Team building skills: What they are and how to develop them

In today’s dispersed workplace, building a sense of community is essential. In fact, 80% of teams and leaders say it’s the key to success.¹ But with tighter budgets and more fragmented teams, creating that cohesion is harder than ever.

The solution? Strengthen the team-building skills that help teams thrive, such as inclusive communication, empathy, and trust. These human skills lay the foundation for psychological safety, motivation, and high performance.

Whether you're part of a team, leading one, or the go-to connector everyone turns to, this guide unpacks the most essential team-building skills, explains why they matter, and provides guidance on how to develop them. You’ll also learn how tools like Marlee can help embed these strengths into your everyday culture.

What are team-building skills?

Team-building skills are the human skills that enable people to work better together. They include skills such as clear communication, active listening, providing constructive feedback, resolving conflicts, and building trust. These are the foundation of psychological safety, motivation, and high performance. When practiced consistently, they transform a group of individuals into a cohesive, resilient team.

What’s the difference between team-building skills and team-building activities?

Team-building activities, such as scavenger hunts, workshops, or virtual trivia, are designed to spark connection and collaboration. However, the real impact comes when those activities strengthen underlying team-building skills. Think communication, empathy, clarity, and accountability. Activities are the practice ground. Skills are what carry teams through the work that matters most.

What are examples of team-building skills?

Just like the people inside them, no two teams are the same. What great teamwork looks like can vary wildly: brainstorming at speed might energize a startup team, while healthy competition could fuel performance in a sales environment.

At Marlee, we’ve spent more than 20 years researching what really drives high-performing teams. And while every team is unique, there’s a core set of human skills, such as emotional intelligence and inclusive communication, that consistently emerge. These are the team-building skills that power trust, clarity, and collaboration. Let’s break them down.

Motivation

It likely comes as no surprise that motivated teams are productive teams. Research shows that highly engaged teams increase business profitability by 21%, and are 59% less likely to burn out.² However, it's crucial to note that motivation isn't one-size-fits-all. While one employee might be energized through the exchange of ideas, others might be more motivated by taking sole responsibility for a project task. Marlee's motivation assessment measures the 48 traits that influence motivation, so you can better understand and cater to your team members' unique drives.

Delegation

The ability to delegate tasks is essential, to ensure projects get completed on time and within budget. After all, as the expression goes, many hands make light work! This is a particularly crucial team-building skill for those in leadership roles, as delegating some of those hands-on tasks frees up time for strategic, big-picture thinking. Not only that, but research shows that trusting employees with these tasks ignites a greater sense of purpose, and facilitates a better feedback culture in an organization.³

Giving and receiving feedback

Speaking of feedback, research shows that this is a powerful tool to drive team learning, and in turn, improve performance.⁴ Organizations with a strong two-way feedback culture (meaning, leaders can provide employees with constructive feedback and vice versa) tend to foster greater psychological safety, which is essential for thriving teams. It's important that these lines of communication stay open at all times, not just during annual or performance reviews. This means holding regular meetings with the intended purpose of checking in.

Effective team communication

Research shows that strong communication skills are one of the greatest predictors of team success. The daily interactions within a team are crucial for relationship building, as well as ensuring project goals are achieved. This becomes even more important in remote teams, as virtual meetings and online messaging can make it more challenging to decipher nuances in communication (although, Marlee's Zoom integration makes this far easier). Everyone communicates differently, and by understanding these preferences, you can ensure all these ideas, concerns, and questions are heard.

Marlee Zoom integration

Goal setting and role assignment

Unclear expectations are one of the most common sources of miscommunication and conflict at work. When it comes to working on team projects, it's essential that everyone understands what they're working towards and why. It's also important to define each team member's role within a project. This enables employees to take greater ownership and responsibility for their part of the metaphorical pie and prevents them from stepping on anyone else's toes.

Empathy

The ability to step into someone's shoes and understand how they're feeling is worth its weight in gold. Emotional intelligence (EQ) fosters better relationships in teams, as it prevents negative judgments and miscommunications. Empathy is often voted as the most essential leadership skill, as it has a direct impact on employees feeling seen, heard, and understood at work.⁵ However, it's challenging to empathize with someone, if you're not aware of their experience. Marlee fosters this awareness, by bringing employee's inner motivations and preferences to the surface.

A Marlee Team Distribution Board showing similarities and differences

Critical thinking

In close-knit teams, it's easy to succumb to groupthink, especially if you have certain members who are particularly influential communicators. This is the phenomenon wherein team members feel compelled to reach a consensus on a decision to preserve harmony in the group, rather than considering other viewpoints. However, research shows that this leads to poorer decision-making outcomes, and can create resentment in the team.⁶ This is where critical thinking proves essential. It's important to foster an environment where all team members feel safe and able to challenge perspectives, in a respectful and productive way.

