How quickly does a new team gel?

As a football fan, I watch the comings and goings in the summer transfer market with fascination. I don’t really look so much at who a manager has signed in the close season, interesting though that is. Instead I focus on how many new players have arrived at a club.

Too few signings and there’s little room for optimism, especially if the team under-performed previously. Too many signings and another danger emerges: that come the first day of the season, they will all play as if they are strangers. Which, of course, they are.

The danger of the “new broom”, in business as well as in football, is that it can simply leave a nasty new mess all over the floor. So realistically, how quickly can a brand new team bond together? In my experience, developing “Super Glue” strength team bonds takes time and effort on all sides. Yet the process can be rapidly accelerated if certain principles are practised from the outset.

In football, of course, the goal is …. well, goals. Lots of them. And more than the other side. In business, however, the goals can be more multi-layered. Financial goals can understandably dominate the thinking of some leaders, though for many others in the team it will be values, beliefs and behaviours that will drive them. So for any team to bond quickly, there needs to be the following:-