The Person at the Next Desk Might Be Your Most Powerful Team Development Tool
Sean Glaze is an author and leadership expert who has worked with clients like the CDC, John Deere, and Emory University to increase collaboration, boost performance, and build exceptional workplace cultures. Sean’s engaging conference keynotes and interactive team building events help you develop more effective leaders. As a successful coach and educator for over 20 years, Sean gained valuable insights into developing winning team cultures – and founded Great Results Team Building to share those lessons.
Most team managers I talk with are dealing with some version of the same challenge: morale is fragile, collaboration is inconsistent, and formal training sessions rarely seem to move the needle in any lasting way.
They want to improve team performance, but they are not sure where the real leverage is.
Here is what the research says, and what my experience working with teams across the country confirms: the biggest driver of how your team performs every day is not you. It is the person sitting in the next cubicle.
That might sound like bad news if you are the one with the title.
It is actually great news, because it means the most important investment you can make as a leader is not another management training course. It is growing the people around you, helping them build better awareness of themselves and each other, and creating the kind of connection that makes genuine collaboration possible.
That is exactly what a well-designed team building experience is built to do.
What the Research Actually Tells Us
A major research study analyzing leadership across dozens of teams looked specifically at where performance impact actually comes from. The researchers separated the effect of formal managers from the effect of peer leaders, the colleagues who influence their teammates without any official authority.
The results were striking.
Formal managers had a positive but relatively modest effect on team performance. The peer leader, the unofficial team captain who others naturally look to, had nearly twice the impact.
Read that again, because it matters a lot for how you think about developing your people.
Your direct reports are not just waiting on guidance from you. They are watching each other. They are taking cues from the colleague who shows up consistently, who encourages after a setback, who holds the standard without being asked. That person has more day-to-day influence over your team culture than most leaders realize.
This is not a criticism of formal leadership. It is a clarification of where the real work is. If you want better collaboration, better morale, and better output, you cannot get there by working only on yourself. You have to invest in growing the people around you.
Why Government Teams Struggle With This Specifically
In many government environments, the organizational chart does a lot of heavy lifting.
People know who has authority and who does not. That structure has real value, but it also creates a quiet problem: when accountability only flows vertically, peer-to-peer ownership disappears.
People wait to be told. They avoid the uncomfortable conversation with a colleague who is underperforming. They hesitate to share real feedback in a group setting. And because everyone is following the org chart instead of each other, the team never develops the organic trust and mutual accountability that drives genuine collaboration.
I see this pattern constantly.
Organizations hire talented people, put them through orientation and technical training, and then wonder why the team still feels disconnected and communication still breaks down. The answer is almost always the same: the people never learned how to work together as people, not just as position holders on an org chart.
You can have every process and policy perfectly documented and still have a team that struggles, because the gap is not in the systems. The gap is in the relationships.
What Actually Changes How People Work Together
I spent over twenty years coaching basketball before transitioning to working with corporate and government teams. One thing I learned early is that you cannot train your way to team chemistry with a whiteboard.
Chemistry comes from shared experience.
It comes from getting to know how the person next to you thinks, what they value, and how they process challenges differently than you do.
That awareness is the foundation of everything. When your people understand themselves and each other at that level, communication improves automatically. Conflict becomes less personal and more productive. People start picking each other up instead of passing judgment.
This is why a genuinely good team building experiences are NOT a party or an afternoon off. It is a structured opportunity to grow that awareness and deepen those connections in a way that carries forward into daily work.
The biggest driver of how your team performs every day is not you. It is the person sitting in the next cubicle.
The key word there is intentional.
Not every team building activity accomplishes this. A bowling trip or escape room might be a nice afternoon, but it rarely gives people new insight into how their colleagues think or what makes them tick. What actually moves the needle is an experience designed specifically to build awareness and connection, with a facilitator who knows how to create that kind of environment.
When you do that well, something shifts.
People come back to work seeing each other differently. The colleague who always pushes back in meetings is not just difficult anymore. They are detail-oriented and want to get it right. The one who seems distant is not unfriendly. They process information differently and need a little space before they engage.
That understanding changes everything about how a team operates together.
Three Things Leaders Can Do Starting Now
You do not have to wait for a big event to start shifting the culture on your team. There are some practical things you can do right now to grow the kind of peer influence the research points to.
Recognize influence, not just output. Most performance metrics in government settings measure what people produce individually. But the person who makes everyone around them better, who encourages, who bridges communication gaps, who steps up in hard moments without being asked, that person is generating enormous value that never shows up in a spreadsheet. Start noticing it out loud. When people see that peer leadership behavior is appreciated and recognized, more of it shows up.
Create space for real conversation. After-action reviews, brief team reflection moments, even a structured question at the end of a project debrief, these create the conditions for honest peer-to-peer dialogue. You want your team talking to each other about what worked and what did not, without everything having to run through you. That horizontal communication is where the real learning and accountability lives.
Invest in a shared experience. Give your people a day designed specifically to grow their awareness of themselves and each other. Not a training seminar with slides and a binder they will never open again. An experience that is engaging, a little fun, and genuinely illuminating about how each person on the team is wired. That shared experience becomes a reference point your team carries forward for months and years.
The Goal of Team Building Is Not Fun – It Is Growth
I want to be direct about something, because I think it gets misunderstood. A good team building day should be enjoyable.
People should laugh. The energy should be positive.
But the goal is not the fun itself. The fun is a vehicle for something more important.
The goal is growth. Specifically, growing each person’s awareness of their own communication style and the styles of the people they work with every day. Growing their connection to the colleagues they sit near but may not really know. Growing their sense of shared identity as a team, not just a collection of people assigned to the same department.
When you grow those things, collaboration improves because people want to collaborate. Morale improves because people feel genuinely connected to the people around them. The peer leader in the next cubicle starts influencing the team in positive ways, because they understand and appreciate their teammates in a way they did not before.
That is the return on investment that matters. Not a box checked on a training calendar, but a team that works better together long after the event is over.
Your Biggest Leverage Is Not Your Strategy. It Is Your People.
As a leader, you have real influence.
But the research is clear that the people on your team influence each other even more than you do. That is not a problem to solve. It is a resource to develop.
When you invest in experiences that grow your team members’ awareness of themselves and connection to each other, you are not just planning a nice event. You are activating the most powerful performance lever you have access to as a manager.
The best coaching lesson I took from two decades on the basketball court was this: you can design the best plays in the world, but if your players do not trust and genuinely care about each other, the plays fall apart under pressure. The same is true for your team.
Invest in growing the people, and the performance follows.
If you are looking for a team building experience designed to grow awareness and connection on your government or corporate team, I would love to talk.
Want new articles before they get published? Subscribe to our Awesome Newsletter.