A healthy work culture promotes greater productivity, increased commercial opportunities, employee retention, cost savings and more creative output. Whether you are managing a franchise network, a group of franchisees or the team of brands; enabling a supportive and collaborative team is not only good for the employee: research suggests it aids the bottom line, too.

Team building is one of the most powerful investments your business can make.

Camaraderie aside, team building has been proven to increase trust and dependability, mitigate conflict, encourage communication and promote collaboration. Research from Google shows that the value of a team who is bonded and trusts one another increases overall engagement, boosting company culture and your bottom line.

And if the mere mention of team building makes you cringe (or has you reminiscing about that episode from The Office), you’re in luck. While every team is different, the most effective team building initiatives about simple, everyday workplace routines that feel easy. Effortless. And, dare I say, fun…

My own team at Happiness Concierge is always thinking about new and exciting ways to unlock human potential and help our clients’ teams thrive under pressure. Straight from our very own Team Building Toolkit, here are four practical tips for building high-performing teams. 

Set the standard

What does being in a high-performing team look like? It’s important to clarify team expectations and unite your team under a shared understanding of what’s ‘teamly’ and what’s not.

Creating a charter of cultural norms based on your business’ unique culture and values provides a handy reference point. As a leader you have the opportunity to set the standard. Once the standards are set, it’s then over to you as a leader to model them. Let this be an opportunity for you to level up your leadership. After all, you can’t be what you can’t see.

Identify how your team work best

High pressure environments can elicit all kinds of emotional responses. Give your team the tools to communicate clearly and authentically in high stakes moments (or what I call ‘moments of truth), to retain that sense of camaraderie you’ve worked so hard to create.

At Happiness Concierge, we encourage team members to fill in a ‘cheat sheet’ about their own unique working needs. This simple task helps each teammate identify how they work best and when. Then, as a team, we find the common themes to promote more efficient ways of working. The result? A simple yet effective bonding exercise which gives you data to optimise your workplace environment, and helps you learn about what motivates your team.

Share the wins

The ultimate bond your teammates share is the work. So when the work is a winner, it’s important to share your success. Not only is a mojo boost but it’s validation from the people we serve – our customers and community.

Just as important as sharing the wins, is learning from the losses. Make a point of involving your team in the process of project reflection. Asking what did we learn? What can we do better next time? How can we work together to achieve it?

Feed it forward

A culture with a constructive framework in place to have powerful and empowering conversations enables your team to bring out the best in each other. Is there a system in your business that rewards continuous improvement? Sharing what we love about our team’s work, for example, followed by ‘what I’d love to see more of’ enables each team member to continuously develop.

At the end of the day, great culture helps unlock great performance, common goal, greater and more meaningful output. Everyone is elevating each other, the team understands the commitment they make together, to each other, to the organisation. The fire in our bellies gets ignited when we have a great culture for the same goal; that’s where teams truly perform at a competitive level.

Investing in a workplace where every member of your team feels valued and supported not only by your leaders but by each other can go a long way to building a positive working environment where everyone feels supported to perform at their best.

Whether you are managing a franchise network, a group of franchisees or the team of brands; enabling a supportive and collaborative team through effective team building is not only good for the employee but your bottom line, too.