Bridging the Divide: Building Cohesion in Blended Teams
The secret to a team’s success isn’t just about finding the best talent, but integrating that talent in a way that’s trusted, collaborative, and cohesive with shared accountability.
Today, teams are rarely made up of just full time employees (FTEs) from different departments with diverse backgrounds. Due to a shift in technology and economics that demand greater agility, blended teams are more often made up of contractors worldwide, whisper networks of freelancers, vendor teams, and even artificial intelligence (AI) tools that act like always-on collaborators.
I’ve worked on blended teams nearly my entire career – as an embedded contractor at a brand that had a high percentage of external temporary workers (ETWs), as a full-time employee hiring flexible resources, and as a consultant organizing mixed teams to deliver client value.
While blended teams offer immense benefits for scalability, flexibility, and targeted expertise, they also present unique challenges. You might encounter conflicts around cultural integration, perceived compensation disparities, or insider/outsider dynamics. These hurdles can directly work against collaborative goals and outcomes.
Cohesion across a blended team isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s a strategic imperative to get business results.
When contributing to, hiring, or leading blended teams, I’ve always held a few core beliefs to be true:
We have a shared responsibility to create environments that feel inclusive and set up for success.
How we each get paid by the company shouldn’t impact the value of our contribution or collaboration.
Legacy knowledge and outsider perspectives have equal value in driving solutions.
Investment in upfront teaming prevents a lot of later challenges and drives results.
Each time a team dynamic shifts – whether that’s hiring a new full-time employee, engaging a consulting team, bringing on freelancers, experiencing persistent conflict, or changing strategic directions – there’s an opportunity to jumpstart team cohesion for successful delivery outcomes.
There are a few tactics I’ve used over the years when leading teaming workshops for supply chain executives at a major retailer, scaling an 80-person data and technology consulting project, or launching a partnership program across AWS, Salesforce, a consulting firm, and a major retailer.
Hint: It doesn’t include a trust fall or even happy hour. Team connection requires more than that.
Talk Openly About What a High-Performing Team Looks Like
When it comes to building a high-performing team, we need to have a shared understanding and language around “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” which includes foundational elements such as trust, productive conflict, commitment to shared goals, accountability to take action, and a focus on driving meaningful results.
Educate Teams on What Builds and Breaks Down Individual Trust
We often reference “The Trust Equation” to give teams a framework to talk about the concept and components of trust. Once we’ve taught the language, we invite each person to share what builds and breaks down trust based on the components that are most important to them. This way, we can each be mindful of our actions in building trust with our teammates.
Use a Personality Test to Understand Each Other’s Styles
Over the years, we’ve used Insights, Myers-Briggs, DISC, and Enneagram assessments as guides to understand how our teammates communicate, think, decide, and engage at work. Getting a team familiar with one of these frameworks supports individual reflection, growth, and development. It also helps to identify and adapt to the needs and preferences of others.
Establish Team Norms
Team norms allow us to state aloud and agree on how we want to show up, who we want to be for each other, and the cultural experience we want to create when collaborating on the team. When we’ve discussed and aligned on this, it can be something that we use to hold each other accountable when something feels outside of the lanes of that behavior.
Share Our Roles and Expectations of Each Other
Before we kick off a new project, we would often go around the room sharing what our intended role was on the project, outlining the spoken and unspoken responsibilities that would fall under that role. Then, we’d take a moment to invite the other teammates to ask questions or add anything that they held as an expectation for the role. Getting this out of the way early ensures we don’t accidentally step on toes or miss expectations with each other.
Understand How Teammates Like to Engage in Communication
While some teams have clear norms around using things like Slack vs. email, typically not everyone has the same preferences. In fact, that text you’re sending your teammates at 4:55 PM might be generating anxiety. So, find out which channels, hours, or formats work well for everyone to do their best work. If we can honor how teammates like to be communicated to, we can get better results.
Talk About How We Like to Give and Receive Feedback
Feedback is hard. Most of us are fairly uncomfortable or bad at it. Yet, in our experience, knowing how to give your teammates feedback before you need to give feedback makes it less painful. Some people like a heads-up to get in the frame of mind for feedback. Others like it quickly and candidly. Some want a donut before getting constructive input. So, learn how people best receive feedback in advance – so that they can actually receive it.
Get Clear On Team Collaboration Tools & Appropriate Uses
It may feel rudimentary to talk about where materials will be created, organized, sent, and managed; however, it goes a long way in smoothing out inefficiencies and waste in the collaboration and hand off. This is now especially true when it comes to generative AI tools: Are we permitted to use conversational AI to complete a project? Do we have a tool that meets enterprise security requirements? Do we expect that something has been put through AI for copyediting before it goes through a peer review?
Document & Share Insights on Teammates for Future Reference
When leading a workshop that kicks off a new engagement, project, or team, we encourage sharing all of these insights about your teammates in a one-pager or placemat that can be saved in a shared location where the team can reference it as needed to communicate, give feedback, or adjust their styles. This serves as a productive bonding moment that teaches us how to best support each other for our best work.
Our team is well-versed in facilitating teaming workshops that drive this type of cohesion across blended (or not blended) teams. We’ve also led change adoption strategies and tactics around building trust, engagement, and collaboration within and across teams. In fact, if we’re doing our jobs well, we feel like part of your team.
If your team is in need of solutions to drive cohesion for greater outcomes, reach out.
