Surviving the Workday

Dear Ms. Theologian,

I want to forge a team identity for my direct reports as I feel this is lacking.

Do you have any other suggestions for forging a team identity when no one on the team really gets along, and they have not had to act as a team in the past?

-A Manager

Dear Manager –

My own experience with team-building brings together memories of trust walks, ropes courses, and falling backward into the arms of someone I hated. It’s not a pretty picture. Why were these attempts at team-building a cringe-worthy failure?

They didn’t address the underlying issues.

There are resources on this topic by people who know a lot about management. So, know that those tips are available, but let’s work on this from a spiritual point of view.

The first and most important team in each of our lives is our family. That’s right, our first community in life–mommy, daddy, and siblings. Or daddy, daddy, and siblings. Or mommy and no sibs. You get the picture. This family is imprinted on us. It affects us deeply as adults. For the most part, many of us function the same way in teams at work as we function with our families (scary, but true). If we hate our parents and tease our siblings incessantly as a strategy to survive, you better believe that we hate our bosses and tease our coworkers incessantly.

In order to build a team, you need to address everyone’s deep-seated need to belong to a community and have a sense of deeper purpose. In order to do this, you need to instill the values of respect and trust. Without those, there is no chance for a team. This is what a good parents would do. It’s also what a good manager does.

You might begin with one of these sorts of activites: Purposeful and Playful Workshop Exercises and Strategies. These activities can provide a way to encourage respect through listening and open and honest commuication in the workplace. And they aren’t just ice-breakers. They can be used frequently.

In order to have a sense of a team, you need to find ways for people to do their jobs as individuals AND as team-members. If there is no need for them to act as a team, then they probably aren’t going to. You need to find ways for them to have the welfare of the team tied to their individual performance.

I’m sorry that I can’t provide a quick fix for this. It seems to me that with ways to build trust and increase respect in the workplace as well as ways to tie individual performance to the group need to be customized for your place. And you, the manager, are the best person to do this.

–Ms. Theologian

This entry was posted by Ms. Theologian on Sunday, January 22nd, 2006 at 12:21 pm and is filed under letters You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.