Do you remember back in school or college, where you’d have to work in a team to complete a project? More often than not, you’d end up in a team with someone who was unreliable, another person who was bossy and someone else who just seemed to be doing their own thing. Frustrating wasn’t it?
These kinds of unsuccessful groupings normally led to mediocre outputs, but can also cause dissatisfaction, anger and a general sense of despair amongst the team members.
Fast forward to your professional life and the chances are that to some capacity, you still have to work in a team. And you may be experiencing some of the former frustrations of your former school years.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Effective team building does work. Read on to find out about how you can make team building work for your business, and wave bye-bye to inter-team fighting and irritation.
Establish Strengths Within the Team
In a group work situation, we all take on a specific role. Team building is a great way to find out exactly what type of people you have working in your business. A popular way of finding out the type of role your members might assume is by using the Belbin theory. This is a questionnaire, which measures people’s behavior in a team scenario.
Based on the results of this questionnaire, you can build your teams based on their Belbin portfolio. See you team in action, by setting them a team-building task, such as spaghetti marshmallow challenge, to measure the effectiveness of the questionnaire.
Team-building Builds Trust
There’s no doubt about it, team building helps establish trust amongst members. Fortunately, you don’t have to close your eyes and fall backwards into the arms of Jeff from accounts to build trust!
Team building, where the activity requires you to rely on a fellow team member, such as helping to pull each other over a wall, will help improve trust in your team.
The result is improved perception of your co-workers, and you won’t second guess your trust with them when you get back into the office.
Get the Creative Juices Flowing
Take your team out of their comfort zone. Studies have shown that people are actually more creative away from their office environment. Get your team to dress down, put their best smile on and be open to new experiences. Send them on an activity they have never dreamed of doing, such as abseiling, cake baking or treasure hunts. There’s plenty of choice of collaborative team building activities in London, or any of the other major cities.
Improve Motivation and Retain Employees
You’ve heard of the saying, ‘the team that plays together, stays together’, right? Well effective teams don’t just work better together, they are also much less likely to leave their jobs in search of a better working environment as well.
Taking part in team building events outside of the workplace improves motivation in employees, as they work together to solve a problem or work on a new activity together. Working on an issue or event which isn’t related to work can help break down personal and political barriers. New conversations happen and alternative points of view are expressed.
Team building does work. But it needs to be the right kind of activity and sourced from a reliable and trusted event company. Invest in your team’s development and create an effective, enjoyable and positive team dynamic.
Building an effective team, through taking part in events, doesn’t need to cost a fortune, but it does require time and planning. You’ll soon find that your team will reap the rewards you have all worked hard to achieve. Go, team!
About the Author
Charlie Berry is the event director at Zing Events, a corporate events company that delivers innovative and creative team building activities in and around London.
Photo credit: Eduardo Chávez
