When you want your team to perform at a high level, you need your team members to connect with each other. If everything needs to go through you first, you may not have a strategy issue but a connection issue. When people feel comfortable working together, they’re more likely to trust each other and share the load.

Leadership expert Ben Brearley says stronger team connections mean stronger bonds between everyone on your team. People know things about each other, including how they like to work, their personality and what they enjoy outside of work. Ultimately, he says it’s about people on your team caring about each other — not in a stilted “we’re a family” kind of way, but in a way that makes people want to genuinely help. The first step in achieving this, he says, is helping those on your team get to know each other better. We share Brearley’s best ideas for getting started in this issue of PromoPro Daily.

  1. Try out a few simple connection activities. Do you have a sales training or workshop coming up? Work in a brief activity at the start of the meeting. Brearley says it’s a great way to break the ice and get people to speak up. One option is asking everyone in the room to open their phone and go to the most recent work-appropriate picture in their gallery. Then, everyone tells a little story about the photo. He advises leaders go first to show that you’re willing to be vulnerable along with them.

  2. Get different people to work together. Most teams have people who work more independently and those who work more closely together. This is often due to people with different roles. By pairing up people to work on a little project or assignment, you help them learn each other’s working styles and how to collaborate. Over the course of the project, Brearley says they’ll get to know each other.

  3. Switch up the seating. It’s OK for staff members to work in their office or at the same desk every day. But Brearley says you can spark conversations by mixing things up from time to time. When you encourage people to work somewhere new once a month, you might find they’ll naturally talk to people they don’t normally chat with because they’re suddenly sitting closer to each other. It’s simple, he says, but it can change the dynamic.

  4. Use psychometric tools. According to Brearley, personality tools like DISC, PRINT or other assessments can get people talking and reveal how they operate. They’re just a guide, though, so don’t pigeon-hole people into certain categories. Instead, use the results to learn more about each individual’s working style.

Stronger team connections make everyone’s job easier and their work more meaningful. When your staff members know they can lean on each other instead of always running to you, things run much more smoothly.

Compiled by Audrey Sellers
Source: Ben Brearley, MBA, is the founder of Thoughtful Leader. He’s an experienced coach, trainer and leader.