Day 71 — Creative PM series 5/7: “Team Morale”
We know from Aesop’s fables, that “united we stand, divided we fall”. Great team morale helps team drive through challenges and difficult times. Lack of team morale drive people and success away. In today’s article, I’m going to share my knowledge and experience about maintaining team morale in the following structure:
- The importance of team morale
- When and how to engage team
- Other tips
Why invest in team morale
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — African Proverb
This sounds like a no-brainer question. However we’ve seem some team just don’t see the value of it. So, let’s list out some obvious benefit:
- Efficiency: When people are motivated by work environment, they tend to put more energy and time into their tasks, hence enhancing the work efficiency.
- Efficacy/ Quality: Higher team morale also naturally make team care more about the delivery quality. In other words, if the team morale is low, people tend to care less, therefore it’s hard to guarantee the delivery quality and work efficacy.
- Culture: Team’s morale level in a longer term is also an indicator of the culture of the team/organization. If the team morale has been long for quite a long time, there must be systematic failure/problem somewhere; and the reason why it’s never fixed in a long time shows: 1) the culture isn’t good therefore there’s no healthy feedback loop to identify this systematic problem, or 2) the culture is toxic therefore even though the team identify the problem, nothing is done to fix the problem.
- Attrition: Nobody wants to work in a depressing environment. If the team morale has been down for a while, it affects everyone and people leave for a better work environment.
When and How to engage
Team Bonding
In the beginning the project, team is usually excited for the new challenge and the morale is high because they haven’t face the hardship. This is a good timing to start with some team bonding event so that we accumulate “relationship capital” before the rainy days come. There are some good ways to do team bonding:
- Icebreaker exercise: Use icebreaker exercise to help team members get to know each other, their hobbies, pet peeve, favorite TV show, most desired vacation location, etc. Tips: keep it fun, light, and positive.
- Team mission/vision: Bring the team to a room and run an OKR exercise to understand what individuals can benefit/ grow from this project. Make sure to let the team members know that the purpose is not to track their progress, but rather encourage them to think about their career growth and how that can map back to this project’s work. By the end of the session, we should be able to create a collected vision, which is super important down the road, especially when we’re facing setback, we can encourage team to think about why we’re doing what we’re doing.
- Social event: food, drink, entertainment, game night, bowling, karaoke, etc. These fun events help team members open up more and build bond with each other.
Support
When the challenges start showing up in the project, teams will need guidance and support in order to carry on with the work. It’s important to provide both routine and ad hoc support to the team so that they don’t feel stuck and can’t move forward. Below are some useful ways to provide continuous support:
- Daily standup meeting: After project work really kicks in, team might suffer a bit due to the “forming, storming, norming, performing” process. Daily standup meeting is an efficient way to quickly capture individual’s issue/ blocker/ concerns so that we can solve these problem promptly and head on.
- Retrospective: Another way to ensure team members have a stable channel to share their concern is having a routine team retrospective meeting. In the retrospective, make sure not only capture the actual action items, but also team’s morale, emotion, and concerns; at the end of the day, human are not machine, and stress does impact our performance.
- Pair designing/ programing: Especially for new joiner or junior member, having a “buddy system” or pair designing/ programming not only helps enhance the quality of work, but also supports their emotional needs.
- Design Crit: Similar to the pair designing, a well run Design Crit helps team to get ideas and feedback to improve the quality of work and feel being supported by the team.
- Ad hoc coffee chat: Whenever we find there’s something doesn’t seems right, having a quick coffee chat or walk-n-talk helps provide instant support to the teammate and identify/ resolve issues quickly.
- Asynchronous support: Whether it’s mailing list, Slack channel or other forms of chatroom, having a channel for team members to ask question and get feedback is also another way to help teams get quick support
Recognize
Recognition is one of the most important morale drivers, but unfortunately is mostly ignored by many people. We all want to feel good about what we accomplished, therefore a on-time recognition is important to help build confidence and enhance performance. I’m listing some tips to help team recognition:
- Celebrate small wins: Whenever there’s a small win (e.g stakeholder approval), cheer for the win in a group setting and recognize the effort from the individual contributors. Make sure to mention what specific part we appreciate from these teammates.
- Celebrate failure, too: It’s a great mental mindset to help team becomes truly Agile, that is, celebrate failure and learning. “We’re either winning or learning.” Have fun/ humor with the setback, but make sure we don’t bring shame on people, and also capture what we learned from it.
- Skill share: Another form of recognition is to create a platform for team members who want to share what they’re good at or what they are interested in.
- Thank you note: A small, trivial thing, but works very well. A nice appreciation note make people feel recognized and appreciated.
- Public praise: If possible, as stakeholders and senior leaders to come visit and recognize team’s effort. Making team feel important is also something can help boost team morale
Fun & Growth
- Monthly outing: No matter it’s bowling or karaoke, picnic or museum trip, routine fun events that people look forward to help alleviate some work stress by having fun together.
- Interest group: Another thing people might enjoy is the learning & sharing opportunities. I’ve seen successful example like presentation workshop, Game of Thrones fan club, emerging technology forum, etc.
- Team drink/ lunch: This is probably the easiest thing to host, and it accommodates almost everyone. Timing wise, it could be when a key milestone is delivered, after retrospective, or simply a seasonal/ routine event.
Other tips
Except for team-level support for project work, it’s also important to spend time with individuals to help them grow their skill set and career. Whether it’s a good mentor program, or some career coaching, providing learning opportunities help individuals stay on track and develop competency, confidence, and enhance morale.
“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” — Steve Jobs
Conclusion
- A good team morale not only helps project delivery, but also helps foster good culture and keep great talents;
- Depending on the stage of the project, having a good strategy around choosing different activities helps provide the right support and boost team morale;
- It’s also beneficial to consider coaching or mentoring outside project-level work to help individual’s growth.
What are some methods you’ve seen successful in keeping a good Team Morale? I’m eager to learn from you.
ABC. Always be clappin’.
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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not represent current or previous client or employer views.
