Building a new team? Try volunteering

One of the most interesting challenges you can face as a leader is how you bind people from diverse backgrounds together as a team. What makes people from different cultures, spanning different generations, and with profoundly different life experiences work together as a well-oiled machine to achieve great missions?Last week when I held my first leadership meeting in Hanoi, I decided that we would all volunteer half a day of our time at a local orphanage. My thinking was that creating shared experiences in service of something greater than ourselves would help us build meaningful connections that would aid our collaboration in the workplace.In addition to donating books for the children, we spent time creating a garden, cooking dinner, creating a library and painting play equipment, as well as an assortment of other odd jobs. And while our efforts were very modest compared to the wonderful work of the people who run the orphanage every day we were also able to make a sizable financial contribution thanks to IBM’s Community Grants program. This program helps support the work that IBMers do in their communities by providing grants based on the number of volunteer hours they give.The truly wonderful thing about the Community Grants program is that it creates a genuine win-win situation. Our orphanage got the benefit of many willing hands, and some financial support that will help them continue their essential work. While we could feel good about ourselves, and participate in a shared bonding experience.At the same time, we were able to gain an understanding of the different strengths (and weaknesses) that we all bring to the table – many of which would have remained hidden had we not volunteered our time together. It was truly a lesson in the depth and power of teaming to drive success.And this work also creates its own virtuous circle with many of our leaders committing to taking the idea of volunteering back into their own teams – both because it is the right thing to do, and because it creates a unique bonding experience that builds trust and promotes collaboration and teaming.If you haven’t tried this approach to team building, then I highly recommend you give it a shot. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by how energised people become at the opportunity to give back.