In this article, I’ll list my favorite dos and don’ts of team building to help you avoid the common pitfalls and create experiences that actually strengthen your team.

DO: Align Activities with Team Scope

To be effective, team building activities should align with the unique needs of the team, including the scope of day-to-day interactions. If the team often collaborates on creative projects, activities that encourage brainstorming, problem solving, and innovation can help move the team and business forward. Alternatively, if team members work mostly independently and barely know each other, consider activities that enable connection and help build relationships. This alignment helps ensure that these exercises are practical and relevant.

DON’T: Schedule All Activities Outside of Work Hours

Surely, there are plenty of times when team events are beneficial and/or appreciated outside of work hours. But when this becomes the norm for team building opportunities, employees are put in an unfair position in which they must sacrifice another part of their life to participate. This automatically excludes people that have unbreakable commitments (which disproportionately affects some groups more than others). It can also lead to a divide between those that attend vs do not attend.

DO: Incorporate Team Building into the Day-to-Day

Not all team building needs to be a formal activity or big event. Consider ways that you can incorporate team building opportunities into the team’s existing workflow. Here are some ideas:

• Collaborative projects: Assign projects to partners or groups to enable collaboration and teamwork.
• Check-ins: A brief check-in during existing team meetings where members share a goal, challenge, or another relevant topic. This helps everyone stay informed and encourages support and collaboration.
• Peer recognition: Create a system where team members can recognize and appreciate each other’s strengths and contributions.
• Rotating roles: Rotate responsibilities for a short period to help team members understand each other’s perspectives and challenges.
• Virtual meetups: For remote teams, provide virtual meeting rooms where team members can grab morning coffee or meet for lunch.

DON’T: Make It Awkward

Team building should not make team members feel uncomfortable. Many people already feel an inherent awkwardness when meeting new people and developing working relationships, so it’s important that participants feel psychologically (and physically) safe. Avoid activities that are overly intrusive. For example, requiring people to share deep personal details about their lives or excessive physical touching (I’m looking at you, human knot!). When people feel uncomfortable it can lead to stress and disengagement instead of building team spirit.

DO: Select Inclusive Activities

Ensure that your team building activities are considerate of everyone’s abilities and cultural differences. This means selecting activities that don’t exclude team members due to physical limitations, personal beliefs, dietary restrictions, etc. It’s also a good practice to mix up activities so that you can better cater to a range of interests. Ask for feedback on your activity plans to get a variety of perspectives.

DON’T: Force Participation

Not every activity must be mandatory. Offering the option of a virtual meetup in the morning for your remote team can be a simple and organic way to help team members get to know each other, but it becomes just another awkward, time-consuming, mandatory meeting when it’s forced. Forced participation can lead to resentment and reduced morale. Including team feedback in the planning process can help align activities with the team’s interests and engagement level. Provide opportunities, encourage voluntary participation, and use participation rates as a measurable indicator of progress.

DO: Set Clear Goals for Each Activity

Every team building activity should have a clear objective, whether it’s to improve communication, enhance problem-solving skills, or simply help people break the ice. Align goals and team building activities with a larger team development plan. Setting specific goals ensures that each activity has a purpose and can help contribute to measurable outcomes.

DON’T: Ignore Follow-Up

Team building activities lose a lot of value if they aren’t followed up on and incorporated into larger team development efforts. Ignoring follow-up after formal team building activities is the same thing as having your team attend a learning workshop and then never speaking of it again. This results in lost opportunities for growth and improvement, and much of what is learned is forgotten. Ensure that the team has opportunities to reflect, provide feedback, and take future action.

DO: Make It Fun!

If the team hates doing it, what’s the point? You don’t want your team to feel like this is just another task on their (already full) to-do list. When the experience is enjoyable, employees are more likely to be engaged, and when they are engaged, they are more likely to take something valuable away from the experience. When team members have fun together, they build stronger bonds which help foster a positive work environment.

But you can’t force fun. So instead of googling for a list of “fun team building activities”, consider going straight to the source, and asking your team what types of activities they might find enjoyable?

Final Thoughts

Team building doesn’t have to be cringeworthy, and it doesn’t have to waste anyone’s time. The difference between activities that spark real connection and those that spark side-eye is simple: purpose.

