Knowing how to develop team working skills is a core part of modern leadership. Whether your people are collaborating remotely, on-site, or in a hybrid setup, effective teamwork is what drives real productivity and long-term success.

The word “teamwork” gets thrown around a lot. But genuine collaboration doesn’t magically appear just because people share a project or a Zoom link, it has to be built with intention and nurtured over time.

Our consultants have spent years helping organisations with team development to strengthen collaboration and culture. We’ve created this practical, human-first guide for leaders and decision-makers who want to turn good teams into great ones – and make teamwork more than just a buzzword.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

Why team working skills are more business-critical than ever
What separates a group of people from a high-performing team
Common barriers that quietly block effective teamwork
A practical, actionable framework for developing team working skills
A real-world case study of how these ideas work in practice
How leaders can support lasting, meaningful team development

So, let’s dive in and start building teams that don’t just work together, but grow together.

Why Team Working Skills Are Business-Critical

Team working skills are the foundation of how work gets done. These skills include communication, adaptability, active listening, shared problem-solving, accountability, and a commitment to collective goals. When these are in place, you lay the groundwork for a team that can truly thrive.

Today’s workplace isn’t easy to navigate. Change is constant, expectations are high, and many teams are spread across time zones, tools, and ways of working. In that environment, teams with strong collaboration skills are far more efficient and resilient.

And the impact goes deeper. Strong team working skills drive employee engagement, spark innovation, and create the conditions for long-term success. When people feel connected to their teammates, understand their roles, and know how their work contributes to a shared purpose, performance follows. So does morale, trust, and retention.
In short: teams that work well together do more than just meet targets – they move a business forward.

But here’s the problem: too often, these skills are assumed to exist. Organisations expect people to “just work well together” without ever defining what that means or providing the tools to get there. That’s like expecting a team to build a house without giving them a blueprint or any training. If you want to learn how to develop high performance teams, you need to shift how you think about performance – from a focus on individuals, to the strength of the collective.

Groups and High-Performing Teams – What’s the Difference?

It’s easy to assume that a group of people working together is a team. But there’s a world of difference between a group and a high-performing team.

A group might share tasks, sit in the same meetings, or contribute to the same project. But that doesn’t automatically mean they’re aligned or effective. High-performing teams operate on a different level; they’re built on trust, shared values, and a clear sense of purpose. Everyone understands not just what they’re doing, but why it matters and how their contributions support the whole.

Psychological safety is a core part of that. In high-performing teams, people feel confident speaking up, sharing ideas, admitting mistakes, and challenging each other respectfully. That openness fuels better thinking and outcomes.

Crucially, high performance isn’t about working harder or pushing people to their limits. It’s about creating an environment where people can do their best work together – where collaboration is natural, and the team functions as more than the sum of its parts.The difference comes down to this: a group shares space; a high-performing team shares ownership.

Common Barriers to Effective Teamwork

Even the most well-intentioned teams can struggle. And if you’re trying to figure out how to develop team working skills, it helps to understand what gets in the way first.

Here are some of the most common barriers we see across organisations:

Communication breakdowns – Missed messages, unclear expectations, or assumptions that lead to confusion and delays.
Lack of clarity in roles and responsibilities – When it’s not clear who’s doing what, tasks slip through the cracks, or multiple people do the same thing.
Conflict avoidance or excessive conflict – Teams either don’t address issues at all or get stuck in unproductive disagreement, often due to low trust.
Low psychological safety – People don’t feel safe speaking up, sharing concerns, or offering new ideas, so creativity and collaboration suffer.
Ineffective leadership or micromanagement – Leaders who hover too closely (or not at all) can undermine autonomy and team confidence.
Siloed thinking – Departments or individuals work in isolation, which blocks shared goals and cross-functional collaboration.

Some of these issues may sound familiar; meetings that go in circles, team members working hard but not together, decisions that stall, or feedback that never quite lands. They don’t always show up as major breakdowns, but as subtle patterns that chip away at performance and morale.

At Farleigh, we often see these signs early on. And while they’re common, they’re not inevitable. If you want to truly understand how to develop high performance teams, it starts with noticing these blockers.

How to Develop High Performance Teams in Practice

Team working skills don’t develop in a training room alone – or in a single team-building day with post-its and trust falls. They’re built over time, through everyday interactions, consistent leadership, and meaningful opportunities to practise in real situations.

Below is a five-part framework you can use to embed these skills into the way your team works – so they become part of the culture, not just a one-off initiative.

1. Set Clear, Shared Goals

Without clarity, even your top-performing team members may pull in different directions. By setting shared goals, you create a clear rallying point; something the whole team can get behind, aim for, and measure progress against together.

Host goal-setting sessions that spark conversation, not just consensus – Invite input, challenge assumptions, and co-create priorities to boost ownership from the start.
Make team goals visible and memorable – Don’t let them live in a slide deck. Use walls, dashboards, or rituals to keep them front-of-mind.
Draw a clear line between individual contributions and the team’s mission – Help people see how their day-to-day work ladders up to a shared outcome.

2. Develop Key Interpersonal Skills

Skills like active listening, giving feedback, and navigating tension are the glue that holds a team together. But, they rarely get the attention they deserve.

Make interpersonal skills a team priority, not just an individual task – Run sessions that involve everyone, not just the “people people.”
Use real scenarios, not generic roleplay – The more relevant it feels, the more likely it is to stick.
Build in peer coaching moments – Create space for people to support, stretch, and challenge each other in a psychologically safe way.

