Team-Building Tips for New Managers

Have you ever worked on a team and felt like you were all alone? As the saying goes, "There’s no 'I' in team," so there’s no reason you should feel like you’re doing all the work yourself. Sometimes team members just need a little help to get them going. For example, some people are shy and prefer to use their talents away from the spotlight. Others are natural leaders and prefer to be the spokesperson for the team instead of the behind-the-scenes thinker. Everyone has their own unique personalities and working styles.

To bring out the best in everyone and benefit from the magic a great team is capable of, they need a manager who can encourage them to appreciate each other and respect each other’s talents. Think of yourself as the conductor of an orchestra. You’ve got the podium; now, you just need to keep the following team-building tips in mind.

Celebrate Individual Talents

It can be difficult to see fellow colleagues as individuals with lives outside of work, especially if they all show up for work every day wearing the same custom work uniforms and working together toward a shared goal. While it is important to make them feel like part of a team, it’s also just as important to celebrate what makes someone different. For example, let’s say you need to collaborate on a project that involves design work but you lack a designer or illustrator.

Even if it’s just decorating the storefront for an event, you may not know you have a talented artist on your team if their day-to-day role isn’t artistic in nature. Getting to know your staff and their hobbies will help you be aware of what hidden talents they have. It might bring the person out of their shell and encourage other team members to initiate conversations with them as well. When team members respect each other’s talents, it makes for a strong team.

Make It Seem Natural

Try not to force team-building activities on people. The fact of the matter is some people may be hesitant to come out of their shell, and if you force them to act like someone they aren’t, it will come across as fake and won’t benefit everyone. Remember that a team is made up of individuals. That includes individual talents and individual work styles. Team-building activities should respect those individual styles naturally. Sometimes all it takes is spending time chatting over coffee.

Whether your team is remote or on-site, consider scheduling a weekly coffee break where you gather in a break room or a virtual chat room to talk about the workweek. You can even have a rule that you don’t talk about work at all. Be prepared to start the conversation and jump in when there is a lull. One fun idea to roll out the inaugural coffee break is to provide each employee with coffee, hot cocoa, or tea along with a custom company mug. Then you can start the meeting by taking turns talking about everyone’s favorite drink and why they like it.

Volunteer Together

Volunteering as a team is an ideal team-building activity. First, it encourages you to pull together to accomplish a particular goal. Second, it can be done outside of the office, and a change of scenery can really do wonders for morale. This is especially true if the event is during work hours since it seems like a day off. The teamwork should start from inception to conclusion, meaning you should work together to choose the charity and make sure you meet the end goal. Not only does this help promote team-building, but it also gives managers great insight as to individual strengths and talents. Be sure to remember to coordinate custom company hats or company logo shirts to wear to the volunteer event too, so you can benefit from a team identity and represent your organization.

Learn Something Together

Whether for personal enrichment or for business purposes, learning something together is great for team-building because no member of the team has an advantage over the other. This especially includes you as the manager. When you all go into a task with zero background knowledge about the topic, it helps each team member feel more equal. There’s no competition like there can sometimes be in the workplace. Consider asking your team if they want to join you once a week over the lunch hour to take an online class together, whether it is art, music, cooking, scrapbooking, or anything they’ve always wanted to learn but never had time to. Alternatively, it could be a skill that benefits the organization. The key is to learn it together.

A team that works well together is a more engaged team. With these team-building tips in your pocket, your team can significantly add to the success of your organization as a whole.