The importance of group building for trust, psychological safety and being human!

I’ve been running a couple of new leadership programmes recently with a group of people who work in the same large corporate but don’t know each other. They’ll be working together over a few months.

One of the things we paid a lot of attention to on the first day was connecting and group building.

No specific agenda; the only ground rule was equality of listening and speaking and truly listening to connect with each other. (In other words not writing your shopping list or sending a quick email whilst other people are speaking).

This group building enables them to build trust with each other which in turn encourages open-ness, sharing, vulnerability and honesty. They start to see what they have in common and where they can encourage and support each other.

Never underestimate the power of this – whether you’re running a training programme of some type or building a team, or your team is back together again in the office after WFH. It’s so tempting to try to get through loads of ‘stuff’ but it doesn’t always add the most value. Creating your firm foundation will pay dividends.

When people feel safe and when people feel heard – that’s when they’ll do their best thinking and their best work.