Ask Dan: Tried-and-tested methods to bond as a team...

Team building and bonding is difficult to measure, so it is hard to set clear processes.

However, we have all been part of strong teams in the past and there are good reasons why those teams have a strong bond.

Is it by accident or design? It’s a bit of both, really, so let’s concentrate on the areas we can control and not panic if the progress takes a little longer than expected.

Clarity of purpose

Strong teams have a clarity of purpose. This means that everyone knows what the team stands for and what it is aiming to do.

That purpose requires two very important team-bonding processes:

• The players decide together what the purpose is, so that as many of them buy into it. They have agreed what matters themselves; it didn’t just come from you.
• The team keeps reminding themselves of the purposes so that they keep everyone aligned to that purpose.

No egos

Strong teams have no egos. Leaders and followers alike must be humble and ready to muck in to help the team.

A good example of this are the All Blacks - see the book Legacy: 15 Lessons in Leadership by James Kerr. 

Who do you think volunteered to sweep the New Zealand changing rooms after games? Well, even after his 100th cap, Richie McCaw was the first to grab the brush.

Now, you can’t just make players humble and caring. But what you can do is take some of the key influencers of the team aside and ask them what sort of environment they want to work and train in.

You should encourage them to see how important they are to the team and why they can help lead in this aspect.

The most difficult part is to let go. In other words: to give players more decision-making responsibility to make. That’s not in terms of selection, but in areas such as how we want to play the game, how we want to train, what our warm-ups should look like, and so on.

So, you can see that it’s not about team-bonding days or big speeches. These can play a part, of course, but if you could capture team spirit in three words, it would be: clear, shared purpose.