Choosing effective Team Building Activities
You may have noticed that there are a slew of team building companies out there, all offering an array of different team building events and most (if not all) offer little or nothing in the way of advice when it comes to choosing the right team building games for your team.
Does Team Building Work?
Of course it does if it is done right. Can team building events fail?
Well, this gets us to the root of the problem. If you have a team that is not performing or that has some specific problems, and you then decide to partake in a team building event without any real consideration of the problems and goals for the day, then you are most likely going to fall flat on your face and its possible you may even make things worse.
Choosing the Right Activity or Event
It’s fairly early to understand how this can go wrong and if you have some problems with specific team members not getting along, then taking the group for a day of paintballing is not going to make that any better.
Likewise, if certain team members are lacking in moral then a heavily competitive event will create too many ‘losers’ to be truly effective.
Common Problems with Team Building Events
-The chosen game or event is not in any way related to the problems facing the team.
– Lessons learned on the game cannot be transferred to the workplace and the game or event has no relevance or point in the mind of the team members.
– The event is highly competitive and promotes individual members and effectively demotes other members that are not performing as well. This can mirror the problems in the office and actually reinforce rather than resolve the issues.
-The event has no cooperative element and therefore the group has no incentive to work as a team towards a single goal.
-With no structure, and no goals, there is little in the way to measure success of any team building activity.
Problems Facing Teams
Before you can decide which team building activity is right for your team, you must first understand the goals of the activity and what you are trying to achieve.
-What are the problems you face?
-How can we resolve those issues?
-How can we reward the team and make them feel that they are part of a single group that is supported by good team centric policies rather than hounded by an ever more demanding management?
Before you dive into a team building activity or scratch your chin over choosing the right event for your team let’s first take a look at the common problems facing teams and let that guide you in choosing team building games and activities to meet your goals.
Getting to know each other
This is the absolute basics and unless your team members know one another and get on then you are never going to take your team beyond basic formation and interpersonal battles toward the more rewarding norming and performing stages.
Understanding others skills
Assuming your team members are all capable individuals and able to do their jobs, it is likely that your team members don’t understand everything that everyone does or certainly don’t know that Jon from Accounts knows everything about the XYZ Corp Account or some such.
Building this knowledge along with a policy of self disclosure amongst the team members can help everyone get things done faster and better.
Working as a team
When you have a group of people that understand each others positions and get on you have the foundations for a high performing team – now you just have to oil the gears and improve everything to make that happen. At this stage we are looking at games that aid communication and cooperation. To build team spirit and to incrementally improve on team processes whilst building a strong team identity.
Problem Solving
Your team will encounter problems whilst chasing down its goals, it is your responsibility to give them the tools to better deal with those problems and to ensure the team does not come to a halt.
Team Building Games can be used to review, monitor and improve the team building processes and methods that your team utilise and to discuss them outside of the framework of their job role.
