15 Simple, Practical Ways To Build A Unified Culture For Your Tech Team

A dev’s work often requires long hours and intense focus. This may keep many tech team members quiet and “head down” throughout the day. While focus and self-direction are great qualities to have in a developer, being too consumed with their own slates of day-to-day tasks can lead to feelings of isolation and keep tech team members from reaching out to give and receive support from each other.

Source: Original Postress-this.php?">15 Simple, Practical Ways To Build A Unified Culture For Your Tech Team

A strong tech team is a unified tech team, so it’s essential for leaders to find ways to bridge the gaps between team members, even if everyone’s working remotely. Below, 15 industry experts from Forbes Technology Council share tips to help tech leaders build a unified culture among their developers and other tech team members.

Members of Forbes Technology Council share simple, practical ways a leader can build a unified culture for their tech team.Photos courtesy of the individual members.

1. Overcommunicate And Set Up Teamwide Check-Ins

Put individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Overcommunicate everything, because ambiguity can breed isolation. Provide regular cordoned-off “check-in” sessions in the team calendar—if these are public events, they are more likely to be enjoyed free of misplaced guilt. Prioritize fun and wellness, because a team’s productivity is only as good as its overall well-being. – Martin Giess, EMnify

2. Set Up a System Of Teamwork And Knowledge Sharing

You need a culture of openness, honesty and transparency that enables questions to be asked when devs are “not in the flow,” as well as a culture of pairing and knowledge sharing where devs work together during the day on problems rather than working in isolation. You also need a product owner who attends all scrum ceremonies and offers frequent touch points during the sprint process. – James Duez, Rainbird Technologies

3. Encourage An Environment Of Trust And Ownership

Encouraging an environment of trust so there is good communication is essential. Share common principles; no matter what seniority members have, they should be able to contribute to the rest of the team (aside from handling their own work). Helping team members feel ownership of a project through sharing the “why” of the project and reducing, as much as possible, the dependencies out of their control will also help with engagement. – Javier Arguello, Mercado Libre

4. Find Multiple (And Fun) Ways To Connect

Fully remote teams learn how to create community through multiple means. Create clear working agreements about meeting time versus maker time. Hold recurring company and division all-hands where everyone participates. Encourage guilds. Create camaraderie within Slack through custom emojis, giphy, online commentary channels, special-interest channels and so on. Encourage multiple ways to connect! – Kathy Keating, Ad Hoc

5. Share The Direct Results Of Devs’ Work

Give your devs credit when credit is due. Most developers who are focused on the day-to-day are often fixing bugs and issues, and that can be quite tedious. By sharing the direct results of the work the devs are doing and rewarding them accordingly, it’s easier to both convey a vision and unify development toward the company’s overall goals. Be sure to share devs’ successes with the whole team, just as you would with other teams. – Fehzan Ali, Adscend Media

6. Switch To Asynchronous Communication

Switch to asynchronous communication for discussions that aren’t urgent—bonus points if these conversations are organized by project or topic and are easily accessible for people to refer to later on. Asynchronous communication provides valuable focus time for those who need it and allows for better collaboration across different time zones. – Dave Landa, Kintone

7. Create Shared Experiences

In my experience, building a team culture requires regular doses of positive reinforcement. I like encouraging each department manager to take their team for an off-site lunch or to take part in local charity events—and during those times, to discuss anything except work-related topics. This helps bring the team together on a social level and enables them to connect and relate to one another through shared experiences. – Sanjay Malhotra, Clearbridge Mobile

8. Host Online Games

Say “yes” to online office games! They are an efficient way to reconnect, check in and engage your team. I periodically host video call events to play a game or challenge. Sometimes I create questions, and sometimes I ask folks to submit questions or facts. And yes, fun prizes are part of it. It’s also a fun way to learn more about your colleagues, company and industry! – Olga V. Mack, Parley Pro

9. Allow Free Time To Pursue Shared Hobbies

Forced team-building exercises have been shown to actually decrease happiness across the team. Instead, creating a culture that encourages engineers to take free time as desired to pursue their hobbies with co-workers—such as ping pong, video games and so on—lets them build camaraderie around communal interests rather than forced association. – Noah Mitsuhashi, noahmitsuhashi.io

10. Encourage A Better Work-Life Balance

I’d suggest developing a people-focused workplace culture in which employees are encouraged to practice a lifestyle that’s balanced between work and personal time. Heavily work-immersed employees can become disengaged from the rest of the staff and may experience a lack of motivation. Weekly social gatherings can also help enhance communication between team members and boost social cohesion and unity. – Roman Taranov, Ruby Labs

11. Implement Pair Programming And Debugging

Pair programming can be a huge benefit for your team. The most difficult part of software development is not so much writing the code as debugging it. By leveraging pair programming and pair debugging, you enable your team to engage with one another organically and consistently. – Richard McLain, INE

12. Organize Weekly ‘Get-Virtual’ Learning Sessions

We have a weekly “get-virtual” session with a rotating set of topics based on the functions of sub-teams. Each month, each sub-team has the opportunity to share their work with the rest of the organization. This has multiple benefits: Everyone gets time in the spotlight, teams learn from and share with each other, more collaborative relationships are developed, and everyone has a unified sense of purpose. – Jennifer Esposito, Magic Leap

13. Hold Short Daily Stand-Ups

Ten-minute daily stand-up meetings have always been a great tool for bringing together the product, engineering and support teams. Creating a forum where issues can be surfaced and triaged gives the team a shared responsibility and allows issues to be addressed quickly. – Dave Mariani, AtScale

14. Get Together For A Drink 

Holding regular team “happy hours” and communal breaks is a great idea—even if it’s only for 30 minutes once a week or every other week. Cracking open a couple of beers in the kitchen or the lobby—with no computers or phones allowed—can help teammates connect and relax. – Isaac Heller, Trullion

15. Have A Meal Together

Sit down with your team and have a meal together at a location where you can chat. Take time every so often to get people in the same room to talk about shared affinities and other less formal topics. You can always segue into a strategy session toward the end, but the communal, almost ritualistic, act of sharing a meal will open up the discussion more than you may realize. – Denver Hunter, First Palmetto Bank