Thread by @aytekintank

1/ Team-building exercises won’t make your staff more productive.

A few thoughts 👇

2/ Common sense tells us that happy, collaborative teams are productive teams.

Research backs it up, too.

3/ But when leaders or managers utter the words “team-building,” most people want to run for the nearest exit.

Visions of cheesy bonding exercises and trust-building games can induce a collective bout of nausea.

4/ Twelve years after launching @JotForm, I’ve learned to take a different approach. I explained it in detail in this post: medium.com/swlh/why-team-…

5/ I don’t think founders need to be experts at building teams.

However, I do think they need to be experts at understanding people. And, more specifically, they need to understand that different people want & need different things.

6/ Instead of worrying about how to optimize our teams, I want to nurture them:

- What do they need in order to thrive?
- How can we help them to grow?

7/ In essence, I think of our multi-functional teams as living, breathing beings.

Yes, they are a collection of diverse and talented individuals. But at their best, they also operate like a single body. And just like plants, animals and people, teams have several basic needs.

8/ Creatives may need freedom and flexibility. Developers maybe need loud music and caffeine. Salespeople may need the trust from the rest of the team that they can go out and sell.

9/ Culture, team-building and bonding can easily become buzz-words used to distract us from the much bigger thing we are trying to accomplish as founders...

... to give the most and get the most out of the amazing women and men that work with us.