How To Develop Team Building Skills

Team building is an integral part of any successful organization. Teams come in all shapes and sizes, with individuals coming together to accomplish separate goals while also supporting each other’s efforts.

As a leader, you will need to develop your team-building skills if you want to maximize the effectiveness of your department and the company as a whole.

Team building can be done at every level – from bringing people together for a specific goal to creating internal teams that work effectively towards a common purpose.

The most effective team builders promote trust, respect, and understanding among teammates, and establish clear roles and responsibilities for everyone involved.

In this article, you will learn about some easy ways to strengthen your team leadership skills. Read on to see how you can boost morale, motivate employees, and create productive working relationships!

Tips for improving team leadership

Here are seven tips to help you improve your team leadership skills. Try out these strategies one at a time to determine which ones make the biggest difference.

1. Use “I” messages instead of telling stories

Too often we get into conversations with people and try to tell our story or get someone else’s opinion by doing so. This is a very inefficient use of their time as well as ours because they have their own life outside of work and they probably don’t agree with what we're trying to convey anyway.

Make eye contact

A strong, consistent flow of communication is a key team-building skill that cannot be overlooked when working with people. When you look someone in the eyes, you are telling them something about yourself and showing how much effort you put into what you are doing at this moment.

When talking to someone, make an effort to look them in the eye while also keeping your face relaxed and expression neutral. This will show other members of the team that you are engaged with the conversation and interested in their thoughts.

For some people, it may be difficult to make eye contact for several reasons- they are shy or have social anxiety, they feel overwhelmed by the topic being discussed, or they do not trust the person they are speaking with.

Whatever the reason, should go away once the conversation has reached its natural conclusion. Once you determine the talk is over, break off the eye contact and take time to reflect on what was said.

Be consistent

Consistency is one of the most important team-building skills you can develop as a leader. When things go wrong, stay calm and keep trying. Keep repeating what has worked in the past or giving clear instructions until everyone agrees that they understand them.

As a leader, your time is limited — there’s never enough of it. You have to make sure every bit of it is invested into something that will leave a lasting positive impact. That means investing in relationships with others, developing leadership qualities, educating people about how to do their jobs, creating an environment where people feel comfortable sharing ideas and being creative, and more.

Consistent behaviour creates consistency of action and effect. For example, if someone consistently behaves angrily towards you, you'll probably stop doing certain things because you fear angering them. If someone is consistently late for meetings, then other members will begin to be late as well. Over time, these effects are lost, and no one feels safe when they're together.

By having those doubts, the inconsistent person doesn't realize the true consequences of their actions. They may even forget why they were angry in the first place! This not only hurts the person who made the mistake but also others around them.

Make plans and invite people to join you

As mentioned earlier, one of the important team-building skills is making new friends. Who you spend time with can influence how much you enjoy your job and vice versa.

As a leader, you will need to make many small talking high-Performance and introductions during meetings and events. You may even have to do it at work when colleagues come and go.

By being friendly and engaging, you’ll gain loyal allies that can help you achieve your goals. Plus, they’ll feel comfortable approaching you about things as they see you both under similar circumstances.

You’d be surprised how many leaders don’t use their position for good. People who are in leadership positions sometimes lack interpersonal skills.

Be a good listener

A lot of people think that being a great speaker means talking a lot, but this is not true! Being a great speaker refers to how well you listen to what other people are saying and then respond with your unique content, insight, and ideas.

Being a good listener will help you in every area of your life; it can’t hurt anything. It will also develop your leadership skills as you’ll learn how to be productive and motivate others by listening to them and understanding their points of view.

Team building exercises often ask participants to talk about something for a set period before moving on to the next person’s topic. By having individuals share their thoughts after this initial discussion, you get to hear more details about what they thought about the topic and how it related to them. This gives you an even better picture of who these people are than you already had!

If someone talks about how much they love working at company X, see if there’s any information you could use to influence future employees towards or away from working at company X. You might find out that some things about the workplace have made it difficult to enjoy work, which could make people feel unhappy and unfulfilled. Or you may discover that management doesn’t seem like its top priority anymore, which could make people feel demoralized.

Ask more questions

Asking good questions is a powerful way to develop team-building skills. Not only do they give you information, but they also push people away or bring them together depending on what answers are given.

Asking good questions can be done in many different ways. You could ask if someone else outside of work does something that makes them feel happy, what made them successful, how they got through a situation, or what their career goal is.

These types of questions are not only insightful, but they also expose parts of people’s lives that they may not even know about themselves at times.

Ask about things that matter to people. It may mean having lunch with colleagues, going for drinks after work, or attending events such as football games to see who your coworkers meet before you.

If there’s anything that matters to someone beyond the workplace, go along with it! A lot of times, people keep these things private because they think everyone will judge them or make assumptions. Don’t assume anything – just come and listen.

Try new things

As mentioned earlier, team building is not about having fun with your colleagues every second of the day. It’s more like creating an environment where people feel comfortable being themselves and exploring different sides of their personalities high-Performance.

By this we mean going out for coffee or lunch as a group, sharing stories, talking about things that matter to you, and investing in each other’s personal growth.

This isn’t always done at work, but when it is – what happens? People try to be as professional and focused as possible so that nothing awkward can occur.

That’s why team-building exercises that don’t involve working together are missing out. Because outside of the workplace there’s no reason to tone down who you are.

You may not agree with everything someone says, but at least they say it openly instead of keeping it bottled up inside. You might disagree with some of their decisions, but at least they are aware of how you feel about them.

Be a good dancer

Dancing is a pretty universal language that everyone can enjoy. There are many types of dancing, from ballroom dance to line dances to samba! While some people love to party like there’s no tomorrow, most people just want to have fun dancing.

Some easy ways to learn how to dance include taking lessons at a local studio or school, attending events where groups gather for dancing, joining a recreational dancing team or club, or even practising with your music in front of the mirror.

Whatever you choose to do, just be careful not to make too much effort unless you want to improve! Over-dance-itis is very common as dancers will waste lots of time trying to perfect every move before moving on.

Avoid this by setting a goal to dance for half an hour once a week and just having fun while doing it.

Find your team's humour

A lot of times, people have strong feelings about things. This is usually because they have deep emotional connections with what they believe or who they believe they are helping by their actions.

For example, someone may be very passionate about an idea or concept. They may get excited when they talk about it, but then they see that you don’t agree and so they feel offended.

This can sometimes create a fight or even violence. It becomes more likely as the argument gets longer and stronger, which only makes both people less willing to change their minds.

If you cannot make someone else see your side of the argument, try finding the place where they lose interest in the conversation.

Are they starting to yell? Are they getting upset? If so, start talking about something unrelated to let them calm down first.

You could also ask if there is somewhere you can go for some quiet time high-Performance and tell them you will do the same thing. This helps everyone relax and re-focus on other things.