Do you know that feeling: sports teams that perform better when they're in the right spirit? Even if they seem less capable in terms of numbers, quality, or quantity than their opponents. How does this actually apply to your own board, management or executive team, your department, team, or organization? And what is team spirit, and how do you create it to lead to magical results?
Team spirit is a collective feeling of pride, loyalty, and connection within a group, which leads to mutual trust and a strong willingness to collaborate and support each other.
Research on team spirit shows that strong team spirit leads to better performance, higher productivity, and greater employee satisfaction, thanks in part to factors such as psychological safety, open communication, and shared goals.
To foster team spirit, it's crucial to cultivate trust and mutual respect, involve team members in decision-making, celebrate successes together, and invest in social activities and team building.
Many team-building and team coaching sessions focus on clarifying instrumental team goals and roles (such as the various colors of team members, which can also be polarizing). This has indeed led to valuable results for some teams and leaders, but not always. Why?
Because a lack of long-term vision, a realistic strategy, and concrete rationalizations, functional role ambiguity among team members, ineffective and time-consuming meetings, unspoken irritations or mistrust, fear, self-interest, or status, whether under or above the surface, persisted.
For example, a former team coach colleague once told me that during the evaluation of his team's journey before a Board of Directors, they commented: "We've gained valuable insights, but we still don't trust each other."
Over the past three decades, in which I've coached and trained hundreds teams in organizations, both indoor and outdoor, I've noticed that sustainably successful teams think, feel, and act based on "spirit." It may seem vague, but it's not with the concrete definitions, practical examples, and exercises you'll find in my book, "Spirited Personal Leadership." Moreover, I'll now show you ten characteristics of “spirit” that put team spirit into practice, allowing you to collaborate more enjoyably and effectively, leading to greater results for the team and your organization.
When do team members lift each other up? This isn't an exhaustive list, but it is a list of ten essential characteristics that, when applied, lead to team spirit and greater results. Team spirit becomes a reality when all team members:
If team members or leaders are unable or unwilling to sufficiently meet these characteristics, they consciously or unconsciously sabotage the genuine and effective team or organizational spirit. In that case, it's important to be willing to part with leaders and people who are not (yet) able or willing to achieve this.
Research also shows that heterogeneous teams work best. All team role theories or color specifications indicate that roughly three team roles are desirable for an optimal team: conformers (followers/followers-in-arms), mediators, and non-conformers (those who are critical of decisions or policies). If all these roles are not fulfilled to an excessive degree, you potentially have an ideal team. It is important that all voices are truly heard and are included in the final decisions. This also ensures broad support for the decisions and the direction the team or organization wants to take.
To give you a glimpse into the process, I'd like to explain one of the ten characteristics mentioned for achieving team spirit. This will give you an idea of how you can put things into practice to generally increase team spirit.
What does this actually mean? Communicating respectfully and transparently with each other. It means that, as a leader or team member, you:
I recently led another team development program, this time to the management of an organization whose new team wanted to strengthen connections and develop greater team spirit. A useful behavioral skill in this regard is giving and receiving feedback effectively and respectfully. But are you there yet? Is that sufficient? Often not! Because there's something else.
Transparency doesn't mean you demonstrate respectful communication solely through your behavior social and leadership skills. You can behave respectfully, socially competently, politely, or politically correct, and still think someone else is grandiose, a jerk, or a bitch. And don't underestimate the latter. Your thoughts subconsciously have a huge impact on others, even if you behave appropriately. Why? Energy follows thoughts.
"Energy follows thoughts"
People aren't just behaviors; they are energy fields that have a much greater impact than their behavior alone. So, if you think well of someone else, you radiate that, and that very energy field affects them. They feel safe, sense your true curiosity, and feel your genuine approach. But it also works the other way around. You can behave socially competently, but if you think even the slightest bit negatively of someone else, you radiate that too. Instantly, the other person feels less safe with you, more likely to doubt your words and intentions, because they sense something different about you. And then you don't have transparent communication, because hidden thoughts are involved in the communication. And then the communication becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so you are the creator of your own reality. But it's different, because you are also the creator of positive energy and connection.
For example, when you change your thoughts and allow them to arise from spirit: with curiosity beyond your judgment, seeking and emphasizing positivity, and accepting and forgiving that the other person and yourself thought negatively about each other. Then team spirit becomes reality. After all, if you have nothing to hide and are honest, then true connection with the other can be established. Because both light and dark sides are given their place, transparently.
For example, when you change your thoughts and allow them to arise from spirit: with curiosity beyond your judgment, seeking and emphasizing positivity, and accepting and forgiving that the other person and yourself thought negatively about each other. Then team spirit becomes reality. After all, if you have nothing to hide and are honest, then true connection with the other can be established. Because both light and dark sides are given their place, transparently.
"If you have nothing to hide and are honest, then true connection with others can be established."
A challenging question in this context is: If everyone could read your mind, would you continue to think the same way? Imagine for a day that this is possible and see how you change your thinking. Catch yourself thinking negatively about others and yourself. What makes you feel better if you think differently about others and yourself? What would you be ashamed of if everyone could see how you truly think inside? What would you do differently? Try it out, especially with the people you tend to avoid and who could cause friction in your interactions.
"If everyone could read your mind, would you continue to think the same way?"
For example, one board member explained that in managing her own team, she encountered two employees who had spent 20 years building their own kingdom. From this informal position of power, they sometimes allowed themselves to behave dominantly and cynically, jokingly, towards others, which, including her own, as the new manager, was repulsive. As a counter reaction her tendency was to avoid these two people and she continued to think somewhat negatively about them. Her own thoughts and judgments about them had created more distance.
After the first few days of team training, she gathered the courage to speak with these two employees individually. She explained what she found challenging about their behavior, why that was, and what her sincere desire was. She also shared her vulnerability: "I'm also searching for the best way to approach you and respect yourselves." A sense of security opened up in their interaction, and hidden hostility gave way to friendliness.
In the example above, you see that team spirit can strengthen not only an executive team, but also the underlying levels and, consequently, the organization as a whole. Imagine if all leaders, board members, and management team members act and communicate more from spirit. The impact and spin-off of teamspirit of a board, management team, or management team for the entire organization could then be immense.
"Team spirit of the board or management team leads to organizational spirit"
What can teamspirit lead to?
Customized team programs that activate teamspirit can lead to the following responses, which I recently received:
Do you also want to go a step further with your team or organization than regular team coaching and truly activate team spirit? Then take a look here:
https://martinthoolen.com/en/service/teamcoaching/
© 2026: Martin Thoolen
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