Making working as a team, work

Here is a sneak peak of an article I've recently written for Productive! Magazine.

Working in a team can be tough, really tough. You can spend 40 hours a week with people that you wouldn’t choose to associate with if you had the option. And with the modern workplace cramming people into open plan offices, with longer working hours and less staff doing more work- relationships between colleagues can often be tense.

So here are a few hints and tips to make work and your colleagues more bearable!

Have fun together

Having fun together as a team is something that is incredibly important and helps to relieve some of the stress of work. We might not want to spend our personal time socialising with the people we work with but when we are at work we need to inject some fun.

Here are three ways you can bring some fun into your team:

1. Have soup day! This was a wonderful thing that a team I used to work in came up with. We had a set day of the week that was soup day and each week someone had to make soup for everyone in the team. It was lovely to sit down together, eat something that one of us had made and it brought out some friendly competition regarding who made the best soup! You could also have cake day or any other food that you all fancy trying to make.
2. Celebrate Birthdays. It doesn’t have to be a big thing, but a card signed by everyone in the team and maybe a cake (bought either by the Birthday person or the rest of the team) is a nice touch and adds some fun into the year.
3. Go out! Some workplaces have weekly social events and that’s probably a bit excessive for a lot of people but why not think about going out as a team maybe once a quarter? You could go for a meal, to the cinema, go paintballing or whatever else you fancy. It’s even better if you can persuade the boss to let you do it during works time because it’s a team building exercise.

Celebrate achievements

As a team you need to celebrate achievements, both team successes and individual successes. It’s easy to let the successes pass by and get annoyed by the things Barry didn’t do, completely forgetting the things he did do!

One way you can celebrate achievements is by adding Ta-da moments into your working day. Ta-da moments are the things that have gone well, the scary task you completed, the successful phone call you made, the blog post you published.

Here are three ways to bring some Ta-da moments into your week at work:

1. Spend the first five minutes of your weekly meeting thinking about your Ta-Da moments over the last week and then everyone shares one with the rest of the team
2. Set aside 5 minutes before you all finish for the day to have a quick group huddle to share today’s Ta-Da moments
3. Start your day with a quick huddle to share your biggest Ta-Da moment from yesterday. This is a great way to start the day feeling positive.

And don’t forget to say Thank you. It’s really important that everyone in a team feels valued and respected. Everyone appreciates someone saying thank you when they’ve done a good piece of work or helped someone out.

Remember people have a life outside of work

You and your colleagues have lots of things going on in your lives outside of work, depending on how open your colleagues are there might be a lot of things going on that you don’t know about. So if a colleague has been snappy or uncooperative take a minute and a deep breath to remember that. They might be having relationship troubles, someone in the family might be ill or the washing machine might have broken and they’re carrying that stuff around with them.

None of us are perfect, we all bring our home life to work and our work life home.

If we try and have more compassion for our colleagues and ourselves we will find ourselves feeling less annoyed with each other. You might want to remind yourself by writing ‘remember compassion’ on a post-it note and sticking it somewhere you’ll see!

Don’t be the office gossip

We’ve all stood around the water cooler and complained, complained about Lucy being too slow, John’s constant questions and Sophie always arriving late. And yes it can feel good to vent but venting doesn’t solve the problems.

Is Lucy being slow because she’s struggling but doesn’t dare ask for help? Is John asking questions because he’s interested in the job and his colleagues? Is Sophie late because she’s having problems at home?

By complaining and gossiping about people you run a real risk of isolating and alienating your colleagues whether that is consciously or unconsciously. No one wants work to be like school, full of cliques and judgement. Don’t be the mean boy or mean girl!

We all have our qualities that are annoying.

So before you start complaining and gossiping ask yourself two things:

• How would I feel if one of my colleagues was saying this about me?
• How would I feel if one of my friends or family members had colleagues talking about them in that way?

Remember Bruce Tuckman

You might have heard of Bruce Tuckman’s Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing model and it’s a very helpful tool to remember if you’re working in a team, especially one that isn’t gelling. Although it is usually used to help a manager know how to lead their team, it has some useful information to take away for everyone.

Tuckman described four different stages that a team goes through.

The first stage, forming, is when a team first gets together and no one is clear about what they need to do or what their responsibilities are.

The second stage, storming, is when people in the team are trying to figure out their position in the group. This can cause a lot of emotional tension and can cause discomfort and upset in the working environment as different personalities clash.

The third stage, norming, is when everyone in the team knows what their job and responsibilities are. The team is working well together.

The fourth stage, performing, is when the team is working very efficiently. They work well as a team, any conflict is resolved quickly and they are achieving high levels of work.

When you’re going through a difficult time at work, it’s worth taking a step back and realising where your team is on the Tuckman model. Chances are, you’ll be on the storming stage and take comfort in the fact that this stage won’t last forever.

Also remember that when a new person joins your team, you’re probably going to head back to forming and begin the process again. This is why working in a team with a high turnover of staff can be stressful.

Be part of the solution

If you’re working in a team where some people don’t pull their weight or are negative, it can be quite easy to fall into the attitude of “They’re not doing it, so why should I?”

But don’t settle for being less than your best, look for answers to problems, help colleagues that are struggling and bring positivity into all areas of your work. Not only will you be happier, but you never know some of your kindness, compassion and fun might rub off on your colleagues! Giving you all a happier working environment with positive working relationships.

www.katybateson.com