Building Team Cohesiveness

In the current competitive business environment, cohesiveness is a key factor in developing a high performance team. As most managers work to transform themselves into conscious leaders, they also work to transform their teams. Let’s explore the characteristics of a high-functioning team and what it takes to build it!

As a corporate coach and trainer, I’ve spent most of my career helping businesses achieve a high performance culture. High performance culture gives rise to cohesive teams that make companies successful. These teams don’t happen coincidentally. They are a result of a lot of discipline, respect, commitment, accountability and, more importantly, conscious leaders.

Conscious leaders are transpersonal and radical, ethical and authentic. They work to develop themselves over a considerable period of time and focus on the ‘we’ rather than the ‘me’. Conscious leaders work to create a high performance culture that promotes working together as an expected standard of conduct. Conscious leadership creates cohesive, high-performance teams by engaging and relating with them.

All highly cohesive teams have the same things in common; mutual trust and respect, good conflict resolution and are very committed which creates accountability among the team. One of the roles of a conscious leader is to combine individual talents and skills into one super performing unit who output is greater than the talents of the individual members alone. In this way, a company can achieve limitless innovation and creativity.

“One of the roles of a conscious leader is to combine individual talents and skills into one super performing unit who output is greater than the talents of the individual members alone. In this way, a company can achieve limitless innovation and creativity.”

Leaders need to inspire team members to keep up morale. Here we see that emotional intelligence plays a key role in building high performance teams and fostering cohesiveness. As managers, as much as we manage people, we also manage emotions and personalities. A cohesive team is also an emotionally competent team that is disciplined, empathetic, trustworthy and efficient. We leaders are then tasked to help develop emotionally competent employees that emulate the above and drive success in a high-performance team.

“A cohesive team is also an emotionally competent team that is disciplined, empathetic, trustworthy and efficient. We leaders are then tasked to help develop emotionally competent employees that emulate the above and drive success in a high-performance team.”

In this regard, I draw a lot of similarities between parenting and management. As a parent I found that talking to my child(ren) was a better way to resolve issues than caning them. ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child’ wasn’t an option in my household and in that way parenting and management are different. Physical discipline will result in assault charges and lawsuits. To create a cohesive at-home environment, I have to find the best way to raise emotionally competent adults in other ways. And so should all of us endeavor to find what works in uniquely our environment regardless of conventional wisdom.

Team-building activities can help your employees develop trust, establish a stronger bond and solve conflicts that may arise amongst them. Volunteer together, start clubs, institute on-going training sessions, organize sports days and picnics, all these can help create situations for your team to get to know each other more, develop common ground and see other sides of one another that will encourage them to look past small difference thus bonding them further.

It is important to note that cohesiveness doesn’t mean no conflict, seriousness, no late nights and always hitting targets months in advance. Instead it means easy bounce backs, positive energy redirections and a sense of humor that can see a leader and his team through the toughest and happiest of times.