Team Development Planning for 2027

Part 1 of Planning Your 2027 Team Development. One budget line pays for three completely different things, and most teams buy the first two and expect the third.

It's budget season. Somewhere in your company there's a spreadsheet with a row that says "team building" or "team development" and a number next to it that somebody has to defend before the year ends. This is the first of three articles on that row: what it can buy, what to write in it so it buys the right thing, and how to make the case to whoever signs off on it. This one is about the three things the money can pay for, because they are not the same thing and they do not cost the same.

I've watched that row get spent a lot of different ways over the years, as a manager with my own budget and now as a CliftonStrengths® facilitator who gets hired out of it. When the number goes in, that one line is paying for one of three completely different outcomes, and most teams only buy the first two but expect the third.

Team Bonding buys connection. After a workshop, a team will sometimes (actually fairly often) invite me to their dinner afterward, which still surprises me because I have LOW Woo® and I'm not the guy working the room. The connection is real. It's also the ceiling. People liking each other more is needed for the next two steps, but it is the price you pay to get on the field, not the game. It's the floor you need before anything else works, and it doesn't move the needle on anything quantifiable that you can report back to your bosses in April.

Team Building buys a shared experience. The offsite, the ropes course, the escape room, the trip with the good catering. I disliked being made to bowl and to run around Catalina Island on a scavenger hunt, and I still remember parts of those retreats fondly. Some of my colleagues from those years are still friends, and we still joke about clubbing at Club Chi at Avalon. That is what a Team Building day buys: a shared day you're still laughing about a decade later.

But Team Bonding and Team Building don't do what the third thing does, and the third thing is what almost everyone thinks they're buying when they budget this line. Team Development buys behavior change. On my old team, everyone knew everyone's top five CliftonStrengths® themes, and our department meetings rotated through topics like improving yourself, managing others, and developing the team as a whole. Nobody took a trip for that. It was a rhythm, and a rhythm costs more than a day because it has to keep showing up.

So here's how I'd split the money. This is my opinion as someone who has led teams of more than 150 and has spent more than a decade facilitating workshops, not a Gallup finding. Before the number goes in, finish this sentence: "On the Monday after, I want my team to ___."

If the blank says "feel closer" or "get to know each other," you're buying Bonding, and one good dinner does it. If it says "have done something hard together," you're buying Building, and that's where the trust falls come in. But if it says anything they'll DO differently, how they run one-on-ones, how they hand off work, what they say to each other when a meeting gets tense, you need Team Development, and that doesn't fit in one day no matter how good the facilitator is. I've stood in rooms with 150 of the best CliftonStrengths® facilitators in the world and been asked for my thoughts and advice, and none of us can change what a team does on Monday in a single afternoon.

Many of the 2027 budget rows I'll see this year will spend everything on the first two sentences and hope for the third. The next article in this series is about what to actually write in the row so it buys the third.

This series: 

Part 1, Team Bonding, Team Building or Team Development? What Your 2027 Budget Row Actually Buys (this article). 

Part 2, What to Write in the 2027 Team Development Budget Row (publishes November 10). 

Part 3, Making the Case Upstairs: The Gallup Numbers Behind Team Development (publishes December 1).

If your team is planning a CliftonStrengths®, Team Development, or first-time manager workshop for 2027, send me a message on LinkedIn or through the contact page and tell me how you finished the sentence. If it ends in something they'll DO differently, let's talk about what that would take.

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