Choosing Team Building...
Team building can be a productive and enjoyable out-of-office event for you and your staff. However, you must make sure you choose the right type of team building for your team to ensure it fits your goals, your business and your individual staff members.
Team building now has such a broad definition across the corporate sector that it is easy to loose sight of the real goal you are striving towards with your team. Team building should be an exercise or event which helps your individual team members change their behaviour for the long term in a way that results in a positive and productive work environment.
For example, when organising team building, consider the following - is your team independent in the workplace? This means, consider whether the success of the group is dependant on the success of its individual members. Therefore a team building exercise involving the different departments and levels of production, as well as between managers and staff, would be beneficial.
However, if you have a team of sales staff, the success of the individual sales staff does not generally depend on the rest of their team. Therefore a team building exercise may be more of a bonding experience, without actually helping increase productivity.
You next need to consider whether your team actually needs team building. What is it that makes you think that they are not working productively together? What are the specific areas they could improve on? To determine this you may want to look closer at whether your team has a poor communications system, are there conflicts between certain team members, do the members put their own success above that of their department or the company and does the team feel like they are appreciated and their concerns are acted upon?
By answering these questions, you can then determine the type and level of the team building required. Also, if you can answer some but not all of the questions, or don't know what to do with the answers, there are many team building training centres which offer a free assessment of your team.
You will then know the type of team building which will be most beneficial to your team. There are plenty of team building companies who specialise in a variety of exercises and retreats. You should also consider which program will give the best long-term benefits, are there exercises you can take back to the office to avoid paying for team building every three months?