When you focus on the dos—clarity, inclusion, and linking activities to real goals, you create space for your team to grow stronger together. When you avoid the don’ts—forced fun, one-size-fits-all exercises, and disconnected events, you save your team from wasted hours and missed opportunities.

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The post The Dos and Don’ts of Team Building Activities appeared first on Leading For Tomorrow.

Setting goals isn’t just about throwing together a wish list and hoping for the best— believe me, I’ve tried! It’s about creating a clear, actionable plan that motivates and guides your team. Think of it as crafting a roadmap that provides direction and measurable progress. Without a strategic approach, even the most talented performers can miss the target.

Are you ready to see your team achieve more? Whether you’re responsible for developing performance goals for your team, or helping your team achieve high-level objectives set by your organization, this guide provides insights to help you drive successful business outcomes.

The SMART Way

You might be sick of hearing about SMART goals, but if you’re not using this method, it can feel like throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it sticks. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

• Specific: Be clear about what you want to achieve. Without specificity, your team can’t see the target they are shooting for.
• Measurable: If you can’t measure it, how will you know when you’ve achieved it?
• Achievable: Aim high but be realistic. If the team doesn’t believe it’s possible to hit the target, they won’t. Use data to determine realistic outcomes.
• Relevant: Your goals should matter to your team and align with broader company objectives.
• Time-bound: Open-ended goals are just dreams. To achieve your dreams, you need to identify the steps needed to succeed and set deadlines to accomplish them.

Turn Goals into Achievements

Setting a goal is just one step of the process. Assessing and monitoring progress is where the magic happens! Including your team in this process, wherever possible, allows them to feel more ownership and autonomy over their work, improves engagement, provides learning & development opportunities, and generates ownership and motivation to achieve the objectives. Here are some key building blocks for creating your roadmap to success:

1. Identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Which metrics are relevant to assess and monitor? Measurable indicators help track progress and identify barriers and opportunities. Let’s assume our objective is to increase total sales revenue by 20% next quarter. We’d monitor total sales revenue (and percent increase) at a bare minimum. But how does our team know which actions to take to achieve this goal by the deadline?

We are more likely to be successful if we identify additional KPIs that contribute to total sales. In this example it could be metrics like lead generation, conversion rates, or average transaction value. Assessing KPIs helps us better understand where we should focus our energy. Let’s assume we learn that our team’s conversion rates are above average (a strength), but transaction value is the lowest in the company by a large margin (an opportunity). These are specific, measurable, and relevant data points that we can use to monitor progress and/or create milestones.

2. Create Milestones

Big goals and long-term performance objectives can be overwhelming. They are more achievable when broken into smaller pieces by creating SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) milestones that provide actionable steps forward and allow progress to be monitored (and encouraged) along the way. Using our example of increasing total sales revenue by 20% next quarter, these are two examples of SMART milestones with time-bound tasks:

• Launch a targeted campaign by the end of July, aimed at increasing the quarter’s lead generation by 15% (based on identified strength)
  • Develop strategy and budget (Due June 15)
  • Create materials (Due July 15)
  • Launch campaign (Due July 31)
  • Assess progress (Due Aug 15 & 30)
• Conduct targeted training aimed at increasing average transaction value by $15 by the end of the quarter (based on identified opportunity)
  • Assess training needs (Due June 15)
  • Develop materials (Due July 15)
  • Conduct training (Due July 31)
  • Assess progress (Due Aug 5 & 15)

3. Use a Communication Plan

Agreeing to a communication plan up front will help hold yourself and your team accountable when things inevitably get busy. It can also help you avoid unintentional micromanaging. Use meetings wisely! Regular check-ins prevent small problems from turning into full-blown catastrophes, but we all know that circumstances can change rapidly. Whether it’s an unexpected barrier, a resource shortage, or anything else that stands in your way, you don’t want to wait until the deadline to find out. Alternatively, you also don’t want to waste valuable time with unnecessary meetings or distractions. As part of the planning process, collaborate with your team to agree upon a communication cadence that best aligns with objectives and team needs.

• What specific information needs be communicated?
• How frequently should updates be shared?
• Who needs to be included in each communication?
• What are the most effective delivery methods? (email, meeting, shared document, etc.)

