Team Building Activities: The Glue To Bind Your Team
Teams are the building blocks of an organization. A company or any organization cannot reach its value without teams. An “A’ team is the one that makes a successful workplace and a great culture.
“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” — Michael Jordon
A great team can win championships.
Here is an example, we all know Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, the two Football legends (talent) were out of the Football World Cup 2018, whereas, France swept them away showing the power of teamwork ‘working as a team’ (teamwork). It is one of the real-life examples of the greatness of teamwork.
Great teams make great workplace culture. The key element of a workplace is its workforce. The team with the right attitude can break records when even completing the race seems difficult individually. It is the team that holds the power to either make or break a company. You can up-skill the team and take a step towards creating the desired and out of the ordinary workplace culture.
This article has some great reasons why should you pay attention to build a team ‘that works.’ But before jumping to the importance of team building, why not focus on the term.
Team building is a process of turning a group of employees into a high functioning and cohesive team. It is like sowing the seed of team spirit and cohesive relationship at the workplace so that employees can focus on “WE” rather than “I.” A team, if desires to succeed, has to play many other roles than just attending picnics and fun activities together.
Why Team Building is Less A Cost But More An Investment
Building a strong and highly productive team is your best investment. If you want to stay ahead of the pack then it is your team that can help you climb those stairs. Most people consider building a team a waste of time, congrats you don’t fall in that category (otherwise you won’t be reading this). It is the most important investment to make.
Here are the benefits you reap if you have an A++ team.
1. Cohesion Means More Trust
Experience matters even in building a strong team. Sharing strong experiences leads to building a connection and increasing trust among the team members.
“To earn trust, money, and power aren’t enough; you have to show some concerns for others. You can’t buy trust in the supermarket” — Dalai Lama
One is not able to involve and share their knowledge completely with other team members without trusting. The absence of trust leads to conflict and work fragmentation.
The organization in which the employees trust their leaders flourishes more as compared to others. When a team beautifies itself with mutual trust and understanding, then things begin to go well. It becomes easy to deal with hard times.
2. Teamwork Seeds Flow Of Ideas
Many minds many masters. One can’t be as smart as all of us. When a team discusses a topic, the probability of receiving more ideas is high which a single mind can’t think alone. A discussion with the right-minded people always yields more as compared to making a plan sitting alone in a conference room.
Moreover, the team members also feel a part of the team when they are heard. It encourages them to put forward their viewpoint which improves their engagement at the workplace. Hence, they tend to experience a boost in their productivity.
3. A United Team Can Reinforce Team Members
In the era of a fast-changing and highly competitive world, it is natural to feel stressed. But it is no denying the fact that a stressed mind can never produce the best results. But if your workplace has a team that ‘works together collectively,’ there are chances that it can create an outlet to move stress away.
Not only the beneficiary is affected but also the company. Increased throughput, higher efficiency, prompt task completion, better employee retention rates are some of the benefits of good working relationships.
The best team executes your vision and mission in the best ways. Your impeccable ideas and plans can prove useless when you have issues within the organization. One of the overlooked aspects of team building is team-building activities.
Team Building Activities: One of the Solutions
It is important to pay attention to organize activities at the workplace (indoor or outdoor) which enhances teamwork, these are called team building activities. These are great ways to strengthen your team’s communication skills and collaboration. Examples of team building activities: Domino Rally, MBTI for Teams, Marshmallow challenge, etc.
Benefits of Team Building Activities
1. No More Hesitation
Hesitation should not take any place in a team. A team can’t be even called a team in which individuals can’t communicate freely. The best team is the one in which all the team members can let their hair down. One of the ways to achieve that level is to introduce team building activities at the workplace. Organizing team building activities is like stepping the ladder of success as it improves communication and team management among the team members.
If I talk about my experience, the exchange of information without any hesitation has helped me prosper and take ProofHub to the next level. Now I have a team that converses freely. The team members don’t give a second thought before asking for help. We all have experienced a transformation in workplace dynamics.
Team building activities take off the barriers to communicate freely with others. The shared experience which they acquire while participating in team building activities helps to see others as trustworthy.
2. Improve Inter-Departmental Relations
Not only within a team but interaction across departments is one of the benefits of the team building activities. One gets to know people from other teams and bridge the gap between them. Company-wide activities lead to better work associations and new friendships to flourish in the workplace.
Moreover, it promotes diversity when activities intend to break down the silos. It is like building connections that might help in the future. You can consider the company-wide team-building activity as a networking tool.
3. Increased Collaboration
Collaboration at the workplace is an important ingredient for a company’s success. Properly planned team building activities help to get this ingredient and make a dish of the company’s success.
Greater collaboration between employees is one of the byproducts of fun activities involving your entire workforce. The shared experience gained during the activities and making a winning strategy help them know ‘who has what knowledge’. Teamwork also develops cooperation among the team members which further leads to success. So, the idea to organize such activities will go in vain unless it is accompanied by a purpose of bringing the teams together.
“Collaborate with your team on the go. Start using ProofHub.”
4. More Productive Employees
Employees also see team building activities as a break from their regular routine. One enjoys doing something different from the daily monotonous activities. The brain relaxes and finds some diverse activities to do at work. Team building activities help employees see their personal strengths. It helps them focus on areas to improve. Hence, the employees are more creative, productive at the workplace.
5. Develop Problem-Solving Attitude
Team building activities also identify different ways to carry out a procedure, process it and make plans to go through it taking along everyone else. The games will help them think from various perspectives, generate different ideas to reach solutions. If you are new to the concept of organizing team building activities or you work in a company where the HR department hasn’t organized them yet, then employees may resist change. They might take such activities as a challenge and upgrade their skills.
A cohesive team without a standout star is more powerful than a single talented person. Many organizations promote the opposite culture and then experience the consequences.
6. More Responsible & Confident Employees
A productive team is one in which all the team members take full responsibility and actively perform the assigned tasks. A team building activity is a way to develop responsibility and it enforces the importance of taking full responsibility to successfully complete a task. An employee, when given responsibility to carry out a certain task in the team activity, feels valued. The sense of being an integral part of the team, therefore, boosts confidence.
Thinking of the steps you should take to build a strong team? Take a look at the following team building tips.
How Should A Leader Build A Strong Team
A great leader is a leader who develops more leaders from his team. Team building activities also help with this. The players can discover their potential to become future leaders. Those who actively participate in the group activities, initiate to rally people to the activity and lead the team. Such acts also increase lubrication among individuals and help you observe how people react to each other.
1. Assign Daily Goals
Workplace culture is the factor that determines the fate of an organization, and for how long an employee stays. The leader should check the health of the team and maintain the workplace culture. You need to make sure that you have a collaborative team. Your teams should know that they are expected to make a contribution to work daily. It can be done when you assign them goals to achieve each day.
2. Be Interactive
A leader is the one who listens to the team’s problems and goes the extra mile to solve them. Being present for your team when required and staying radically responsive will help. It is one of the best ways to create more value with teammates.
3. Tell Them Customer Stories
It is like giving real-time feedback to the ones who have spent months building a product or who provide service. Your team members would love to know how their hard work is helping customers change their lives. Share such moments of joy with the entire team.
4. Stay Together Do Together
Make decisions together!
Conduct discussions and refine ideas collectively. It makes their work count and feels valuable. Hence, it boosts motivation in them and takes their confidence to the next level. It directly increases their productivity.
Over To You
Here comes your role to encourage your employees to learn how to effectively work and play together as a team. You need to move beyond the constraints and go out of the way to build a strong team. Team building activities will help you to cross the river of challenges and work as a team.
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