Team Building creates room for intervention and development, which is why this activity is important to the company’s success.
There is a captain who has a dream. He wants to sail with a great ship that can withstand storms, waves, and adversaries in the vast ocean. That also has amenities for the comfort of those who will travel on the boat.
He is excited about looking for a shipwright, and he found one! He explained everything he wanted for his ship, and after a few months, it was done!
“My dream ship is now finished. This is indeed a great ship,” he exclaimed; but, the shipwright told him that it was finished, but it was far from great, so he asked the shipwright, “why is it so?” and the shipwright replied, “It hasn’t sailed yet.”
What Is Team Building
The term “team building” describes a variety of initiatives taken to inspire team members and improve the group’s performance as a whole. Yes, it is true, but it is more than that.
Team-building is a process of maintaining and fortifying a team.
A team is a ship that carries different people. All the people there has a role to fill in. There must be a navigator, a cook, and many more. They must all work together to survive and move to their destination. But, to sail continuously, the ship must be in proper shape, and there must be someone who must maintain and fortify the vessel, and that is the shipwright.
If you want to be a great manager or supervisor, Team building will significantly benefit you! Because team-building is the shipwright of a team, shipwrights must be involved in the ship’s maintenance and fortification.
If you do not have a shipwright who will maintain the ship, the team, your team will be drowned and will not sail best on the vast ocean of excellence.
So what? You may think it may be a little exaggerated, but you must understand that a team is a set of people, humans. They have needs; they are not robots. You must take care of them in many aspects.
Your team has strengths and weaknesses; how would you deal with them without knowing and learning about them? And if you already know, how could you navigate from it?
As the captain of the ship, you have so many things on your plate. You can only attend to some things, and you know it is essential not to forget your ship. You need a shipwright who will understand in a very consultation what the ship needs, a fortification? An improvement? Maintenance?
Whatever it may be, your ship needs a shipwright— Your team needs team-building.
As you go on to sail the vast ocean of excellence, you will find that there are things that need repair. Some things need maintenance, and some need improvement.
10 Benefits of Team Building
I remember one of the great quotations I read,
“No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.”
Halford E. Luccock once said that it is natural because two are better than one, right? What else if you were a group or a team?
Yet a team is not only a group of people. A team works together, accomplishes, and sees the vision as it is. As I have said earlier, a team is like a ship; it needs a shipwright, which is team-building.
Let me offer you 10 more reasons to do team building.
1. Team building establishes trust.
In every relationship, trust is the primary element. Without trust in a team, it is like a set of cogs with a stone between them; it cannot move. The team trusts each other when they believe in each other, and they can be vulnerable and make sure everything will be alright.
The opposite of trust is, of course, distrust. Distrust is a breeding ground for conflict of any kind.
Let me elaborate on it with you in a story.
A military unit was deployed in a remote area.
On their journey, the military got ambushed, and the attackers captured one of them. The one that the attacker takes looks calm and reserved.
One of the attackers said they would reap him off before midnight when he did not tell them any information about their unit. However, this soldier did not flinch and managed to stay calm. It was late at night, and it was time to kill him.
The attacker told him again, “If you want to live, tell us everything you know” while fixing the gun to the military’s head, the military still did not talk.
The attacker pointed the gun at him, and before he got to shoot, loud noises of guns were heard, and the companion of the attacker were all killed.
The last one standing is the one who holds a gun in front of him, and panicky asks, “you already know they will come to rescue you?” the military replies, “yes, I know.”
This story demonstrates trust. The “yes I know” phrase of the soldier in the story reflects the team’s honed confidence through the effort of team-building. Really? Yes! Because team-building in the military is essential, their training is usually about it.
I use a military story to emphasize the value of team-building.
Trust is a badass thing that a team could ever have, and team-building is an excellent way to establish it.
2. Team building builds teamwork.
Team-building builds teamwork. Teamwork is working together with other people to accomplish a goal.
Team-building is not an individual activity because it engages everyone to work together. Everyone is needed.
I am part of a Youth Organization called ADHAYA, which means ‘Adhikaing Likha ay Kaya.’
Before our launching event, we planned what to do to make it happen.
I am the Vice President for the Promotion and Communication of the said organization. I am responsible for creating publications and promote on social media. In addition, I update them about the event, what to expect from the event, who are the people who can attend the event, and many more.
The problem is that I need to find out if my team, the board executives, landed their role properly because it is our first time working together.
I was very anxious if we could make it. Unfortunately, we lacked resources since our organization is at a start-up point., We’re having financial problems, and we did have a budget for the food of our participants; we didn’t even have sound systems and lighting, and we do not know where to get a vehicle for those who will come since we changed the venue’s location. It was the last day and not everything are in the right place.
Fortunately, our teamwork ‘works’. We launched our event, and beyond belief, we did it successfully. We do not know how it happened smoothly at the last minute, but teamwork makes it work. I realized that I must learn to trust each of their capabilities.
