Sean Glaze defines team building as designing experiences that connect people to a common goal and each other. He distinguishes recreational team building from intentional practice, focusing on trust, accountability, feedback, and relationships as core areas leaders should develop.
What exactly is team building? Well, if you're an effective leader, you understand that even if it's not on your official job description, teamwork and team building and culture are absolutely evidence of your leadership and part of your responsibility. But team building, which can be either recreational and not have a whole lot of impact on your performance, or intentional, which is the type you want to focus on, is defined very simply. Team building is the ongoing process of intentionally designing experiences so that your people can connect with a compelling common goal and with each other so your team performs more effectively. And whatever you're doing to connect people with each other and to connect them with the impact that their efforts have on achieving that compelling common goal, that falls under the umbrella of team building. So if you want to work on trust or accountability or feedback or relationships, those are all opportunities to build a better, more unified, more cohesive, and high-performing team. I'm Sean Glaze. That's what effective leaders do.
