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In our recent coaching sessions with teams, my team members and I have found that remote working, job insecurities and the fear of redundancies, cause a lot of anxiety for team members who already feel isolated from their team members

The lack of visibility at work means that more and more people are working really hard to prove to their peers and to their leaders that they’re being productive. Many are frantically trying to show their worth.

We often find in our first session with teams when we reveal the results of their team diagnostics, that teams have been left torn apart. . Asa leader or team member, you probably feel the same about your team. The connections that come from being in the same space; the connections that you nurture when you have those team lunches or coffee breaks, or those get-togethers that happen after a hard day at work have been stripped away for many individuals, relationships and for many teams.

So, as you reflect on your 2020, take some time to think about your team and think about how much you have done to keep your team connections going. Whether you haven’t done enough in the last year or recognise that you need to do more, it is never too late.

3 Tips for Keeping Your Team Alive

• Encourage Collaboration. Find and offer opportunities for your team members to get together to work in pairs or in small groups, outside of your regular team meetings. It is important that people have tasks, projects and work that they do together as a team to make them feel connected and to help them focus on working towards a clear, common purpose.
• Recognise & Celebrate Teamwork, Not Just Individual Successes. Due to the physical distance imposed by virtual working, team members are more disconnected than ever. More than ever, your people want to be seen and acknowledged. As humans, we like recognition and we want to be celebrated for the work we do. Do not limit that to individuals; acknowledge and celebrate teamwork and collaboration. Make your team members feel special and celebrate their relationships.

And, if you’re a leader who struggles to do that; if you cannot recognise that nothing gets taken away from you when you make other people feel special, that is a signal that you need to do some work on yourself too. Ultimately, part of your job as a leader is to make sure that you’re appreciating the good work of your people.

• Prioritise building and re-building your team. Given the physical disconnection imposed by the 2020 pandemic, teams need to stick together and stay connected. So many people are dealing with challenges in their personal lives that have come about because of lockdown or COVID-19, or other challenges of 2020. Team members need to be there for one another and to feel secure enough in their relationships to reach out for support, when needed. Make sure the relationships in your team are solid and can remain so.

Whether you have a new team or have a team that has been together for years; whether you were high-performing or not; regardless of which stage your team is at, do not assume that you are doing well as a team. Ensure that you bring your team together to discuss how you are getting on as a team, particularly given the challenges of the last year.

• A 2020 taskforce I was coaching recently, commented that until our coaching session, that they had not felt like a team. They had worked virtually all through the year and hadn’t taken the time to connect as individuals and to find out about who team members were individually; outside of work and their job descriptions. They hadn’t checked on one another’s hopes and dreams for their work together. Their focus prior to team coaching had just been on them bringing in their individual strengths, and not on working together effectively as a team. The energy between them shifted significantly as a result of team coaching.

  So, even if you were connected before; even if you had been a high performing team before, don’t assume that you remain one. The relationships within your team make your team high performing, or not. And just as plants need regular attention to keep growing stronger and to survive, so do your team relationships. n, – especially in harsh conditions like the ones that we have recently found ourselves in.

  If you are a team leader and are yet to do so, ensure that you get your team together to work on your relationships, your team dynamics and on what is necessary to move from being a collection of individuals to becoming a high-performing team.

  And if you would like to kick off with benchmarking your team against high-performing teams, get in touch for a complimentary assessment of your team, or send an email to me to discuss your team challenges on obi@obijames.com.