In order to make a startup successful, you need to carefully manage hundreds of different variables, such as perfecting your product and finding a competitive edge. One of the best-kept secrets to startup success is team camaraderie, as better, stronger teams are much more productive and collaborative.
So what steps can you take to build more camaraderie in a new startup?
Start With the Brand and Culture
Everything starts with the brand and the culture. If you have a strong foundation that supports teamwork and collaboration, and you continually remind people of these values, they’ll be much more likely to connect with each other. It’s also good to have this foundation in place before you start hiring, recruiting, and training, since you’ll be able to find better candidates for this team environment and acclimate them to more collaborative conditions.
- Nail the mission and vision. You can start by nailing your mission and vision. These are central to the guiding philosophy of any business, and if they mention something about camaraderie, teamwork, or collaboration, they’ll help establish them as essential for the brand’s purpose.
- Establish core values. You can make your need for camaraderie even more evident by including it in the core values of your brand, and preferably at the top of the list. Obviously, this is only meant to serve as a guide, but cementing some aspects of camaraderie into your core values is a fantastic place to start.
- Design the space. Next, you’ll want to design the space in a way that both encourages collaboration and reminds people of what type of business they work for. For example, you could take advantage of a coworking space that offers fully branded floors, showing off your logo, your core values, and the aspects of your brand that make camaraderie so vital. You can also choose an open floor plan that encourages people to talk to each other and work together more easily.
Encourage Peer Rewards and Recognition
It’s natural for camaraderie to develop in an environment where peers give each other rewards and recognition. This doesn’t have to be grandiose, nor does it have to be expensive; even something as simple as a digital “high-five” can be meaningful. Encourage lighthearted contests and competitions to give people more opportunities to interact and show admiration for each other.
Host Teambuilding Events
Certain types of teambuilding events may inspire eye rolls in some of your workers, but if done right, teambuilding events can be both fun and capable of facilitating professional development. Choose events that are genuinely interesting to your staff, but make sure those events also give them a chance to get to know each other, work together on a common problem, and develop new skills together. It’s going to make your workforce more cohesive, better bonded, more productive, and aligned under a similar guiding philosophy. Consider hosting at least a few teambuilding events every year.
Create an Atmosphere of Openness and Honesty
Greater transparency, openness, and honesty can also produce more camaraderie, and for obvious reasons. When people are free to share with each other, trust each other, and trust the business they work for, they’re going to be much more open to collaboration and invested in the work they do. Just remember that this works in multiple directions; you need to be transparent with your employees, your employees need to be transparent with you, and your employees need to be transparent with each other. This can be tough to achieve in a formerly opaque environment, but if you start with leadership and work your way down, it’s a much easier transition to manage.
Identify Pain Points and Address Them
There are many ways to build up camaraderie, but it’s also important to identify and eliminate obstacles that might be in the way of this goal.
Common pain points include:
- Time zone or cultural issues. If you have people working in different parts of the world or people from very different backgrounds, there’s naturally going to be some friction. People may find it hard to collaborate due to timing, logistics, or philosophical differences. But you can iron this out by establishing fundamental principles that everyone can abide by.
- Communication discrepancies. Bad communication can ruin your camaraderie potential. The solution is to use multiple communication channels and establish clear standards for internal communication, enabling a communicative path forward in any scenario.
- Specific interpersonal conflicts. Not everyone on your team is going to get along, or at least not at first. Chances are, at least a couple of your workers are going to have unique interpersonal conflicts. Mediation, coaching, and if necessary, restructuring are all the possible solutions here.
The Rewards of Greater Camaraderie
Ultimately, greater camaraderie in your startup is going to lead to:
- Higher productivity. If your team has a sense of camaraderie, they’re going to be much more productive, and for several reasons. They’ll be able to communicate better, they’ll be more proactive in conflict resolution, they’ll feel better about their place on the team, and they’ll even be more motivated to accomplish great things.
- Collaborative potential. Naturally, greater camaraderie also leads to greater collaboration. Your team members will be able to connect with each other, exchange thoughts, and ultimately come up with more innovative ideas.
- Loyalty and retention. Employee turnover is disruptive and expensive. But if your employees share a genuine sense of camaraderie, they’ll be much more loyal and much more likely to stay with your business in the future.
Developing camaraderie in a new startup can be challenging, but it’s also highly rewarding. If you make camaraderie a top priority from the very beginning, it’s going to be much easier to build the type of team you want running your business.
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