The Case for Team Un-Building

At some point in the next six months, is your team going to spend time stepping away from the work and focusing on “building team?”  If so, I would love to make a case for team un-building.  Before team “building,” spend time on team “being,” where a true opportunity is created to build awareness around what people actually experience and the only goal is honesty and curiosity.

I don’t mean to bash or judge traditional team-building.  I’ve spent many hours not just participating in it but leading it.  And I’ve produced more than my fair share of norms documents, shared values, mission statements, and team commitments.  I can still see the value in it.  But the truth is, the research about the impact of shared agreements, norms or mission statements is spotty at best.  That doesn’t mean they aren’t really important.  

But where the research couldn’t be more clear is the value of team members feeling safe to share what they actually think and feel.  The term for this is “psychological safety,” and according to Dr. Amy Edmondson, a professor of leadership at Harvard Business School, the research is “overwhelming” that it’s the number one thing high-performing teams have in common.  When team members feel safe to share what they are truly thinking and feeling, they can avoid wasting time and energy pretending… and can learn so much about what is actually happening with each other and their organization. 

Building psychological safety is about awareness, not action.  When leaders value being aware of what is truly happening on their teams, they will inevitably desire to create spaces where people can be really honest and vulnerable, and not have to put on masks or perform for each other.  But for most of my career when I did traditional team building, it wasn’t about awareness but about action.  I wanted to change my team in some way, or get them “aligned” or create a set of commitments they could hold each other accountable to. 

I believe that psychological safety and shared values or commitments can co-exist.  But one has to come before the other.  When we take a team that doesn’t yet have awareness into each other’s experience, or doesn’t have the safety to be honest, and try to get that team to commit to a set of behaviors or norms – it won’t work, and will likely backfire.  Because now – not only does the team not feel safe enough to share their true thoughts and feelings – they have gotten clear cues that there is a “right” way for them to communicate and that is likely to stoke their fears.  It’s hard enough for me to share emotions like fear, embarrassment, or frustration, and if my leader has set norms like “staying solutions oriented” or “leading with questions first” then I’ve got even more reasons to feel hesitant about sharing what I’m really feeling or thinking.

That’s why I’ve come to believe in the importance of starting with “team being,” not building: time for the team to hit pause on creating any new expectations for how people should behave, think or feel – and instead seeing what it feels like to stay in curiosity and truly see each other.  That kind of opportunity for a team is worth its weight in gold.