Hello and welcome to Tricky Management Situations !

Onirio delves, just for you, into all those delicate, sometimes seemingly improbable (but oh-so-real!) challenges that the world of management throws our way. In each episode, you'll find tips to gain some perspective and expertly navigate through your tricky managerial situations

Today's program focuses on team building.

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🛶Today's Struggle: How to strengthen team bonds before everything falls apart?

As a manager, you've recently sensed that the team's morale isn't at its peak. Between arguments, miscommunication, and employees feeling left out of discussions, you're feeling overwhelmed! 🤯

So how do you restore genuine team cohesion and effective collaboration?

⛔ Mind the mistakes!

"We have too much work to take time off right now!" Informal moments are crucial for sharing personal, positive or negative news impacting employees' lives and well-being. It also shows the team that the manager isn't solely focused on performance.

"Colleagues have clashes? Oh, they're adults; they'll sort it out themselves!" Ignoring conflicts might exacerbate the situation. We recommend reading our episode "Managing two employees who can't stand each other" on this topic 😉

"I do have a preference for certain team members" Sometimes, we tend to bond more with a colleague and might often have lunch with them without inviting others. Beware, this can be perceived as favoritism (especially if you consistently assign the most interesting tasks to this person 🙉🙈🙊) and could create tensions, or even participate in the creation of clans within the team.

"We don’t need to like each other to work well together!" While you don’t need to be best friends, high-performing teams tend to foster quality interpersonal relationships. Such teams operate within a trust framework, enabling creativity, solidarity, and a sense of belonging.

💡 A few tips to keep your team on track

1) Identify your own rituals to unite the team and celebrate successes or important events

Many rituals exist to ensure cohesion within your team. Choose your own, ideally by co-creating them with your team! Among the classics:

🥐 Team breakfast to start or end the week with an informal moment, celebrate an arrival or return, announce good news...
🥣 Team Lunch to spend quality time together, discuss personal matters, or share collective news.
🍻Afterwork (coffee or drinks at the end of the day) to celebrate after an intense day or week, recognizing professional or personal accomplishments, or farewell events
🎳 Half or full-day team-building to engage in fun activities (e.g., olympiads, escape rooms, orienteering, bowling, laser tag, cooking classes, etc.). Ensure that all team members can participate 😉
🏖️ Company weekend for relaxation and fun with the entire company crew! 😎

💡 Find the right frequency for these rituals. Consider delegating their organization to team members who have an aptitude for bringing people together.

2) Set aside time to reflect and rethink your collective ways of working

And here, we're talking about team seminars! A moment between the manager and their direct team, usually lasting from half a day to 2 days.

Take the team out of their usual context: The main goal of a team seminar is to step back from routine, shifting from regular meeting venues and rituals (e.g., renting a space outside, retreating to nature, going to a cafe...).
Use techniques to facilitate open discussions: Kick off your seminar with an icebreaker to let your team express their current feelings. One approach is the character wall where where each member chooses a character representing their current mood and explains the reason behind the choice.

Take a step back on your ways of working: identify your team's strengths and areas for improvement.
Here are some workshop techniques we love to use:
- The Angel's and the Devil's lawyer = Divided into sub-groups, participants analyze their team's operational mode from two perspectives
  - Angel, who defends current operating methods with their positive points,
  - Devil, who only sees the negatives and criticizes the same operational modes.
  The outcome of this workshop is a verbal battle between the angels and devils

The “Sabotage/Defuse” Workshop"
- In the first stage, participants are "saboteurs" who express their worst ideas for sabotaging the way they work. E.g.: "How can we permanently damage team cohesion? How can we degrade team communication? How to kill team collaboration?"
- In the second phase, participants act as "defusers" and brainstorm solutions to counteract any sabotage of operational modes
The "Speedboat" workshop: An activity to be done with the entire team. Allow 1.5 to 2 hours!

The boat represents the team, and the workshop consists of describing :

The Island: what does the destination look like? What are your goals?
Carrying winds: what pushes the boat towards the island? This represents the team's strengths, what works well.
Rocks: obstacles that the team can't control and must avoid.
Anchors: the brakes (or issues) on which the team can act.

Animation tips:

Allocate individual time for everyone to express their ideas, followed by a group discussion
Highlight the most crucial painpoints and brainstorm action plans

3) Make sure things really change!

After a seminar (or any team-building activity where improvements were discussed), the worst-case scenario is that nothing changes, leading to the same issues six months later!

It's up to you, as a manager, to follow up on the adoption of new work practices and the implementation of identified improvements. This ensures that these moments of collaborative intelligence remain beneficial in the long run. 😉

À for the next episode!

In each episode, Onirio explores a managerial situation and gives you advice on how to take a step back and adopt the right reflexes!

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Have you experienced managerial difficulties? Inspire us!

We're sure you've been in plenty of situations that would merit an article 😉. And we're always looking for inspiration for our next episodes. So drop us a line with a description of your troubles! We'll be delighted to explore your situations!

Episode #16 - Strengthen team bonds before everything falls apart