Time management and organization

There are no two ways about it, with so many demanding priorities in the workplace, time management skills are vital for getting things done. While everyone has different preferences about how they manage their time and workflow, incompatibilities in this area can breed frustration in teams. For example, you may have certain team members who are structured and methodical, while others need the pressure of a deadline to get things done at the last minute. Consider using Marlee's free motivation assessment report to illuminate these strengths and preferences, and designate responsibilities accordingly (for example, some team members may be better initiators, while others prefer to wait and reflect). It's also important to set plenty of smaller deadlines and milestones around your project, to ensure nobody is left behind.

Resolving conflict

The reality of working with many different personalities, motivations, and communication styles is that problems will inevitably arise. There's no such thing as the 'perfect' team, and it’s unrealistic to expect things to be smooth sailing all the time. However, what makes a team effective is how quickly and efficiently it can resolve conflict. This means being proactive about identifying potential roadblocks bubbling under the surface before they turn into bigger problems. It also means having processes in place for working through these, so nobody feels blind-sided if an issue is raised.

Ask Marlee, our AI, to help you identify these possible areas of friction ahead of time.

Ask Marlee what drives team conflict

Trust

There's a good reason so many team-building activities are oriented around trust, it's the glue that holds high-functioning teams together. In the context of a workplace, trust is a belief that your fellow team members have good intentions, and will follow through when they say they will. Research shows that trust has a significant impact on information processing, attitudes, and performance in teams.⁷ This effect is only compounded in virtual teams, where there is more uncertainty to navigate. Whether you have an in-person, remote, or hybrid work environment, making the time to get to know your team members will build this rapport.

Collaboration

In an ever-changing work environment, team collaboration is more important than ever. Research shows that collaborative teams are 50% more effective at completing tasks than those who work independently and have higher levels of engagement and satisfaction.⁸ This is likely because it brings together a multitude of different perspectives, which tends to lead to more innovative ideas and solutions. Healthy collaboration can be thought of as a big picture skill, in that it requires a culmination of many of the other competencies that have already been mentioned, including trust, communication, critical thinking, and empathy.

How to develop team-building skills

The first step towards building teamwork skills is taking Marlee's motivation assessment. It's more than 90% accurate and captures 48 traits that influence what energizes and drives your team at work.

This provides a bird's-eye view of how each team member's motivations align with one another and the overall 'feel' of the team. It also provides a snapshot into team similarities and potential areas of friction that could create issues down the track.

Armed with this information, there are various pathways you can take to work on these team-building skills.

Get coached

Based on gaps identified in your team, our AI-based coach Marlee will suggest targeted coaching programs for your employees. These include:

Personal Power

Effective teams require strong leaders. Whether it's a new manager, team leader, or department head, this coaching program empowers individuals to step into leadership positions with confidence. Not only does it positively reframe what it means to be 'powerful' in the workplace, but it equips them with key skills including influential communication, stakeholder management, and executive presence.

Reflection & Patience

You may have team members who are excellent at taking action, but a little hasty in their dealings with more detail-oriented coworkers. This is the perfect coaching program to encourage these individuals to take a step back and reflect, before moving forward with intention. As well as developing key self-awareness and mindfulness skills, it teaches how to use strategy documentation, feedback and retros, to more effectively get others on board with their ideas.

Increase EQ

Strong EQ (emotional intelligence) is at the core of what it means to be a great team player. This coaching program helps employees develop the valuable skill of 'reading people' and understanding the emotions that drive behavior in the workplace. It also teaches effective communication skills, such as how to convey a message with body language, voice, and facial expressions.

Goal Catcher

The ability to set, communicate, and inspire others to work towards goals is one of the most crucial team skills. This profound coaching program guides individual employees to set an inspiring vision, and to break this down into tangible goals and targets. It also teaches how to communicate these plans to others (whether it's larger company goals, or department-specific projects) and motivates the team to stay on track.

Multiply Your Impact

Some highly intelligent and motivated employees prefer to fly solo, but, as the expression goes, no one is an island! This coaching program guides more solitary team members to expand their influence at work by harnessing the potential in others. Throughout the program, Coach Marlee teaches how to build an open-minded, experimentation culture through the art of giving and receiving feedback.

Team Building

Looking for a team building activity that is guaranteed to foster greater awareness, understanding, and collaboration? Designed to be taken by your entire team, this coaching program guides you to become a tighter-knit unit over the course of 9 weeks.

In just 2, 5-15 virtual sessions per week, your team will learn to celebrate complementary strengths, overcome blindspots, reach faster decisions, improve communication, boost productivity, and more. This program also guides you to set and define your united mission or 'big why', and to work consistently towards it without burning out.

Run a team-building workshop

Another effective way to strengthen your team is to hold a team dynamics workshop. This is a designated time for your team to down tools and get to know each other on a deeper level. As well as enhancing your understanding of what makes your team members tick, it's a great opportunity to reflect on what's working (and what's not) and set goals for the quarter or year ahead.

In preparation for your workshop, it’s a good idea to ensure everyone has taken the Marlee assessment. Also consider setting everyone on the same culture in Profile setting, so that you have a baseline for a high-performing team to work towards. You may choose to print out physical copies of the results or access them digitally. Either way, the data acts as an excellent starting point that will allow you to visualize dynamics, similarities, and differences within your team.

Read our full, step-by-step guide to running a team dynamics workshop.