Designing Meaningful Team Experiences Part II: Know Your Team
In Part I of this series, we explored how setting a clear goal shapes an effective team-building session. Now, we move to the second principle: Know Your Team. While this may seem obvious, consider your team in three distinct ways to design more intentional, high-impact experiences:
Understand the Individuals and Their Roles – Get clear on the personalities within your team and the functions their roles represent. Both influence how your team engages.
Assess the Team’s Maturity Stage – Consider what stage of development your team is in. A new team member or role shift can significantly impact team dynamics.
Consider the Teams Your Leaders Represent – Leaders are shaped by the teams they manage, and external pressures can affect how they show up in leadership interactions.
Let’s explore how these three aspects influence the way you design your time together.
Understand the Individuals and Their Roles
Understanding your team means knowing the individuals in the room—their personalities, relationships, and the demands of their roles. Google’s Project Aristotle offers valuable insights into what makes teams effective, emphasizing psychological safety. Every leader carries both their functional perspective and personal experiences into the room, influencing team interactions. Some leaders naturally bring their individual nuance forward, while others prioritize their role first. Your job is to design an experience that resonates with both.
It might sound like I’m asking you to conduct a psychological assessment of every team member and create a boutique experience—far from it. The goal isn’t hyper-customization but creating an experience where everyone can engage meaningfully. Going too deep too quickly can backfire. If you ask more of your team than they’re ready for, you risk making them feel exposed rather than connected.
This is where your Say, Think, Feel, Do framework comes in. Revisit your goal and consider your team. What shifts do you notice? What kind of experience can move the entire team, regardless of starting points, toward the intended outcome?
Assess the Team’s Maturity Stage
Beyond individual roles, your team has a collective maturity level that shapes how they interact. A team with high trust engages differently than one navigating uncertainty. Bruce Tuckman’s Four Stages of Team Development provides a framework for understanding how team dynamics evolve over time, helping leaders tailor team-building approaches accordingly. Learn more about Tuckman’s Model.
If the team has a new leader, trust levels are likely low, and enthusiasm may be high. Team members will be watching carefully, unsure of how open they can be. They need an opportunity to observe the leader and share about themselves in a safe way.
If the team has a new peer, trust and enthusiasm may both be high, but there’s a risk of an “us vs. them” dynamic. The team needs to redefine its identity to integrate the new member and see how they fit into existing dynamics.
If the team has bonded through a challenge and emerged stronger, they may have high trust and high enthusiasm. This group thrives on deep, intimate activities that transform their shared hardship into lasting connection.
If the team has faced a challenge that fractured trust, engagement and morale may be low. They need opportunities to rebuild confidence in each other. If trust is severely broken, some members may need separate conversations before engaging in team-wide activities.
Consider the Teams Your Leaders Represent
Leadership teams don’t exist in isolation. They serve their own team, but they also represent and influence the broader organization. Leaders must balance sharing their function’s perspective while also aligning their teams with company-wide priorities. This dynamic should be in the back of your mind as you design the experience.
For example, if two teams are misaligned or in unhealthy competition, pairing their leaders for activities that build trust and collaboration can be valuable.
From the start, consider what happens after the team-building session—how leaders will share insights, cascade takeaways, and reinforce alignment across teams. How will leaders share insights with their teams? How do they ensure key takeaways are cascaded through the organization, so their teams hear it from them directly rather than secondhand? What follow-up connections might be necessary at different levels to reinforce alignment?
Final Thoughts
In my next post, I’ll dive into how to weave strategy, vision, and values into team experiences. How might the bedrock of your business become the fertile soil for your high-functioning team? Until then, take a moment to assess your team: What dynamics stand out? How do you account for them in your team-building design?
