Team-building in account management is often undervalued, depending on the amount of autonomy an account manager has in his or her daily tasks. In fact, it’s easy for these people to become solely concentrated on serving their clients at the expense of their peers.
The problem is that this leads to a loss of trust between colleagues, which can have wide-ranging consequences on the company. Sometimes it’s necessary to rethink how you see the team.
Leadership goals
Company leaders are accountable for creating — and participating in — a culture that encourages internal collaboration. It’s the supervisors and superiors who set the tone, not the company retreats where people talk endlessly about feelings, or participate in “trust falls.” These types of exercises and outings aren’t necessarily a waste of time, but they’re not going to change the underlying structure and values of a company if only a few people buy into the program.
If yours is the type of business that hires expensive consultants once a year to talk about the importance of working as a team, only to find that you see little change in overall productivity, you can bet that the reason is at least partially that the leadership hasn’t adopted the principles either.
Interpersonal rapport
…