Building bonds is in our blood (and our brain)

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The savanna heat swelters as the relentless sun beats down and brings fresh sweat to your brow. You’ve walked for miles, tracking the movements of the herd on its way to water. You’ve been as quiet as a whisper, treading lightly on parched ground. Finally, the herd stops at a meandering stream. You crouch low, preparing for your next move. Then you see it. The one that wanders a little farther down from the rest. Now is your chance. You pounce at the same time as your compatriots who are yards away from you, and all your hands’ actions uncoil in unison — a rock slung, a spear thrown, an arrow launched. The hunting party, and your families back at camp, will eat well tonight.

Being human means being part of a group. A tribe, a clan, a city, a country. A Cubs or White Sox fan. A member of Team Edward or Team Jacob. Both nature and nurture drive this behavior. In those ancient, pre-civilization days, being part of a group often was the only way to stay alive. One human alone couldn’t take down a water buffalo, mastodon or an emu. You needed others to multiply your force,  keep watch for a disgruntled tiger or know how to get back to camp. The more you worked together, the more experience you gained knowing who was good at what and who you could trust with your life or your child.  

Those who couldn’t consistently work as part of a team were often shunned, sent away to fend for themselves and removed from the gene pool. In this way, humans literally evolved to build bonds with one another and in larger groups. To be rewarded or it with both deerskin and dopamine, ostrich meat and oxytocin. While today we may be wrangling a Piggy Wiggly cart rather than a wild boar for our dinner, building bonds is still a part of the social and emotional intelligence power skill  that is vital for you to be effective in your professional and personal life.

What does it mean to build bonds?

The American Psychology Association’s dictionary defines bonding as “the process in which attachments or other close relationships are formed between individuals, especially between mother and infant. An early, positive relationship between a mother and a newborn child is considered by some theorists to be essential in establishing unconditional love on the part of the parent, as well as security and trust on the part of the child. In subsequent development, bonding establishes friendship and trust.” 

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This definition goes right to the centrality that bond building plays in our lives. It is something we seek as soon as  we are born. We go through our lives establishing bonds with family, friends and eventually  colleagues. Often, we are not explicitly aware of the mechanisms that build these bonds, possibly because there is a myriad of chemical reactions happening in our bodies related to this process. We lay the groundwork for trust with others neurologically when the conditions and potential reward for cooperation outweigh the perceived risk of betrayal. As we start to better regulate our fear of the unknown, we reap, and subsequently remember, the rewards of cooperation. 

When we meet or start to work with someone new, the cortisol level in our bloodstream sets up a baseline level of anxiety. Newness is scary, and fear spikes cortisol. As we progress in that new situation, oxytocin helps us be open to possibility while our amygdala continues to evaluate potential threats to our well-being. 

When that new colleague backs up the point we were making in a meeting, ,  we both appreciate the support and consider why they chose to do so. Was it in solidarity, or is it a surreptitious plot? Our prefrontal cortex responds to these chemical signals and weighs the risks that trust brings. We choose to believe that this colleague’s agreement with us is genuine. If our trust in that new person is returned in kind, dopamine spikes, and our body remembers the reward that this trust has brought us, bonding us to that individual in a new way. Some of this process is conscious; much of it is not. But the results are fully known to us as we come to our conclusions: “I trust Ines. I don’t trust Jimmy. Byron is dependable under pressure. Susan is not.”    

Why is building bonds important in the workplace?

As anyone who has tried to herd their family out the door at a predetermined time would know, getting a group of people to work in unison with one another is hard work. No matter your workplace, you and your colleagues are all walking in the door with a different set of motivations, lived experiences, personality types and tolerance levels for the smell of microwaved fish in the breakroom. Achieving the mission of your organization takes fortitude, cleverness, belief and ingenuity. You will be acting in the face of competition or indifference. External factors like market timing, societal shifts and even changing weather patterns will play a role in the success of your organization. In the small list of factors you do have control over, your ability to foster bond-building among your team members and within the wider organization has a direct effect on its performance. 

According to a 2025 paper in The Review of Economics and Statistics entitled “Measuring Group Cohesion to Reveal the Power of Social Relationships in Team Production,” Simon Gächter, Chris Starmer and Fabio Tufano find empirical evidence that group cohesion has positive impacts on team performance. Do Hong Thang outlines in a 2025 paper in the International Journal of Humanities Social Sciences and Education entitled “The Impact of Social Capital on Workplace Engagement, Productivity, and Organizational Success” that the social capital built from trust and bond-building within a team and enterprise directly impacts employee engagement, job satisfaction and overall productivity. They go on to state that “the interplay between bonding, bridging, and linking social capital determines the effectiveness of professional relationships and the collaborative strength of an organization.” Paul Zak’s 2017 Harvard Business Review article “The Neuroscience of Trust” highlights research that discovered “people at high-trust companies report 74% less stress, 106% more energy at work, 50% higher productivity, 13% fewer sick days, 76% more engagement, 29% more satisfaction with their lives, and 40% less burnout than people at low-trust companies.”