4. Make Progress Visible

Visualizing progress keeps goals top of mind. Use dashboards, charts, graphs, or even a giant whiteboard in the office. When everyone can see where they stand, it’s harder to put it on the back burner. Plus, it’s satisfying to watch those numbers move in the right direction! Some data may be better shared to the group, and some may be better shared more privately. In this digital age there are endless tools available to help you share progress and create motivating visuals, from virtual project management workspaces like Asana and Trello, to data analytics tools like Microsoft Power BI, to collaborative platforms like Google Workspace.

5. Celebrate Wins

Acknowledge progress and celebrate achievements, big and small. This isn’t just about morale – though that’s very important – it’s also about reinforcing the behaviors you want to see and maintaining momentum. Practice normalizing positive feedback and celebrations by utilizing a mix of formal and informal recognition, appreciation, and acknowledgement of strengths and contributions. Even small things like a compliment, thank you, or a shout out in a meeting goes a long way. Consider including formal options like awards, peer-to-peer recognition programs, performance bonuses, etc. There are lots of creative ways you can celebrate wins with any budget!

6. Adapt

Sometimes our approach and/or goal needs to be changed, but for the right reasons. While it can be tempting to move the target closer when they miss, in my experience, this often has the opposite effect. Yet, there can be a fine line between a challenging goal and an unattainable goal. This is another reason it’s important to use data and include others in the goal-creation process when possible.

In any case, even the best projections aren’t 100% accurate, and circumstances do change. If it becomes clear that the goal is no longer achievable by the deadline, adapting the action plan may be necessary, whether that means shifting resources, adding steps, changing a deadline, referring to a ‘plan B’, or changing the target itself. Indeed, sometimes we’re given goals that we can’t change. But we can always adjust the approach we take to get there.

7. Learn from Failures

Not every goal will be met, but the good news is that failure can be a better teacher than success! Whether you hit the goal or not, use the outcome as a learning opportunity to refine strategies, processes, and communication tactics for the future. Growth requires opportunities to reflect on the experience to better understand what went well, and what didn’t go well. You won’t see your team grow if they don’t have the opportunity to learn from mistakes.

The Bottom Line

Effective goal setting and monitoring isn’t about ticking boxes on a checklist. It’s about creating a roadmap for success and keeping everyone on track with clear expectations, measurable progress, and consistent communication.

Understanding current performance is key. It’s hard to get where you want to go if you don’t know where you are. By analyzing KPI trends and stakeholder feedback, you can pinpoint performance gaps and the most relevant milestones. Furthermore, collaborate with your team to brainstorm how to best influence the targeted areas of performance. The people that perform the job everyday spend more time experiencing the processes firsthand, so they have a unique view of risks, challenges, strengths, and opportunities to improve. Inviting your team to be part of the goal and/or milestone creation process will help generate engagement and accountability to hit the agreed upon targets.

By setting clear goals, communicating effectively, and celebrating progress along the way, you’ll not only drive performance, but also help foster a team culture of trust, ownership, and continuous growth.

The post Team Performance: A Manager’s Guide for Turning Goals into Achievements appeared first on Leading For Tomorrow.

A manager’s job is to control the structure to create order and consistency by organizing, arranging, and delegating resources, responsibilities, and other components. This often includes people. But people cannot be controlled in the same way that resources, tools, and money are controlled. People come with nuance, including complex emotions, varying motivators, ethical considerations, and unique needs and abilities. To maximize potential, people can’t be managed; they must be led.

Necessary control helps the business operate efficiently, fairly, safely, sustainably, etc., whereas unnecessary control can hinder growth and performance, decrease morale, and foster stressful workplace environments.

But where is the line between necessary control and unnecessary control?

This balance is a common struggle that people managers, business owners, and leaders face. Let’s explore some of the signs of micromanaging, the implications, and tips to lead happier teams without sacrificing performance.

You hover.

The stereotypical helicopter manager can happen literally or figuratively. Do you literally hover? Or from afar, does your presence linger? Do people live on edge waiting for you to pop into their bubble at any given moment with new demands, questions, and critiques? You’d be surprised how easily you can create a sense of being watched over the shoulder, even when it’s not in person. The nicest managers with the best intentions can unintentionally create stress and pressure by hovering.

Indeed, a lot of positions require varying amounts of control and communication, so every role will look a bit different. A few reflection questions:

• Would the people you work with refer to you as a ‘hoverer’?
• How much of your time is spent observing and critiquing others?
• Do your team members have opportunities for autonomy?

