Teamwork has always been key to human survival and the advancement of our culture. As we enter the creative economy, the need to nurture teams is more important to success than ever before; effective teamwork helps a company’s bottom-line, reputation and ability to innovate.
At Hyper Island, teamwork is the bedrock of our learning experience, and is influenced by well-researched methods and tools from the Swedish National Defence College to thought leaders such as Brené Brown, Susan Wheelan, and Shane Snow. Combining this learning with my past work experience in advertising, I’ve reflected on ways businesses can facilitate more effective teamwork to produce better results.
Here are 5 Lessons from Hyper Island on Teamwork:
1. Invest Time in a 'Point of Departure'
When you start any new project or pitch, a group of individuals come together, all with different personalities, needs, skills — and often from their own silos in an organisation. In order to build an effective team, it is vital to spend time up front learning who these people are, such as what strengths they have, what skills they want to develop, or how they cope under pressure.
Companies spend significant time on deciding ‘what’ needs to happen in a project, but ‘how’ a group of individuals will work together is often overlooked. Clarifying both processes will save countless hours of confusion, misdirection and duplication of work. The ‘why’ is also important — give your team a convincing purpose and goal, no matter how short or long you will be together. This is particularly helpful when trying to break down barriers that silos can present, where people seem determined to protect their turf. At Hyper, we use The Content & Process Model to ensure we stay aligned throughout the project's life span.
2. Practice Opening Up
It’s incredible how open people become when someone takes the lead on this front. Sharing your own personal vulnerabilities can create a domino effect of healthy transparency and trust-building. I’m not suggesting over-sharing or revealing too much of your personal life. Rather, simply demonstrating a level of self-deprecation and empathy will give others the confidence to speak up — especially if they’re not feeling themselves, experiencing some self-doubt, or struggling with a task. If a problem arises in a team where trust has been established, people are more willing to speak their mind and can quickly resolve the conflict at hand, instead of hiding their frustrations and doubts. Note: Stinky Fish is always a useful tool to help teams open up or clear the air.
It is typically given that people are an organisation's most important asset. So it is imperative to not only lead, but also take care of them — to protect and nurture this most valuable element of success. The best environments are where people feel comfortable sharing both their needs and perspectives. Are you brave enough to be more vulnerable in front of your team?
3. Feedback is a Powerful Tool
Feedback has always been a highly-debated subject in the corporate world. Some do it better than others, but generally it has remained a common stress point — and comes down to a lack of effective communication. It is a problem that deserves more attention because it is essential to growth. You don’t need to succumb to excessive process or long reflections every year — in fact, it is more important to practice doing it frequently (and constructively) so people can learn to help themselves. Dedicating time to developing teams throughout a project allows the space and opportunity for feedback — and is necessary in order to move from working groups to effective teams.
At Hyper, we learn how to give constructive and appreciative feedback throughout our group projects. It’s easy to forget that receiving feedback can be enjoyable and encouraging — and the power of telling people in your team what you appreciate about them is phenomenal. It creates an environment of safety and togetherness, instead of people competing against each other. At the end of each project, we wrap-up our experience as a team to reflect on our own behaviours, how we worked together, and what we want to bring forward into our next team experience.
4. Make Room for Risk-Taking
Hyper is a learning environment, so you are blessed with not bearing the burden of real-world client pressures. However, it is still possible to inject this type of creative freedom into a corporate environment, which is necessary in today's economy. Carve out a space for people to go, offer them some kind of structure, and allow them to explore creative thinking and test new technologies. This gives individuals and teams a massive boost of purpose, happiness and skills that can be transferred into everyday work. Remember, creativity is a muscle — so let people practice. Allow them to realise their creative potential in a safe space where failure is accepted and coincidental collaboration is encouraged.
Why not start by using the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a platform to proactively develop meaningful creative solutions for your clients? Plant the seeds around your organisation and nurture ideas that enable your people and business to contribute to the world’s most urgent challenges — all while becoming more comfortable with measured risk. An initiative like this can create deeper trust with your clients and even open new doors. I guarantee these Global Goals are also on your client’s agenda, because it is certainly on the agenda of investors and other key stakeholders.
5. Play is Critical to Learning, Creativity — and Wellbeing
I’ve found happiness in realising that play is not only an enabler of learning and creativity, it's also critical to our wellbeing — as much as sleep, exercise, or social connection. The corporate world is starting to come around to the fact that endless hours of work is harmful to productivity. We need to instead invest time in other aspects of our wellbeing — such as play — to truly maximise the output of our limited ability to focus in a day.
Play opens our minds, helps us learn, and makes the state of being creative more natural. Less imposter syndrome, more freedom. Corporations could relax a little bit sometimes and embrace the fact that play can be a powerful tool in activating our minds and developing creative solutions. Find ways to add more of it into your everyday work and life — in your next workshop, your afternoon check-in, or even your morning routine.
Businesses are results focused — and the best results will come from creating the most effective teams. Invest time up front developing teams and creating the space for them to thrive. Otherwise, you’ll waste significantly more time later trying to clean up the pieces.
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