How to strengthen relations and collaboration within a team
When your mission is building irresistible organizations, it’s very important to be one yourself. Internally we continuously work on how we do this. At the beginning of this year we asked the whole team what they needed to have a ‘very good’ year.
They asked for more learnings, by doing projects together or through mentoring and peers. Mostly they asked for time to connect more with their colleagues, and to have more fun together.
Our theme for the year was set: Very Good and Very Fun.
And, we did a thing that perfectly aligned with our theme… we went to Marrakesh for 5 days. Celebrating our birthday with teambuilding, which brings us to the theme of this month's newsletter: Teambuilding Toppings
What ingredients make teambuilding work? 🍕 A thing we hear too often: "The vibes in the team are a bit off, let's do a pizza night to improve this." Pizza solves a lot of problems, but unfortunately not all. A pizza night is never a bad idea, but we believe it needs a few special ingredients.
Let's use that pizza metaphor: What toppings should the pizza contain to truly strengthen relations and collaboration within a team?
According to Self-Determination Theory, connection is one of the three core human needs at work. Team engagement expert Koen Veltman calls team effectiveness HR's hidden responsibility, and rightly so, because strong teamwork doesn't emerge naturally just by hiring talented people. Great teamwork is also a solid predictor for High Performance.
Because we work on different assignments, and are spread across client offices during the week, we don't see each other that often. Staying genuinely connected matters a lot to us, but is an extra challenge. That’s where Marrakesh came in.
Why did it work? Offsite learnings and team7 toppings ✨
We organised it together. The trip wasn't something that happened to us. Different team members each owned a piece of it. That shared responsibility made sure everyone had the option to contribute to the content, the vibe and the success. It felt like ‘ours’ and resulted in a lot of engagement on the topics. It also kept it fun, because we had changing presenters and hosts all the time.
Everyone was invited. Good teambuilding starts with inclusion. Inviting everyone sounds obvious, but it really made a difference. It didn't matter if it was your first week or if you are part-time working student, everyone could come to Marrakesh.
We played together. A 1001 Arabian Nights themed party night, our own 7people version of Werewolves, a competition night, creating memes, and a crazy fireshow. It pushed us outside our comfort zones, helped us discover silly sides of each other. It made the trip feel light-hearted and fun.
Serious learnings. Alongside the laughter, we had a few sessions with more serious content. We dove into our ways of working, and into what it takes to become a ‘very good’ HR professional. We spoke about what made us feel less confident, shared personal experiences, reflected, and yes, shed a few tears too. The combination of fun and real learnings made the overall experience way more powerful.
We celebrated each other. People tend to be their own biggest critic, which makes genuine compliments from colleagues so powerful. We created a compliment wall: photos of the whole team, with the assignment to write at least one compliment per colleague. It was heartwarming to see the wall eventually run out of space for the post-its.
Leaders set the example. It's easier said than done to be open and vulnerable in a group. But when leaders and senior team members go first – share personal stories, dance, show up fully as themselves – it creates psychological safety for everyone else to do the same. We brought along two ‘besties’ - experienced leaders, who really helped the team grow and who were not afraid to be very authentic.
We worked toward our shared goal. A common goal creates common ground, and common ground creates connection. Our ‘Very Good and Very Fun’ goal was repeated many times. We all wanted to learn, bond and have fun at the same time.
We highly recommend coming up with a 2026 theme or slogan for your team.
No budget for a Marrakesh trip? No problem! Here's how to bring this into everyday life. The best teambuilding isn't a one-off event. It's woven into how a team operates daily.
Here are five ways you can build strong teams by focussing on connection:
📅 Schedule (recurring) moments for connection. Connection can be the main goal of a meeting itself. Do you ever schedule time with colleagues to talk about more than the work-agenda? Or does this have to happen during lunch and drinks?
We’re realised that scheduling time to connect is really key. GitLab, a fully remote company, built a rich culture of "coffee chats". These are spontaneous, informal video calls between randomly paired teammates. Simple, but powerful.
💬 Share successes and failures. Real connection grows when we share not just the wins, but also what didn't go as planned. Vulnerability builds trust, and trust builds teams. You might have heard of ‘Fuck-Up-Fridays’ where teams present and celebrate mistakes. You have to make mistakes in order to get good, and when mistakes or losses are shared - it’s turned into a learning. Create a moment when your teams shares their tough learnings and misses, like an ongoing retrospective (but ideally done in a playful way.)
🎊 Celebrate together. Always stop to celebrate wins, big and small, as a team. We explored the art of celebrating in an earlier edition of this newsletter. When you create a culture of celebrating, resilience also grows in a team.
🎳 Play together. Our best tip: give your next team meeting a theme. Dress up a bit. Create space for people to laugh, be silly, and step outside their comfort zone together. We turned our monthly meetings into the most anticipated day of the month, by giving it a theme each month. Always with 2 hosts, who come up with the theme themselves. It really gives a next level feeling to the otherwise standard information that was shared. (Our favorite theme so far each year is Halloween 🎃 where we dive into the scariest HR moments we experience.)
❤️ Appreciate each other. The compliment wall from our Marrakesh trip is a quick win to bring into your own organisation. Physically on a wall, or virtually in a Slack channel or digital whiteboard. Read here to create your own.
Lots if tips here. Pick you favourite topping or ingredient, and start building a stronger, more connected team. Step by step. And don't forget to eat pizza together now and then :)
