Successful team building is probably the only thing standing between me and early retirement via quiet quitting.
I’m typing this right now at like 1:47am because I can’t sleep after today’s standup where literally nobody looked at the camera except me and I felt like a total dork. My apartment smells like burnt popcorn because I tried to “multi-task” dinner. Classic.
The Time I Almost Killed Team Morale With Trust Falls (true story)
In early 2023 I read some article about how trust is the #1 thing in high-performing teams so I decided we needed trust falls. In person. In the break room. With HR watching.
Big mistake.
I went first because “lead by example” right? Except the tallest guy on the team (nice dude, but built like a linebacker) caught me like I weighed 12 pounds and then whispered “bro you need to eat more”. Everyone laughed. Then the next person bailed because of a “back thing”. Then someone else said they had vertigo. Within 90 seconds we were all just standing there eating leftover donuts in awkward silence.
We never did trust falls again.
But weirdly after that disaster people started being more honest in meetings. Like “hey I don’t understand this ticket can someone explain it like I’m five?” instead of pretending. So maybe failing publicly was accidentally good? Idk.
Harvard Business Review has this whole thing on psychological safety being more important than anything else → https://hbr.org/2017/08/high-performing-teams-need-psychological-safety-heres-how-to-create-it
They knew. I didn’t listen.
Stuff That Actually Kind of Worked (Most of the Time)
After the trust-fall fiasco I stopped trying to copy corporate retreats and just started doing small stupid human things. Here’s what stuck:
- Once a week “failure Fridays” – everyone has to share one thing they screwed up that week. I usually lead with something like “I sent the client the internal-only version with all our snarky comments”. People started admitting stuff. Deadlines got less toxic.
- I started a Slack channel called #random-wins. Not big wins. Tiny ones. “I finally unsubscribed from 47 marketing emails” “ate a vegetable today” “didn’t cry in the bathroom”. Sounds cheesy. People post in it more than the actual work channel now.
- Food bribes. Not fancy catering. Just “hey I’m ordering Domino’s, what do you want?” Everyone feels slightly guilty if they don’t show up to the Zoom after you paid for their stupid cheesy bread.
Google’s Project Aristotle basically confirmed all this → https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/understanding-team-effectiveness/steps/introduction/
Psych safety > fancy activities every time.
The Part Where I Admit I’m Still Bad at This
Last month we did a “personality colors” workshop because the new director loves that stuff. I got labeled “blue” which apparently means empathetic listener. Everyone laughed so hard the facilitator had to mute herself.
I am not an empathetic listener. I interrupt people constantly and then apologize in all-caps. But whatever, the team now has an inside joke about my “blue energy” and honestly it’s better than nothing.
Successful team building isn’t clean. It’s messy and embarrassing and sometimes you just survive long enough that people stop being fake-nice to you.
Wrapping this up before I ramble more
If your team feels like strangers forced into a group project, don’t book the escape room yet.
Just start stupid small. Admit you’re wrong first. Buy the damn pizza. Laugh when it flops.
It won’t fix everything. But it might make Monday suck 8% less.