In other words, it pays to foster high trust among team members and within an organization. Building bonds bequeaths bundles of Benjamins. This social science backs up what we understand intuitively. When we work together in a group that has built bonds based on trust and respect, we are able to focus on the tasks at hand. Organizations and teams with a low-trust culture force us to expend mental calories on our own psychological and career safety. “Will telling my supervisor about the potential risks of a direction the company is going in lead to me getting demoted? Is the person in the cubicle next to me listening to my conversations? Who keeps taking the cookie out of my lunch in the breakroom fridge?” None of these questions will help the organization reach its goals.

How can I foster bond-building on my team?

As grown adults, we are past the age where trust falls are helpful, either in building bonds or in keeping our sciatica in check. The types of trust-building exercises that may have worked in a camp setting don’t translate well to the workplace, at least if your goal is to forge lasting, positive relationships between the people working on your team or within your organization. Chanting “light as a feather, stiff as a board” just ain’t gonna cut it when the stakes are high.

In their 2022 Harvard Business Review article, “The Power of Healthy Relationships at Work,” authors Emma Seppälä and Nicole McNichols lay out five principles through which team members can build strong bonds with one another.

• Transparency and authenticity. This involves clear, consistent, honest and open communication, including being comfortable with being vulnerable, and  actively listening and responding to others so that they feel heard, seen and valued. 
• Inspiration. Lifting each other up by inspiring each other to be the best versions of themselves motivates and inspires people to become better. 
• Emotional intelligence. Effectively handling emotions — big or small, bad or good — is crucial to a team’s ability to navigate conflicts.
• Self-care and self-awareness. Maintaining your own balance and sanity means learning which mental states burn you out fastest, taking time off and building stress resilience.
• Values. Leading compassionately, generously, forgivingly and with a strong focus on ethical behavior will make it easier to build bonds because you and your team will be on the same page emotionally and intellectually.

I want to call out that none of these principles include mindlessly agreeing with each other, keeping concerns quiet or papering over differences. Groupthink is a term with negative connotations for a reason. On my team, I preach the value of creative tension as often as possible when disagreements come up regarding the direction a product should take. 

Great works of art come from healthy creative tension, as illustrated by the first five Beatles albums (Yeah, I said it.) The Toyota production system famously allows anyone on the production line to pull the lever to stop the assembly line when they notice something is off. Teams that have built strong bonds through transparency, authenticity, inspiration, emotional intelligence and self-care/awareness have developed a structure in which mutual respect is at the foundation of any conversation regarding process improvement so that value can ultimately be gained from disagreement, then reflection and finally synthesis moving forward.    

Balancing your recipe for bond-building

Acetic acid (CH₃COOH) diluted in water, creates vinegar, a key ingredient in any quality vinaigrette and a very useful, natural cleaning solution. The bonds here produce a lot of value for both our taste buds and sense of cleanliness. Change just one of those carbon bonds by switching it with a fluorine atom, and you get monofluoroacetic acid (CH2FCOOH), a lethal poison similar to cyanide, which, rather than shutting down germs on your countertop, shuts down cellular respiration in your body. 

I’m trying to illustrate here that bonding happens whether the outcomes are good or bad. Teams in toxic work environments bond as well, but much more out of a sense of security for their sanity rather than the success of the organization’s mission. There also are teams or organizations that have an incredibly healthy relationship with one another, but their products no longer make sense in the marketplace. I am sure there were some incredibly well-adjusted teams making horse buggies in the early days of the Model T.   Foster bonding within your team. Illustrate to them its importance by your own behavior. But also make sure that bonding helps to support delivery of  an impactful value proposition for the people that you serve.

A wise sage of my own tribe once said, “People/People who need people/Are the luckiest people in the world.” It is hard to argue with her logic and her message (Plus, why on earth are you arguing with Babs? What is wrong with you?!) We are lucky to gain strength from our fellow sapiens and humanity from fellow humans. True connection to others is a virtue, not a vice. Anyone telling you otherwise is trying to sell you their snake oil. Follow your instincts the way our ancestors did when they banded together around a fire or sought refuge together in a cave. Do the work to build bonds with your colleagues, and help them build bonds with others. Do that work together, and everyone will eat well tonight.

Adam Bazer, MPD, senior director of thought product development, ASHE