On Building Teams up and Leadership.

1. Team building starts with trust. There has to be a basic foundation of trust in the team. Every team member should trust other team members to be operating for the benefit and progress of the group. Trust building takes time. But we would have to start the process somewhere. To start the process. I would suggest you host a weekly team lunch, where people sit together and eat. No work discussions. Simply a discussion on a personal level. In such discussions, a leader should expose their vulnerable side, in order to encourage the team to express their vulnerabilities as well. Expressing vulnerabilities builds trust.

2. A leader’s personal relationship with each member is important. Ideally, a leader should give 15–20 minutes of their to each individual of the team on a weekly basis. This time should be more during the forming stage of a team. This slot of time, should ideally not be about work. However, a leader could use it to understand any blockers on a personal level the employee is facing that are affecting their work.

3. Once there is a basic level of trust, it is important to introduce meaningful conflict to encourage the engagement of people. Without engagement, people are like dead weight and that’s not something any team wants to carry. In the forming stage, the first meeting could be about what approach each team member has to the project. A leader’s role in this situation should be to encourage disagreement and debate amongst the group and to ensure a meaningful conflict. The leader’s secondary role here is to establish the values for which the group is going to stand. The values for which the group is going to stand for are the values that the leader has. The leader has to demonstrate to the group not by words but by actions, what values they stand for.