Unnecessary hovering behaviors often stem from the manager’s own need for control or a fear of failure. If you’re a business owner, for example, you’ve likely invested a lot of your money, time, energy, and life into this and you naturally want to control the outcome. Or maybe you’re a mid-senior level manager that gets paid based on how well your team does. There are endless reasons that managers might feel the need to over-control. But the truth is, you’re just wasting time, especially your own.

Try this: Before you communicate, ask yourself two questions. Does this need to be communicated right now? Would the audience want to have this communicated right now? If the answer to both is no, then there may be a better time to communicate it. If everything is urgent, nothing is urgent.

You hate delegating.

Micromanaging isn’t always about being too involved. It can also look quite opposite of that, for example, an unwillingness to involve others. A lack of delegation is another sign of needing to be in control. Look, I get it- because I’ve done it. Maybe you’ve finally gotten that promotion after a lot of hard work, and you’ve got so many great ideas. Or perhaps you simply love doing it and it brings you joy and fulfillment. Or maybe it’ll be faster and better if you do it yourself. And you might be right! But this isn’t sustainable long term.

If you never pass the torch to others, they won’t get better, you’ll risk burning yourself out, and your business and/or team won’t reach their full potential.

Try this: Delegate with purpose. Approach delegated projects as developmental opportunities. What motivates the individuals on your team? What experiences or skillsets do they need or want to have? Ask them.

You monitor actions instead of results.

How much time do you spend worrying about how other people spend their time? In other words, are you monitoring the result, or the means in which they achieved the result? Sometimes, specific actions are the result. For example, in a highly controlled environment that relies on consistency, there are detailed processes and protocols that dictate actions. Similarly, a salesperson might have a script to follow, where success isn’t just about getting a sale, but how well they adhere to the script. Yet oftentimes, there is a lot more ambiguity involved in how results can be achieved. When there is room for creativity and personal initiative, micromanaging the process can slow productivity, stifle development, break trust, and cause frustration.

Your job is to equip and empower people to do their roles to the best of their ability, not to the best of your ability. By unnecessarily monitoring actions instead of results, your team essentially has two jobs. The one they were hired to do- and the job of pleasing you.

Imagine if every day at work, you are forced to always write with your non-dominant hand. It’s slower, stressful, and can be downright torturous. And even though you know you can get the work done faster and better by switching hands (or using a computer), your boss insists this is the way it should be done. You’d get better with practice, but you’ll never do it as fast and as good as you would with your dominant hand. This is what it can feel like when people are arbitrarily forced to perform their work in a way that feels unnatural. Of course, we often must do things that are uncomfortable or that we aren’t good at. But imagine how much more effective people would be if they had more opportunities to switch to their dominant hand.

You request frequent progress updates.

You either have a deadline with clear expectations or you don’t. If you do, requesting too many surprise updates is causing unnecessary distractions, attempting to control the pace and means of completing it, and signaling that you don’t trust your team. Let’s not confuse this with effective communication habits. Consistent check-ins are a crucial part of goal setting and performance management. Great managers are checking in to ensure that there are no barriers stopping employees from succeeding. Micromanagers are checking because they either seek to control how it is done, or they don’t trust that it will get done.

If you feel like nothing would get done without you doing this, your goals and objectives may be too broad or unclear. Or in other cases, accountability is lacking. Consider agreeing to a check-in schedule and communication plan with your team ahead of time to hold both yourself and team accountable.

Try this: Break long-term goals, projects, and objectives into milestones or smaller tasks that promote ongoing progress. For example, a monthly performance goal can be broken into weekly objectives that help promote timely action, set clear expectations, and provide organic progress updates.

You require the final approval on all decisions.

Is this not the ultimate control? To control every decision? Many of us have worked in an environment where internal & external customer service is hindered, projects are held back, or opportunities are missed due to excessive administrative and hierarchical barriers.

Not only that, but when you control every decision, your team no longer has a reason to make their own decisions, including practicing problem solving and critical thinking. Some people on your team may like this, because not everyone enjoys having these types of responsibilities. Others that are naturally skilled and energized by these experiences will either become frustrated or leave for a company where they can better utilize these strengths.

