrates that team building is at the forefront of your business’s mission. This long-term approach helps nurture existing relationships between co-workers while also creating a more unified team environment across all levels of the organization.
• Neglecting feedback. In any business, feedback is a two-way street. Effective team building requires open communication between team members and managers, where feedback flows and is listened to. When managers neglect feedback, employees may question their progress and growth. This can demotivate employees, making them feel unappreciated and less aligned with the business’s goals and values. 

Consequences of poor teamwork

Teamwork is crucial to workplace success, but many companies fail to emphasize its importance. However, when businesses don’t encourage teamwork among employees, they may face negative consequences, including the following:

• Poor teamwork impedes time management. Co-workers who don’t work well together as a team likely won’t communicate effectively. This communication gap can lead to misunderstandings about job responsibilities or project directions that can waste time. For example, they may unintentionally work on the same task or assume someone else is completing a project.
• Poor teamwork hurts project management. Without a shared sense of purpose and responsibility, co-workers are less inclined to generate innovative ideas, produce high-quality work or meet project deadlines. They’re also less likely to effectively problem-solve, leading to more unresolved issues and conflicts throughout a project’s lifespan. These delays and reworks can inflate budgets, making projects more expensive and time-consuming than initially planned.
• Poor teamwork leads to a lack of shared goals. Without a shared sense of teamwork, it’s hard to motivate employees to work toward a common goal. Misaligned teams can create unhealthy workplace competition and dissatisfied employees, affecting everything from retention and turnover rates to productivity and job performance.
• Poor teamwork makes employees feel disengaged. Employees who don’t feel part of the same team are less inclined to support one another. Instead of collaborating to solve problems, disengaged employees may try to pass the blame or shift responsibility without considering how these actions will impact the rest of the team. This behavior can cause employees to resent each other, eroding workplace trust.

Truly great teamwork creates a happy and productive work culture where workers’ problem-solving skills, curiosity, empathy and strengths play off one another in a complementary way.

Sean Peek and Kerry Goyette contributed to this article.