From Teambuilding to Workbuilding: Why getting along isn't enough
- Claudia Salas Bozich
- Feb 21
- 4 min read
You participated in what we'd call the ideal team building: escape room, pizza, beers, laughter. The team left super happy. Photos, smiles, great memories, and a boost in developing your power skills.
Because yes, we know very well that activity made you work as a team and use your best anti-stress skills.
But most likely, you arrived Monday morning and everything stayed the same!
The same meetings that go nowhere continue. The same misunderstandings about who does what still persist. And that same feeling of "running around like headless chickens" remains alive. Even some guilt about taking a "break" and abandoning "so many things to do."
What happened?
Most likely, the team building helped you get along better with your team. But it didn't change how you work together.
This is where the dimension I love to work with comes in, and the approach I'm passionate about for impacting organizations: workbuilding.
The problem isn't that they don't get along
Most organizations tend to confuse two completely different things:
Getting along ≠ Working well together
This is common to see: teams that get along very well, where the climate is fantastic, there's good communication... BUT they can simultaneously be an operational disaster.
Because working well together requires much more than just empathy, getting along, or knowing how to listen: it requires systems, explicit agreements, and clarity in decisions. Come on, aspects that are resolved at work and not at the bowling alley.
What is workbuilding?
Workbuilding is the intentional redesign of how a team works.
It's not a one-day event. It's an intervention in the work system so people can collaborate, decide, communicate, and execute much more effectively.
Team building strengthens personal bonds, fosters trust, climate, and boosts power skills.
Workbuilding builds work systems.
I believe both matter. And I believe team buildings have their necessary moment.
But let's be clear: a team that has good feeling but doesn't move projects forward isn't enough for us.
Team Building vs Work Building: the differences
TEAM BUILDING | WORK BUILDING |
Focus on relationships and skill development | Focus on work systems and collective competencies |
One-time activity | Continuous process |
Outside work context | Within the real context |
"We get along better" | "We work better" |
Improves climate | Improves results (and climate) |
Group challenges, pizza team, laughs | Redesigning meetings, decisions, flows... |
Don't get me wrong. Team building is necessary. In fact, if you know me well, you know I love facilitating them. We know the balm that laughter is, or that moment of connecting and not talking about work. We also know how useful they can be in developing power skills. But to improve work impact, we need much more.
And besides: a better designed work environment decreases stress levels, excess conflicts, misunderstandings, and other situations that can wear down the work climate.
Why we need more workbuilding
Work changed, team building didn't
Personal relationships aren't enough when you work with someone who's in another city, on the other side of the world, or who you only see on Zoom twice a week.
We need explicit ways of working. "We know each other well and understand each other" isn't sufficient when there are different schedules, conditions, and even cultures in the equation.
Team building treats symptoms, not causes
If your team doesn't collaborate well, the problem is NOT that they don't know each other.
Things like not having clarity about who decides what. Chaotic meetings. Non-existent feedback. Work flow overload... THESE DON'T GET FIXED IN AN ESCAPE ROOM.
Individual competencies are important but not sufficient
A well-executed team building can be incredible for improving personal competencies like active listening, assertive communication, managing pressure, learning to ask, etc. They push us as individuals. But let's be clear: skill development alone isn't sufficient to create changes in work dynamics and ways of working.
We can learn to speak better to each other and give feedback, but that doesn't directly solve the bottleneck or work overload.
What workbuilding includes
Workbuilding addresses multiple dimensions of teamwork. I'll share the dimensions and interventions I most frequently facilitate in this type of process:
Communication and coordination
Meeting redesign: what meetings we really need, how we facilitate them, how we close them...
Communication channels: what gets communicated through which channel (Slack vs email vs meeting vs document)
Work item traceability: how do we track what's happening without asking? Kanban boards can be included
Bottleneck identification: where the flow gets stuck and why
Decisions and governance
Clarity on who decides what: governance and clarity in authority levels and decision-making
Effective delegation: what decisions go down a level and to what degree
Explicit work agreements: schedules, response times, what's urgent vs important
Spaces for feedback: how we give feedback, how we receive it, when we do it...
Purpose and direction
Co-construction of shared vision: where are we going as a team?
Identification of limiting and empowering beliefs: what holds us back, what drives us forward
Alignment on the "why": why we do what we do
People and profiles
Understanding individualities with a contribution focus: not just "how you are" but "how you contribute." Not just isolated DISC profiles
How each profile adds to the system: understanding strengths based on real work
Psychological safety conversations: creating space for people to say what they think
Continuous learning
Structured retrospectives: what worked, what didn't, what we change
Experimentation with new ways of working: try, measure, adjust...
Adjustment based on what works: iterate on what we already do
Bonds and motivation
Dynamics and challenges that strengthen communication: yes, the fun part is here too!
The nice part of team building: because workbuilding doesn't eliminate connections
Reconnecting with motivation and emotions: like joy and harmony. Yes, an energy boost is good for the team
Workbuilding is awakening at work
Workbuilding allows us to identify the patterns we carry on autopilot, reflect, think. Take a pause. Refresh ourselves. Reinvent ourselves. Improve. Connect.
And besides, the team that works well together can enjoy each other more!
Team building gives us the relational foundation (and when well executed, power skills). Workbuilding builds on that foundation a work system that really functions.
This isn't about one or the other. It's about one AND the other.
An awakened organization understands that people need both things: to get along well AND work well together.
Because Friday beers create closeness. But they don't create sustainable work systems. And because a sustainable work system improves both climate and productivity.
And you, do you work with this approach?
If you want to design custom workbuilding for your team, let's talk. Let's generate something special.
Claudia Salas Bozich
