How To Organize a Team Building


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Team building is an important part of any successful organization, not just because it helps you connect with other people, but also due to the benefits that it brings to your business.
Teambuilding can help boost employee morale, create closer relationships within departments, and provide opportunities for socialization and networking. All of these things are integral parts of a healthy work environment.
It’s easy to underestimate the importance of team building, but don’t let that fool you! While most of us enjoy being surrounded by others who share our same interests, team building is more than just a fun activity. It offers valuable lessons that can have lasting impacts on employees and the workplace as a whole.
This article will discuss some ways that you can do your own personal team building, and then look at how you can organize a group event or conference.
Make it a game
As mentioned before, team building is not about having fun as a group of people, but rather creating an environment where trust and confidence are rewarded. A great way to do this is to have participants play games together.
Participants are given a topic and question, and they must talk for two minutes per player on their team. Then, each participant takes a turn to speak with the rest of the teams’ time running out.
The winner is determined by who can make the most statements within that time limit! This activity works because everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, so what kind of games individuals are good at helps you understand how they work as a team.
You could also ask them to discuss their favorite movie or book, or tell some jokes. The goal here should be to find common ground and learn more about each person.
Take turns
As mentioned before, team building is not about having fun in separate rooms with different people. It’s not an event where you can show up and watch everyone have a good time. That’s just boring.
Team building is about spending time together as a group. You will need to make at least two of every member of your team work together outside of business hours.
This is very important to do because teamwork is one of the most fundamental human traits we have.
Without it, we would never survive beyond our own personal success. We would always rely on others for help when we fail or get overwhelmed.
That wouldn’t be healthy for anyone involved. For us, it would destroy what little trust and confidence there is in our society.
We would eventually crumble under pressure and stress alone. Without it, we would perish.
By including some sort of team activity into your day, you are investing in the well-being of your employees while also improving yours.
It’s like giving yourself a chance to recover from overworking by doing something that doesn’t require so much energy. This is particularly helpful if you’ve got a lot on your plate right now.
Take a look around you.
Challenge teams
As mentioned before, team building is not about having fun in an empty room with your colleagues or going for drinks after work. These are all good things, but they can be done without much effort.
Team building that means something comes with doing activities outside of the workplace and/or including people who do not work with you directly.
Giving more responsibilities to members of the group and asking them to work together is a great way to have some teamwork under pressure.
Challenging assignments like this require close cooperation and communication skills.
Running meetings as a group and working collectively towards a common goal is another excellent way to strengthen relationships.
These types of exercises make trust grow stronger and help people realize how important each other is to success. If anyone was to walk out during such a meeting, it would probably break down many layers of friendship and support.
Hold team challenges
One of the biggest reasons why teamwork in your workplace breaks down is because there’s no challenge for people to work together on. In other words, they don’t get asked to do things that require them to collaborate with others or use their knowledge to help someone else be more effective.
If you want to improve collaboration in your organization, start by asking how well people are working together now and what could be improved.
Ask questions like: What are our goals here? Who will do what job tasks? Are we using each other’s strengths? If so, who? What if anyone doesn’t have a strength we need right now?
Then ask how well these answers match up with the ones from earlier questions such as: What are people paid to do? What are their responsibilities?
You can also ask about whether anyone has ever done something like this before. Sometimes, people just don’t know — or they’ve never been given an opportunity!
When they realize it’s possible and something they would like to try, they may come forward with ideas.
Be friendly and happy
As mentioned before, team building is not about having fun with your coworkers for two hours once a month. It happens every day, all year long.
It’s also not a one-and-done activity; you have to keep doing it to see results. The best teams work together in an intimate setting every day — they meet for lunch or a coffee break, they discuss things outside of the workplace, and they rely on each other as friends.
This isn’t always easy, but it is essential to success. When people don’t like each other, trust evaporates quickly.
By being friendlier and happier than everyone else, no one will really care if you don’t play chess at 2:00 p.m. next week.
Use humor
A good way to start team building is by using comedy as a tool. You can do this with jokes of your own or telling someone else’s.
If you are reading this article, then you probably like a joke or two. If you don’t, try thinking about something funny for 30 seconds and see how many times you can say it out loud without cracking up.
By breaking down internal barriers and stereotypes, comedy helps create open conversations that address important issues. It also allows people to relate to each other, which is a key ingredient in teamwork.
Using humour as a starting point for teambuilding isn’t new. Companies have been doing it for years to achieve similar results. In fact, I would argue that a lot of big name companies rely heavily on it as one of their main tools.
But why not use this powerful tool as an integral part of your company? Why not take advantage of all the positive effects it can bring to your workplace?
I believe there’s no reason not to add some laughs into the mix today.
Build relationships
As mentioned earlier, one of the biggest reasons why team building exercises fail is because they are too focused on having fun or achieving a goal.
Too often participants feel like they have to work with others that they do not trust or believe will help them reach their goals.
This can be difficult to deal with when you’re trying to motivate someone else. It also creates more stress for people who try hard but get frustrated by lack of progress.
By instead focusing on developing friendships and understanding different personality types, it becomes easier to connect with other people and facilitate change.
Teambuilding activities that focus on friendship and relationship-building are much better chances of success.
Relationship-building includes things such as getting to know the person's strengths and weaknesses, figuring out how to bring out the best in each individual, and creating an environment where individuals feel comfortable.
These types of relationships are important to have if you want to succeed in life and work.
Do things together
As mentioned before, team building is not about having fun in an activity with no purpose. It’s not just going out for drinks or playing games either. These types of activities are great ways to do this, but they don’t always work because people have different goals when they join your group.
For example, if one person wants to go drink beer together, then that’s fine. But if someone else wants to learn how to use Microsoft Office, there you have a problem.
So, make sure all of your team members know what the project goal is so it can be used to determine whether to include them or not. If it seems like a good fit, let them participate!
Teambuilding exercises will often ask questions such as “What has helped you grow as a leader?” Or “How could we create a space where individuals feel confident to challenge leadership and assume new roles?” You get the idea – asking these sorts of questions helps to expose hidden leaders, and creates opportunities to develop under-utilized skills or promote upward mobility.
Generalizations
Another way to do team building is to have participants discuss topics (or even argue) using general statements or examples.