Steps to Building Esprit De Corps

05/05/2003

Steps to Building Esprit De Corps

"True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable."
–Dave Tyson Gentry

STEPS TO BUILDING ESPRIT DE CORPS

In his book, Bringing Out the Best in People (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1985), Alan Loy McGinnis outlines specific techniques which a leader can use to enhance team spirit:

1. Reward Cooperation. Some organizations are structured so that if you are a part of a working group that produces strong results, you may get nothing. If, on the other hand, you torpedo the success of others in order to chalk up personal achievements, you are praised. Obviously, such a policy invites backstabbing and bad morale. If it is only the prima donnas in the company who get the strokes, your organization will respond by producing more prima donnas. If it is the team players who are rewarded, your organization will produce lots of collaborators.

2. Assign responsibility for group morale to the group itself. Peer pressure is always more successful than pressure from the top, so impress on the people in your committee or your family that part of their job is creating the right mood. That way everyone is accountable for the level of morale. In short, you have taught them to be motivators.

3. Plan occasions when people can be away together. A curious thing happens when you take a group of people away from their ordinary surroundings. They become more creative, more open to new ideas, and they form strong bonds with each other rather quickly. So good leaders often take a day or two with their group at some location where they can cement their relationships, undistracted by regular routines....

4. Assign a high value to communication. More often than not, when a group is fractured and people begin to fight each other, it is because of misunderstandings and small acts of inconsideration which have escalated into major grievances....One way to head [squabbling] off early is to make sure that there are regular opportunities for talk among the members...Organizations fracture when information is dispensed primarily by the grapevine, for the grapevine is notorously discriminatory -- certain people will know and others will not, and the people who are left out are certain to be malcontents.

For ideas on building esprit de corps in the early childhood setting, check out Does Your Team Work? by clicking here.

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