Team building: some ideas to make a difference

There are many team-building activities that can be organized. But beyond the individual disciplines, here is what it takes to create a winning team.

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” — Henry Ford”..

Henry Ford’s words, spoken a century ago, now sound more current than ever. Because today that we are always connected through the Net, transforming individuals into a team, a real group, is difficult to be created.

It seems like a paradox. Or maybe not. After all, there is a very strong underlying individualism in the business world. But the success of a company is never the result of one or more individuality but of a teamwork.

Take for example any team sport, from football to basketball or volleyball. A champion can help a team win a single game or two, but actual teams are needed to win the championships.

Team building, beyond academic definitions, brings people together by encouraging collaboration and teamwork. Team building is not just about organizing a series of fun activities that help people see themselves in a different light and allow them to connect in a different environment.

One of the main reasons for organizing a team-building event is to get results. Through a series of planned, fun and motivational activities, the teams develop skills such as:

communications
planning
problem solving
conflict resolution

Team building ideas that work to facilitate long-term team building by promoting authentic and in-depth connections.

But what are the major advantages of team building?

Improve business communication

Improving communication helps work better together. This is probably the key reason people choose team building. On the other hand, everybody wants a friendly work environment where people are comfortable and happy to talk and work with anyone, right?

Increase productivity

Did you know that socializing and making friends in the workplace is one of the best ways to increase productivity in the office? How? Doing team building not only improves morale in the office but also allows people to work better to solve the problems they face daily in the workplace.

Change your perspective

Team building also offers employees the opportunity to abandon their usual office roles. In a team-building exercise, a manager can only simply be another team member, while a new employee can take on a leadership role. With team-building activities, everyone has the opportunity to wear other clothes assuming new roles, try new sensations, extra responsibilities, new emotions. Unexpected talents may emerge or even just get a better appreciation of the difficulty of having a position of responsibility.

This change of perspective diminishes mutual envy and stimulates greater cooperation.

Teamwork improves team performance

Team-building activities also work to improve workplace projects that involve teamwork because they help teams understanding each other better. After completing team-building activities together, employees understand strengths, weaknesses, and mutual interests better. This understanding helps them work even better together on future vital progress for a company.

To make a difference …

Attention: team building does not mean booking an hour of rafting, an experience in an escape room or a trip who knows where. Also, because the risk of obtaining the opposite effect is high. It is not only the activity chosen to declare the benefit of team building. Or rather, not all activities are equal.

A person who cannot do something feels publicly humiliated in front of colleagues and not everyone has a sense of humour that makes them laugh. Who organizes team-building activities must, first, has as much information as possible about who will carry them out and must be sure of relying on structures with competent and trained staff.

So the first thing to ask is what is the most important result you want to achieve: improve trust in colleagues? Stimulate internal competition? Enhance teamwork?

You can’t improvise team builders, nor can you get away with a few motivational phrases. Organizing a team building event means planning it first and managing it during the activity and then monitoring its effects afterwards.

This event focuses on emotion and experience as corporate training moments. The first thing to do is, therefore, assess the duration of the activity (s): there are events that take half a day or a st a whole day, others that involve trips for several days or you can focus on a continuous path made up of several appointments during the year.

Who decides? The customer, of course. But to choose the type of activity most suitable for your company, it is good that you are aware not only of the possible activities but also of the formulas to take advantage of events and motivational courses.

If you are thinking of a team-building event for your company, do not ask yourself what activities you can do, of sports and activities of this type there are dozens: from treasure hunt to the cook-off, from the race in a go-kart, to the escape room at orienteering. As you will notice, some develop collaboration and teamwork more while others enhance individuality. There is no absolute right or wrong activity, there is only the best (or those with more structured events) for your company. So ask yourself who can help you achieve the result you want and how.