3. Create Opportunities to Practise

You can’t develop team working skills from a slide deck. You learn by doing things together.

Turn real business challenges into learning moments – Use live projects as a space to apply new behaviours, not just technical solutions.
Run regular retrospectives that actually get used – Reflect not just on what was done, but how the team worked together.
Mix up team configurations to break silos – Give people chances to collaborate across roles and departments in a way that feels meaningful to them.

4. Support Psychological Safety

This is about more than just being nice. You need to create an environment where people feel safe to speak up, take risks, and trust that they won’t be punished for it if it doesn’t go exactly to plan.

Help leaders model curiosity, vulnerability, and calm under pressure – What leaders do sets the tone for what’s safe.
Co-create team norms around trust, feedback, and disagreement – Don’t leave culture to chance, shape it together.
Celebrate learning, not just outcomes – Recognise effort, experimentation, and insight, even when results aren’t perfect.

5. Build in Feedback Loops

Without regular check-ins and course corrections, even strong teams can drift. Feedback should be more than a one-off, it should become an ongoing part of learning to work better together.

Hold regular team check-ins focused on dynamics, not just deadlines – Ask: How are we doing? What’s helping? What’s getting in the way?
Invite feedback from all directions – Make space for every voice, not just the loudest.
Connect team development to business impact – Show how better teamwork leads to better outcomes, not just better vibes.

By following these five steps, you can move from saying “we should be better at teamwork” to actually building the habits and environment that make it possible. It’s not something that happens overnight, but it’s absolutely worth it.

Case Study – Strengthening Team Culture at Aston Manor

Aston Manor, one of the UK’s largest cider producers, had big plans for growth. But like a lot of fast-moving businesses, they were starting to feel the strain of siloed teams, communication gaps, and a culture where people weren’t always saying what needed to be said.

That’s where Farleigh came in.

We worked with their senior leadership team (around 40 people across seven teams) to get underneath the surface. It started with creating safe, honest spaces for conversations that had either been avoided or deprioritised. What emerged was powerful: people began to understand each other better, open up more, and work together in ways that felt less transactional and more human.

It started with creating space for open, honest conversations. People quickly began to see where things were breaking down – and what stronger collaboration could look like.

“It has opened my eyes into people’s personalities. We talk better, we understand each other better. It has brought us closer together.”

“This course has helped us work more effectively together. It’s given us the confidence to speak our true feelings with each other.”

Rather than delivering generic training, we helped teams reflect on their real behaviours, identify what was getting in the way, and co-create new ways of working together. They practiced giving and receiving feedback, got clearer on shared goals, and built stronger habits around collaboration.

Through our work, teams became more aligned, more confident, and more effective in how they worked day to day. The development wasn’t abstract; it showed up in conversations, decisions, and team dynamics. And it laid the groundwork for a more connected, capable organisation.

How Leaders Can Support Team Working Skills Long-Term

Team working skills don’t stick without support. You can run the best workshop in the world, but if leaders don’t model and reinforce those behaviours day to day, they fade fast.

The role of leadership here is to create the conditions for good teamwork to grow. That means making space for development, showing what “good” looks like in action, and helping teams stay aligned when things get messy (because at some point, they will).

If you’re serious about learning how to develop team working skills that actually last, it starts at the top. Here’s how leaders can make a long-term impact:

Model the behaviours you want to see
If you want teams to listen, collaborate, and share openly – start with yourself. Be transparent. Ask questions. Own your missteps. When leaders show up as team players, others will follow.
Create space for reflection, not just reaction
It’s easy to get stuck in task mode. Build in time for teams to pause, step back, and talk about how they’re working together, not just what’s on the to-do list.
Invest in coaching and mentoring
Formal training is useful, but personal development happens through ongoing support. Help your team leads grow their confidence in facilitating collaboration, managing tension, and supporting diverse strengths.
Link team development to career development
When people see that being a strong team player helps them grow professionally, they take it seriously. Recognise and reward those who contribute to team health, not just individual output.
Champion inclusivity, always
Great teamwork depends on people feeling valued, safe, and heard. Make sure your teams celebrate diverse thinking, encourage contribution from all voices, and actively remove barriers to participation.

If you’re looking at how to develop high performance teams, this is where it starts: with leadership that sets the tone, supports the process, and stays committed for the long haul.

Learn How to Develop Team Working Skills with Farleigh

Learning how to develop a high performance team is one thing. Embedding methods in the way your team thinks, acts, and connects? That’s where the real value is.

If you’re ready to build a team that works better and feels better to be part of, we’d love to help. Farleigh offers a free two-hour consultancy session to explore where your teams are today, and where they could go with the right support.

We bring practical tools, honest insight, and a human-first approach to everything we do. Because developing teams isn’t just what we do – it’s who we are.

➡️ Ready to get started? Schedule a call or learn more about our team development approach.

Explore More Ways We Develop Teams

Team development is just one part of what we do. At Farleigh, we help organisations grow by focusing on the people, culture, and systems that drive performance:

Leadership Development
Equip your leaders with the confidence, clarity, and tools to lead effectively in a changing world.
Culture Consultancy
Shape a culture that supports strategy, empowers people, and creates lasting impact.

Whatever your starting point, we’re here to help you unlock potential at every level of your organisation.