How Team Building

Team building is an excellent way to boost employee productivity, happiness, and engagement in an organization. It’s also a great way to increase team cohesion and trust within an already productive group of employees.

Team building can be any number of different activities, but there are several types that are particularly effective. These include educational trips, free food events, outdoor activity days, and motivational speeches or workshops.

The main goal of most type team building exercises is to have fun, so choosing activities that are focused on having fun are better than ones that aim to teach important lessons. This article will talk about some easy ways to do team building at your workplace.

I'll also share my own personal experiences with this technique. I’ll discuss how I used it for myself and what worked and didn't work when I applied these principles as a consultant.

It's true, investing in relationships is one of the best things you can do as a leader. Relationships bring benefits to both individuals and groups, which makes them worth our time. Here are 5 reasons why developing friendships at work is smart.

Reason #1: Friends Help You Do Your Job

A good friend or colleague can help you achieve your goals. They may want something from you, too — their success depends on yours.

That could mean creating a vision statement or gathering research and data for a project, helping them get where they need to go.

Shared experiences

Teams with less trust are more likely to have higher levels of conflict, tension, and even argument because team members cannot rely on each other for support and guidance. This can be due to issues such as personality conflicts or differences in leadership style, but also financial dependencies or power struggles.

In these cases, no one is really accountable for the group’s success or failure. If someone else gets the credit or reward, they may feel unjustly left out, which can create additional tensions.

Because teams without trust spend a lot of time arguing about who does what, people end up doing most of the work alone. This cuts down on productivity and morale, and can contribute to burn-out and quitting.

Shared experiences help reduce this risk of interpersonal stress by giving individuals within the team common ground.

This could be through working in an open office space where you meet many colleagues every day, sharing coffee after work, or talking about your favorite movie genre. It could be something like having in-office events that others invite themself, or celebrating an employee's birthday with a lunch party or gift.

It could be holding casual get-to-know meetings, such as attending a basketball game together, or playing pool once a week. Or it could be going on a weekend retreat or business trip, where everyone shares a room and a meal together.

Leadership development

Another important part of team building is leadership development. This can be done by offering training courses or seminars, hosting events, conducting group discussions, giving speeches, and leading exercises and games.

Leadership is more than just telling people what to do and being in charge — it’s also about motivating others to take action and helping them understand why their actions are necessary.

It’s difficult to motivate someone else to perform a task if they don’t know what goal you have for that person, how their job fits into the bigger picture, and whether they’re on track towards achieving their goals.

And it takes time off work to go to a seminar or event, so leadership talent should be incentivized, not paid extra.

Team members who feel like their opinions matter and that they’re appreciated will always put in more effort than those who don’t.

Personal development

A lot of people talk about team building, but what does that really mean? For most business professionals, it means going to a conference or seminar where you learn something new. It could be an educational event like learning how to do your job better, attending a training program for lessons on productivity tools or technology, or listening to a keynote address focused on leadership.

That’s definitely part of team building! But there is another way to look at it. Learning something new isn’t just important, it can also make you feel good.

A few years ago, Harvard Business School conducted a survey in which they asked participants if they felt their career was advancing and if they were confident about their future. Over half said no, and nearly one third said even though they enjoyed their current position, they didn’t believe they would be advanced here.

Why not? They may have lost confidence due to changes within their organization, rumors about their department being eliminated, or poor performance reviews from past employers. In those cases, what they learned wasn’t applied to their work and they are still performing well below their potential.

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut when you're working hard and feeling successful, so trying to find ways to motivate yourself can seem impossible. Fortunately, however, research has shown that being aware and understanding yourself can help restore some motivation and self-confidence.

Social development

A large part of team building is social development. This includes activities that promote interaction between people, as well as actions that are motivated by friendship.

Running an organized team activity (OTA) or organizing your own group activity can be fun ways to do this. There may be things like going for a coffee together, attending a concert, or taking a trip somewhere together.

More creative options include hosting your own event or creating incentives for participants to attend others’ events. All of these types of activities help you strengthen relationships and connect with other people.

Teambuilding exercises don’t necessarily have to cost anything either. Some examples of free team-building ideas include doing something productive like cleaning up the park or walking down the street holding hands.

If you're reading this in June, try planning a day at the beach or pool together! It's a great way to spend time outside, chat, and laugh. You'll make new friends while having some fun yourself.

Another option is to organize an informal get-together after work, perhaps for drinks or dinner.

The future of team building

There are many theories about what makes teams work, and how to make them work better. However, none of these theories focus on one thing more than any other. And that is creating, developing, and fostering relationships.

Teambuilding exercises that rely heavily on competition or goal setting can be fun, but they don’t always promote trust. For this reason, some say that teambuilding is an outdated concept.

Others argue that teambuilding is too individualistic and doesn’t emphasize collaboration. Some believe that spending money on expensive retreats and workshops takes away from investing in your organization’s culture.

But without teamwork, there will be no successful projects, and therefore no success for you as an employee and as someone with a career. We need to understand the importance of teamwork if we want to survive in our jobs and advance in ours.

That’s why it's so important to recognize that being a good teammate isn’t something that you learn through formal education and training. It’s an innate quality that most people have, but few use effectively.