Also consider that if decisions are limited to the knowledge, experience, perspectives, and opinions of one person, then the success of the team or business is limited to that one person’s capacity. Spoiler alert: multiple minds are better than one.

Try this: Start by making more decisions together. This allows people to develop these skills in a safe environment where mistakes can be made, and risk can be discussed. It also increases engagement, makes people feel heard, and helps generate a sense of ownership.

Your team struggles to meet deadlines or achieve performance goals.

The more you dictate actions, distract people, and limit autonomy, the less time and energy they have to complete their work, and do it well. In my experience, this is particularly relevant for people managers that manage other people managers.

Management of teams and people require the manager to build effective relationships. This is something that cannot be controlled from the outside. While there should be a supporting structure with development opportunities to help managers develop these skillsets, each person is unique, and one size does not fit all. Not to mention, if you’re 1-2 levels of management removed, you won’t understand the context the same way. While your perspective is helpful, it shouldn’t be the only perspective. Act as a coach and mentor to help them build authentic skills rather than giving them a list of behaviors to mimic.

Try this: Instead of asking for an update, ask supportive questions like, “what’s going well?”, “what’s not going well?”, and “what can I do to best support you?”. These types of questions will help you better understand the challenges or barriers in reaching their objectives and goals.

Your team has low morale.

Certainly, there’s plenty of reasons your team could have low morale, but a quick and easy way to make someone miserable at work is to micromanage them. In my experience, you can split these into at least two buckets:

• A stressful environment. There was a time in my career that I cried on my way to work every morning because I dreaded having to be in an environment that made me feel stressed, critiqued, anxious, and just plain awful due to a micromanagement culture. This not only drove me out of the company very quickly, but negatively impacted my performance and the way I spoke about the business to others.
• A lack of fulfillment. There was also a time in my career that I admittedly shot down the dreams and excitement of others by gatekeeping decisions and strategic control. This left some people feeling discouraged and unfulfilled in their roles by stifling their creativity and autonomy.

Give your team a reason to like what they do.

Your team lacks critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Micromanagers hinder change and innovation. As mentioned, people won’t develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills without opportunities to practice them. If you’re feeling frustrated that your team can’t solve problems on their own, consider these reflection questions:

• Do they feel empowered to act? In other words, do they have your permission? And do they know this? And do they believe it? (sometimes we give people verbal or literal permission, but our actions contradict this by showing dissatisfaction or disappointment).
• Are they equipped to act? They can’t do it if they don’t know how. What opportunities are available for them to develop these skills? (this is a great time to be collaborative and work through problems and objectives together).

Try this: Allow people to make mistakes without fearing losing their job and/or respect from their boss. Encourage them to reflect on what went well, and what they would do differently in the future. This will empower people to take risks when necessary and help them reframe ‘failure’ into ‘learning’.

OKAY, I have some micromanager tendencies, now what?

Self-development is a continuous process. But for now, here’s your crash course in how to begin giving your team a little more breathing room and empowering them to achieve success.

• Acknowledgement. The first step is self-awareness! This isn’t a time to judge yourself, but to acknowledge. Seek to understand how your natural strengths, core values, aspirations, and company objectives influence your leadership style. What motivates you? How do you motivate others? What beliefs do you hold that influence the expectations you have of yourself and others?
• Assessment. Take time to observe and reflect on your communication and managerial habits. Ask your team for feedback. Are there any areas in which your team or business can benefit from adapting behaviors and/or processes?
• Set SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound). For personal goals, this will help you hold yourself accountable and maintain realistic expectations. For your team, effective goal setting will allow you to better manage and monitor progress without micromanaging. Include team members in the goal-creation process. This helps create ownership and motivation for the agreed-upon objectives.
• Foster trust and creativity. Show people that you trust them by practicing letting go of unnecessary control. Ask for more feedback. Gather more ideas and perspectives. Empower people to grow and equip them with tools to do so.

Let your team spend their time working instead of worrying about how you want them to be working. With clear expectations and SMART goals, it can allow for a better employee experience that leads to better outcomes for everyone. Be the boss that people like to work for!

If you’re interested in developing your self-awareness and exploring your natural leadership style, I’d love to help you! View strengths-based leadership development services.

The post 8 Signs You Might Be a Micromanager (and What to do About It) appeared first on Leading For Tomorrow.