What would happen in your office if the manager announced that the firm was going to introduce some team building exercises? Twenty years ago in the UK, only a few American companies and a couple of Japanese businesses went in for it – the rest of us made fun of them. Ten years ago, a friend of mine was in a firm that encouraged chanting and singing before starting work each morning.
He said that being British, it was hard at first, but enjoyable and helpful after a couple of days. The practice is still not extensive, but it is definitely catching on. Not so much the communal chanting of mantras and the communal singing of the company’s song as the staff turn their computers on together in the morning, but weekend team building exercises. Most employees would enjoy a free weekend’s vacation, even if the excuse is a company exercise.
The fact is that a lot of the biggest and most successful firms in the world spend money on team building activities. If they are doing it, there is a good reason for it and that is that team building works. Google, Microsoft and Coca Cola believe in team building activities and you cannot get any bigger than that.
However there are a few risks to be cautious of. You know that you are overdoing team building if:
a] people accuse you of treating them like a machine and not as a person
b] the process of ‘doing’ becomes bogged down in never-ending open debates
c] teams get scared of taking tough decisions, because it might hurt a team member’s feelings
d] the team’s identity hinders the rise of instinctive leaders, especially during problem times
This means that team building is important enough to be taken seriously, but that it has to be monitored so that the team’s identity does not obstruct the reason for the team’s existence – making money. The firm should come first, then the team with the individual team members not far behind.
Team building activities must be fitting for the team. They have to take into account the age groups in the team and the likely physical abilities of the members. It would be no good a team leader organizing a weekend rock climbing for a team whose average age is fifty and whose fitness degree could at best be called sedentary.
Sometimes it is practical to build teams across departments, so, for instance, if someone in every sales team liaises with accounts, those people from all the sales teams could go on a team building event with the accounts department so as to become better acquainted with one another.
Team building activities do not have to be adventurous, costly or involve a weekend away either. How about using the company’s kitchens (or hiring a kitchen) for, say, four teams to design, create and bake a company pizza?
Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now involved with team building activities for teenagers. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Small Team Building Activities
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