Re-examining Team Building

Photo by Nick Fewings

We had a week of fun lunches with some of our wonderful clients. We are continually grateful for having these amazing people in our lives. Part of our conversation focused on the topic of developing cohesive teams and the challenges that organizations are still facing in the post pandemic era.

All of us at this lunch were of an age when our careers started in the ”traditional” workforce. The business culture consisted of spending a lot of time at the office developing strong relationships with our co-workers. Team building activities were an integral part of the work week. In fact, we all shared how some of our colleagues became our closest friends and mentors. Work was the hub of personal and professional activity.

Along comes COVID on the heels of the burgeoning social media culture blowing up this paradigm in a number of ways.

First and foremost, virtual work became a norm, turning coworker relationships on their head. Virtual relationships are different from ones formed in person. When you meet someone virtually, developing friendship bonds outside of work is not as easy or natural. The sense of community and shared experience is weakened when all you see is a face on the computer. There aren't the “where should we go to lunch” types of conversations each day. Without this natural base of connection building cohesive teams can be challenging.

The pandemic also dramatically impacted the flow of relationships at the end of the work day. During COVID, people couldn’t really hang out with their colleagues. Instead of making plans to get together with fellow employees, after work hours were devoted to socializing with existing family and friends. This made people less dependent on work relationships to expand their social circles.

In addition to these shifts that affected people already in the workforce, companies are seeing the impact of the pandemic on those now entering the workforce. Many of these employees experienced a year or two of forced isolation at a pivotal developmental stage. Rather than a balance of in person and computer connections, they had to rely almost solely on virtual methods to build their social networks.

The teens and early twenties are a period of experimentation with relationships, communication and navigating the adult world. Many people in this age group did not get the opportunity to hone social interaction skills. They had limited in person relationships with peers or adults outside of their family. To paint with a very broad brush, people in this demographic can struggle to navigate direct, in person communication. For better or worse, they are used to curating their conversations and aren’t as practiced in adapting on the fly. It is not hard to see how this could affect team dynamics.

So, if business models and the characteristics of people in the workforce have changed, it stands to reason that business leaders need to re-examine their strategies for building team cultures.

We are going to spend the next couple of weeks thinking about this topic and offering suggestions on how you can adapt team building strategies to align with the modern workforce.