Team building transforms employees with diverse and complementary skills into a cohesive and productive team. It is a process that turns members who are addends into multipliers.
Team building accelerates success. It helps organizations produce better results with the least effort, time, and resources. When done right, team-building experiences contribute to employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and profitability.
Contrary to popular belief, team building isn’t about playing games.
Team building is about inspiring and equipping. It is about embracing new mindsets. Team building enhances skills that support the goals of individuals and the organization.
In this Team Building Guide, we will explore the following:
What is team building?
How does team building work?
How do professionals design team-building activities?
How to pick the right team-building games?
Why get a team-building facilitator?
You will get access to essential resources too. You will get tips and tools to solve team problems. You can join webinars and online courses.
What is team building?
Team building is a collective term for developmental interventions that include training, games, activities, and other experiences sponsored by organizations to form, build, and strengthen teams. Most team-building activities intend to build camaraderie, build trust, develop harmonious relationships, and upgrade team skills.
Team building is what the individual member, team, and organization do to help the team achieve its mission. It is never an effort of only one person. Any team member may initiate team building.
Competency-based team-building programs enable team members to acquire team skills vital to success.
Employee teams have been credited for everything from preventing labor unrest, innovating products and services, attracting new customers, and saving companies billions.
But, while teams can be an effective strategy to help any organization, it is not easy. Putting high-performing individuals together doesn’t guarantee that productive work will happen.
Wise managers embrace team building as a process.
Individual performers bring a unique set of values, beliefs, skills, and ambitions. These differences frequently clash.
Some employees are resistant to teams. Many individual performers lack the competence to work with others. So, you ought to be very careful.
Many managers view team building as an event to make employees happy.
Organizations all over the world invest billions in activities, games, and exercises. Many employees think team building is about exercises, games, and activities.
Team building isn’t just playing games. But many embrace this wrong belief. With no clear purpose, playing team-building games is often a wasted effort to build team.
But what makes most teams fail is not ineffective team building. Most groups fail because of a lack of management support and team autonomy.
Team building is an intervention.
It helps ensure that a team achieves its purposes and goals.
These managers don’t just make people play games for the sake of playing games. They use games, exercises, and tools to achieve specific results.
They do team building to build trust, strengthen communication, and improve work processes.
They use team building to resolve conflict.
They use team building to enhance creativity, innovation, and teamwork skills.
Read further if you want to know how to design your team-building program.
As a team member, you have a choice: you can wait for someone to build your team or take the initiative. Effective teams have members who take the initiative.
Team players build teams.
Here are four simple things you can do:
- Commit yourself fully to the team.
- Take an active role in defining the vision and mission of your team.
- Find out how your skills complement the skills of other team members.
- Take accountability for your team’s progress.
How does team building work?
Typical team-building events are one-day or multi-day offsites. Managers who prefer game-based events hire organizers to run their events.
The goal is to build camaraderie, celebrate employees, and have fun.
Managers who want a result-oriented team building hire process facilitators. They solve problems together, find new opportunities, and exercise collaborative decision-making. Team facilitators use games, exercises, and tools.
Larger organizations have trainers who are comfortable leading team-building sessions. Some HR practitioners can also run team-building sessions. Internal facilitators often have a better grasp of the needs of the team. They often interact with them and are familiar with the work objectives.
An external facilitator, on the other hand, can help them see things with fresh new eyes. But it is the team leader who has the most significant impact on building the team.
Members expect team leaders to lead in team building. Team leaders must ensure that team members get into the right team mindset and get new team skills.
Team leaders can embed in every meeting team-building activities. There are team activities that can be done in 15 minutes or less.
Many team-building events waste time and money when they buy “packages.”
Team building works when it achieves personal, social, and organizational objectives. It is vital that team building bring about behavioral change.
How to design team building?
You can follow the 6-D Approach to designing team-building programs.
Define.
Be clear about your goals for your team-building efforts. Align your team-building efforts with your strategic direction.
Discover.
Find out where your team is now. Your inquiry must focus on the strengths of your teams. Listen to you what your team members say. Focus on their strengths and give more attention to what you can do now.
Design.
Having identified opportunities, look for a combination of solutions. There are many solutions to specific challenges.
Develop.
Create team-building exercises that fit behavioral change. Tailor-fit handouts, certificates, props, and training materials to achieve the best results.
Deliver.
Run your team-building activities.
Destiny.
Follow-through sessions help you achieve your goals.
How to pick the right team building games?
Almost all group sports promote teamwork. But you must be very careful in choosing your sports metaphor for team games.
Because how you win the game is a metaphor for how you want people to achieve corporate goals.
You do not want a divided workplace. But every time you choose games that make one team win and other teams lose, most of your team members will feel like losers. When you process the games’ results, you cannot merely say that one group did not win because their members have less or no teamwork.
(In obstacle courses or tag o’ war, those who are physically strong almost always wins).
Not all competitive games are healthy.
You don’t want your employees to compete against each other. You want them to collaborate so they can serve your customers together.
To be number 1 in your industry, you do not have to kill your competitors.
To be number 1, you have to delight your customers so they will choose you every time. You do not set your eyes on your competitors all the time. Set your sights on your customers. Communicate well with your team members to deliver excellent service as a team.
Choose games that will show the team how they can be quick and reliable in serving customers.
In real life, you will not die when you make mistakes. You can use your mistakes to enhance your skills and serve your customers better.
If you have teams like customer support, marketing, production, and operations, don’t choose a game that makes other team members losers.
There are better alternatives to killing each other in a game.
Why get a team-building facilitator?
Team leaders have two main jobs: facilitate and lead. Team leaders need to learn how to run practical team-building sessions.
However, there are times when a team leader needs to get another person to design and lead team-building activities for his or her team.
You can hire professional team-building facilitators. They invest time in understanding team dynamics and designing experiences for teams. They use tools that enhance team engagement. They help you ensure that you follow a process that will bring you your desired results.
