10 Tips to Improve Team Cohesiveness in the Workplace

Build team cohesiveness through how the team works, not through social events alone: clear roles and goals, people who do what they say, and room to admit mistakes. Google's study of 180 teams found that how members worked together mattered more than who was on the team. Team cohesiveness comes from learning together, sharing context and building on each other's knowledge, not just from being scheduled into the same meetings. Below are 10 tips for building it.

10 tips for building a cohesive team

1. Be open to new ideas

Listen openly to a new idea before you judge it. When people see that their ideas are welcome, they accept other people's suggestions more easily, and the cycle feeds itself.

2. Respect the difference and get to know your peers

Respect differences of every kind: physical differences, origin, class, race, sexual orientation, careers, philosophies and beliefs. A team with different points of view has more to build on, because new solutions appear when people think about the same topic from different angles. Learn how your peers think and how they work on specific topics, and give them room to learn together.

3. Be participatory

A team only works well when all members feel the work is shared fairly. Take part, get involved and don't leave your task to others. Visible effort encourages the colleagues around you to show theirs.

4. Share ideas

It's no use being part of a good team if you always work alone. Share ideas and knowledge, and contribute to the growth of others as they contribute to yours.

5. Show interest

Showing interest also means standing up for other employees: meet deadlines, be willing to learn and test new suggestions, and listen to others.

We recommend keeping a visible list of commitments: who will do what by when, reviewed in your regular meeting. Dependability, members reliably completing work on time, is one of the five dynamics Google found in effective teams, and its guide for managers suggests clarifying roles and building concrete project plans that make each person's work visible. A list turns a spoken promise into something the whole team can see.

6. Provide constructive feedback

Build an environment that encourages constructive feedback: present your point of view without insulting or belittling the ideas of other members. Good criticism is about the ideas, not the person. When the team is open and confident in receiving feedback, a project usually grows faster. Let each member review their own work when needed.

7. Create autonomy to perform tasks

Some work is done individually. Each member takes a different role, and each employee needs the autonomy to carry out their tasks and work independently. Don't wait to be told what to do; take the initiative, even as a team.

8. Have a systemic view

Taking a systemic view means seeing the whole beyond the individual parts: spotting improvements and common solutions, and approaching problems in a more structured way. It lets each contributor see all parts of the project.

9. Respect individuality

Be patient with collective processes. Reconciling opinions is not always easy, so share your views, listen to the people you work with and respect their point of view. Our own ideas are not always correct.

We recommend aiming for a clear decision, not consensus. Google's study found no significant link between consensus-driven decision making and team effectiveness, but it did find one for structure and clarity, which its team survey measures with, among other items, whether the team has an effective decision-making process. That is a reason not to treat unanimous agreement as the goal. Hear everyone first, name who decides each kind of decision, and expect people to back the result even if they argued against it.

10. Build trust and confidence

Trust is essential, and it has to be reciprocal. Learn to trust your teammates' work, and make an effort to make them trust yours too. One way to show trust is vulnerability: admit your mistakes or doubts about the project. Dealing with each other can be delicate and takes patience, care and attention. Stay available and calm for dialogue.

Managers should go first. Google's guide, citing Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety, lists acknowledging your own fallibility among the ways to build it. When a manager admits a mistake in the team channel, teammates learn that mistakes can be said out loud.

Kipwise helps your team stay cohesive

A cohesive team knows what everyone is doing, what their role is, and how the work is moving toward the same goal. Most advice on team cohesion in the workplace stops at the social layer: trust, rapport, and communication. But teams also fracture at the operational layer. When nobody can find what a teammate was working on, or why a decision was made, even people who like each other start working around each other instead of together.

In Kipwise (https://kipwise.com), that shows up as page history: every update is recorded, so if someone goes on leave or moves to a new project, the next person can see what was decided and why, not just the current draft. Nothing depends on one person remembering everything.

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