A Guide To Team Building


by Vincent Kingwill - Date: 2007-03-16 - Word Count: 450 Share This!

For most businesses, motivating effective teamwork can come as a significant challenge. Differing personalities, skills, attitudes, opinions, roles, and backgrounds can all affect the outcomes of collaborative projects, both positively and negatively, depending on how that collaboration is introduced and managed.

It is up to management to motivate an environment that promotes openness, uniqueness, supportiveness, and productivity. It is not to your companies benefit to have your employees interacting like homogenous machines, void of uniqueness and style. They are individuals with unique personalities and skills, and this must be supported to adequately utilise their strengths and attain a positive working environment. Effective communication, trust, respect are key values in achieving this, which is the goal of team building.

Team building can take various forms: from action packed adventures to sport, from board games to skills training. Some companies overlook the benefits of 'team building' exercises, labeling them as a mere waste of time and money. But the true benefits of team building come from a strategic approach human interaction, with the goals of openness, uniqueness, supportiveness and productivity in mind.

The first step to any team building exercise is to plan the activity. The activity is ideally something outside of the work environment, allowing the employees to detach themselves from the challenges they face at work and remain focused on the challenges that the team building exercises produce. Pick an event or activity that each member of the team is able to do (do not exclude people), but that still challenges them in some way (take them out of their comfort zone).

The second and most important step is allocating goals. This must answer the question of what we want to achieve. It is important to ensure that each member of the team acknowledges the purpose and meaning of the exercises, as well as how the team will benefit from satisfying these goals. Without effective goals, the exercises will lack direction and significance. So it is important to think them through.

The next step will be allocating roles and accountabilities amongst the team. Pick individuals based on their strengths and personalities. If individuals will be split up into groups, try to achieve some sense of harmony or balance amongst the members. Combine theoretical and practical individuals if the challenge requires both mental calculations and physical strengths.

Once the exercise is complete, each employee will need to conduct an individual assessment of how well they felt the goals where achieved, and comment on the performance of their peers.

Optimally, you could find a corporate and team building events company to help you find the best team building event for your team. These events are structured in such a way as to encourage collaboration, communication, and trust amongst participants


Related Tags: teamwork, goals, collaboration, motivating

This article was written by the online marketing department for RBA Events http://www.rbaevents.co.uk RBA Events are a corporate events and team building events company with over 18 years experience in the UK industry.

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