Does your team operate as a healthy community? Here are the three things we had to do to stay sane under one roof:

#1: Trust Each Other

To build trust in a relationship, everyone should be able to say the following statements to their colleagues and leaders.

1. I believe that you care about me as a person.
2. I believe that you won’t judge me on second-hand information. If you hear someone saying negative things about me, you will vow to check this out for yourself.
3. I believe that you won’t talk negatively about me to others. If we have a problem, you will come to me to talk about it. If you have to sort things out with someone else first, you will come to me shortly after.
4. If I have a problem with you, I will ask to speak to you privately soon after the offense occurred. I will then:
   • Get clear about what I believe happened that made me feel the way I do.
   • Listen to your perspective and try to understand what you meant
   • Work toward an agreement with you about how we will handle these situations better in the future.

#2: Honor the changes we are all experiencing

Every time priorities, job responsibilities and the make-up of the team changes, so do we. Plus, our lives outside of work are constantly changing. Therefore, we should honor and support each other as we live through change. Periodically, we should renew our relationships by asking:

• How do we describe our relationships? Are they easy? Hard? Why?
• What needs to be celebrated about how we have related so far?
• What can we agree to leave behind?
• What should we agree to continue/stop/start doing from this point going forward?

This is an especially useful exercise when one peer is promoted or given a great new assignment above his or her friends. Looking at the new relationship will help to relieve hard feelings.

#3: Commit to playing together

There is nothing more nourishing and renewing than play. To create healthy bonds at work, you need to laugh with your colleagues and share fun experiences.

Good peer relationships are vital to your success. Bad relationships can be fatal. It’s not enough to make sure everyone is talking. You have to continually talk about how you can get along better to reach your peak of effectiveness. Create a healthy community to ensure your team’s success.

© Marcia Reynolds

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“First, Take Good Care of Each Other.” That’s what the sign in the lobby of each Experient office says. When I was part of the leadership team there, we had a very strong belief that in order to lead the industry in serving our external clients and suppliers, we had to first play well in our own sandbox. The sign in the lobby was a gift from the Anaheim Marriott’s GM, Doug Watson, who also believed in the power of internal customer service.

We all have customers, whether they are external or internal. High-performing organizations will develop and nurture a culture that emphasizes a strong commitment to service, in house and out in the field. Employees who enjoy their jobs and their relationships with their co-workers are more likely to offer excellent service when it comes to the paying customers.

Here are some ways to develop great internal service culture:

Get together — Pot-luck lunches, drinks after work, birthday celebrations, a community project … these are just a few of the ways employees from different departments can come together to get to know each other, beyond the day-to-day grind.

Show gratitude — When was the last time you thanked someone in accounting or told his or her boss how valuable s/he is? How about arranging to have candy or pizza delivered to some of your colleagues who are working through crunch time? Or maybe really blow them away and proactively offer your assistance? Random acts of kindness are truly appreciated, especially by those in the trenches. An organization that has a good balance of timely public and private recognition is sure to have motivated employees.

Walk a mile in their shoes — Does everyone in your organization understand and appreciate the various responsibilities of their co-workers and how they can positively or negatively affect their efforts? Have you ever shadowed another department for a day or even a few hours? This tactic is especially insightful for those departments that rely on each other. Complaints will quickly diminish.

Coordinate deadlines — Instead of directing co-workers to turn a project around by what may be an unreasonable date, ask them what kind of turnaround works for them, given their other priorities.

Cut the gossip — If someone complains to you about another employee, do you instruct them to take their issue directly to that employee or do you help spread the disease within your organization?

Make team decisions — Are decisions made from above and then communicated to the rank and file or are employees asked to provide valuable input on decisions that impact their area?

Standardize service, inside and out — Have you developed best practices for providing service that apply to both external and internal customers?  Do they address speed of response, tone, attitude, and mutual respect? Are they reinforced and recognized on an ongoing basis?

Take Away

To distinguish yourself as an organization that delivers exceptional customer service, you need to start from the inside out, and from the top down. That means cultivating an internal culture of respect and support for each other, from the CEO to the receptionist.

You can help that along by seeking opportunities to:  get together outside of the office, thank each other for a job well done, get to know everyone’s roles, communicate directly with each other, and work together as a team — especially when it comes to making deadlines and decisions.

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These are the words I most often use from Managing with Aloha when asked why I feel Lōkahi is the Hawaiian value which conveys teamwork best of all.

When we work within a team, that dynamic of needing to join heads and hands with others is the critical component, isn’t it. We aren’t alone, and we need to function by cooperating with others as best as we possibly can. Beyond simple cooperation we need to collaborate, allowing our shared inputs and ideas to become woven and blended; unified. Compromise may happen, but we hope not; we want better than that cooperation of having to give up something. We want to achieve some new creation of dazzling unity where no one had to give up anything. No bright idea dimmed.

On the contrary, our team ended up being stronger than we initially could even imagine was possible. Not only was there room in the effort for everyone to participate, the effort itself took on a kind of magic, and a new creation was revealed. There was a transformation of some kind, and the transformation may have been us! People emerged from their contributions and their shared working efforts feeling victorious, and saying things like, “Amazing; how incredible was that?” and “Who would have thought we would actually pull that off?”

When teams work together best, individuals emerge bigger than they were before: They’ve been lifted up, or have grown in some way. The Lōkahi unity which was achieved did not diminish anyone, or worse, leave them out. On the contrary, it gave them the possibility to explore a potent capacity they weren’t even aware they still could explore. The most successful teams are those which make individuals stronger and more confident in their own abilities: They have witnessed how their contributions served others.

So my question for you today is this: When you begin working with a new team, or with your existing team at the start of a brand new day, are those outcomes I have just described the outcomes you set your sights on? What goal do you have in mind?

This is how I will describe Lōkahi from now on: I will own it in my Kuleana (my personal sense of responsibility), and say, “Lōkahi seeks my harmony with bringing people to creative agreement. It is my value of cooperation, collaboration, and unity.” I am that common thread. I am that defining critical one in the success of each team I engage with. I don’t mean that it is all about me, not at all. I do mean it is about my own behavior, my own contribution, my own initiative, and my own willingness to cooperate with the greater desire to collaborate. Lōkahi teams do not happen without Lōkahi people.

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