Please note that our preparation is done only in one week, no wonder we would have a problem like that. But even though I have trust issues with the capabilities of my team, this experience made me understand that team’ works’ if everyone understands their role and takes it seriously.
Teamwork is vital to achieving any goal; if your team lacks collaboration, team-building could help you with that.
3. Team building encourages professionalism.
Professionalism, according to Virginia Tech, is the conduct, behavior, and attitude of someone in a work or business environment. It is about having a solid work ethic and striving for excellence.
It is a culture that an employee must conform to. Once an employee is at work in any company, he must be professional. It is how you conduct yourself at work to represent yourself and your company positively. It includes behavior standards that may be mandated in an employee handbook, such as adhering to a specific dress code and traits.
Professionalism is one of the most significant factors in everyone’s career success. So for a business company that has a team that lacks professionalism, it could be a wrecking ball.
Team-building encourages professionalism in the workplace. There are team-building activities that promote professionalism; actually, we can design a program for that.
4. Team building enhances problem-solving skills.
There are real problems in every company. And there are solutions. Problem-solving is the art of identifying problems and implementing the best possible solutions.
Team-building enhances problem-solving skills because it also has a faculty for complex activities that need solving. How well does your employee team handle complex projects or day-to-day problems? Problem-solving activities assist your employees in overcoming obstacles and finding solutions to any difficult situations.
5. Team building resolves conflict.
Another good thing about team-building is that it resolves conflicts. Unfortunately, in a team, we can’t avoid conflict. Why? Because of differences in perspective.
I am part of the core leaders of our church. During the last election, most Filipinos were in heated arguments about who will be a better next President of the Philippines.
As a sociology student, I have my best pick and always promote my president on social media. However, one co-leader seemed irritated by one of my posts and said I must not involve any religious sects because it is not “leader-ly”.
But I have my take on that. We now have a conflict. Our pastor knows about this conflict since the argument happened in the group chat. She then conducted a meeting with us two.
Conflict is not only solved by talking about it but must also be dealt with by letting others understand that a relationship is better than winning an argument.
Team-building is the best way to do it because it breaks the ice and solves conflict by letting the people in conflict work with the other people involved and see each other in a different light.
6. Team building encourages team autonomy.
“The greatest danger a team faces isn’t that it won’t become successful, but that it will, and then cease to improve.”
Mark Sanborn
To move forward as a team, autonomous teams have the freedom to be self-directed toward their shared goal. The team can make the most critical decisions to execute and navigate the product’s development. This frequently yields excellent results, and those teams always deliver value in the form of their product. As a result, they are a high-performing
The good thing about autonomy is that it encourages the team’s growth.
Team-building helps build an autonomous team because the activities it has lead to enhancing the vigor and creativity of the team. When there is autonomy, team building helps them figure out what is best for them and what is not. They could learn more on their own. Yes, they still need management, but an autonomous team knows how to manage their own and provide the best results.
7. Team building clarifies vision.
Vision is significant on a team because it tells what the future looks like and what steps need to be taken to get there. Without a vision, there is no future to hold, and there will be no present zealousness to show because there is nothing to obtain.
Team building helps gain clarity of the vision a company has. Because everyone has their job, they must understand that any of it impacts the overall picture of the vision.
Team Building is all about laying the groundwork for clarity and understanding.
8. Team building promotes cooperative communication.
Cooperative communication is not just listening and talking with each other in the team. Communication has something to do with finishing a task or addressing a conflict.
Team-building allows cooperative communication because most of the activities it offers have to do with how they will come up with finishing a task faster and smarter and how to solve a conflict.
I could say that cooperative communication is one method of communication that improves work and life relationships which is sadly frequently overlooked. With Cooperative Communication, people will get along and work in unison.
9. Team building enhances creativity.
Creativity is required for high levels of innovation. It is the ability to create or bring into being something new, whether it is a new problem solution, a new method or device, or a new artistic object or form.
A team must enhance its creativity to join in the changes of time. It helps build the critical thinking of the team member and improves the team’s performance and competitiveness.
And team-building can be designed to be highly competitive, that click on the creativity level of the team.
10. Team building promotes a healthy work environment.
Lastly, team-building is a must if you want to promote a healthy work environment.
In the workplace, competition can be a great motivator. However, you must ensure that you are fostering a healthy work environment. People should be able to collaborate without feeling compelled to sabotage one another.
Team-building could help you promote a healthy work environment: it works on every level of much-needed competence, characteristics, skills, and many more in the management world.
Saying that, if you take team-building to help you deal with your company’s problems and vision, it can enable you to promote a healthy work environment.
Leaders must build teams.
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said.
Have you recalled the story I told you about a captain who wants a great ship? He already has a ship, but it is far from great. He needs to experience its sails first. Your team is the ship that carries different people. It would be best if you took care of the ship while at sail. You need a shipwright to help you with that.
