Building Up Team Spirit
Behind any successful project there’s always a successful team.
As a software development team working on a project, we’ll go through ups and downs that put the team’s cohesion to the test.
While leading such a team, one of my main goals is that we all build a strong bond that will help us do our best and deliver great work under any circumstance.
Like any relationship between human beings, a strong and healthy team spirit is built upon core values like, trust, respect, transparency, empathy just to state a few. At the end of the day, it all boils down to this — Human relationships!
Here’s a few things we do in order to build a strong team spirit.
Onboarding
It all starts when we create a new team or when a new member joins.
That is the best time to set the expectations and rules by which the team will play.
I usually divide it into two different meetings, a welcome 1-1 and a team welcome meeting.
Welcome 1-1
The welcome 1-1 serves to:
- Brief the new member on the project.
- Get to know him and his expectations on his involvement in the project, and within the company.
- Talk about what is expected of him.
To conduct this meeting I follow my own adaptation of the “Managing People” chapter in The Manager’s Path by Camille Fournier.
In this meeting I first explain the purpose of the project, the people that will work on it and the role that he will play in it.
Then I ask him questions that vary from things like career goals, to questions about his personality and how he prefers to be approached in certain common situations (“How do you prefer to be praised (publicly or privately)?” is one of my favorites), to questions in order to understand what he sees as valuable characteristics in terms of evolution.
Lastly, I explain what we expect of him and how he can achieve it. It allows us to set expectations ahead of time that will avoid uncomfortable situations due to misaligned expectations. In the expectations list, there are entries on things like core values such as Respect, Honesty, down to the expected attitude and behavior.
Usually the things we discuss in this meeting, specially in the last two sections, will depend on your experience, as well as your team and company culture. It will change over time as you, your team and company evolve.
Nevertheless there are a few cornerstone topics that are ever present and never changing, like the core values!
If you need inspiration and ideas, once again The Manager’s Path by Camille Fournier is a great resource.
Team Welcome Meeting
After each member’s welcome 1-1, I usually do a team meeting to introduce everyone where the main goal is to let everyone know more about each other, how they work and what they value.
In this meeting we usually do an exercise that I picked up from reading “The Agile Samurai” by Jonathan Rasmusson, called The Drucker Exercise.
In this exercise every team member takes some time to answer 4 questions about himself and then present them in front of everyone.
The questions are:
- What am I good at?
- How do I perform?
- What do I value?
- What contribution can be expected from me on this project?
It’s great way to kickstart a new project, but you can also do it even if you are in an ongoing project.
You can find more information about this exercise in this The Agile Warrior article and how to do one in this The Headquarters article.
Ongoing
A robust team spirit is not just built during the onboarding phase. It’s something that needs to be developed and strengthened every day.
There are a couple of things that you can, and should, do in order to achieve this.
Every day I personally try to bring things like a good mood, guidance, a helping hand, etc. I also try to make sure that morale stays up in rough times and that possible misbehaviors are controlled.
I also use the 1-1s with each team member to, among other things, improve their engagement with the project and the team, and also help identify and prevent any issue that might erode the team’s spirits.
Stronger bonds are developed when people are able to connect outside of the day to day work. At Runtime we have groups that organize out of work activities, from sports like Paddle Tennis, Football to Tabletop games. This a great way to do it, nevertheless, it’s not always possible for everyone in the team to participate in these activities so we schedule a team lunch every month where we try to pick a better restaurant to go to and where we talk about anything we want (work included… but discouraged ;) ).
There’s a lot to say and do about creating and maintaining a great team. These are just a few things I’m currently doing that I think are worth sharing.
And what about you? What do you and your team do to strengthen your relationship? Please share your ideas in the comments.
If you feel this is a team and environment you would like to be a part of, please contact us as we are hiring!
I’ve been working at Runtime Revolution for over 10 years, helping clients build their ideas and integrating the great teams that develop them!
