Working in a goal-oriented team each member of which is dedicated to reaching the best results is priceless. Right people get work done easily. Every problem is solved quickly and none of your colleagues from other teams know about it. A good team means a lot.
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When people listen to each other, take into consideration everyone’s opinion, support and develop the ideas of their colleagues, a team automatically becomes more effective and productive. On the contrary, the teams where each member tries to show off themselves, their own qualities and achievements and never listens to the recommendations of other members, are bound to fail.
As a leader of the team, you need to understand how to make your team more successful and efficient. In the ideal world, you can just hire people that complement each other but we do not live in the ideal world. You need to make every single effort to make your team better by trying to discover personal traits and features that can help each person to become an integral part of the team.
Importance of Team Building
First, let us investigate what is team building. In fact, this is a process that aims to turn employees into a team that works cohesively. Many organizations face the problem where they have individual employees who can’t cooperate well with groups of people. Thus, the talents and skills of a person cannot be used fully. Implementation of team building helps a person to introduce their personal qualities into cooperating with other people.
There are different types of team building. For example, it may include everyday activities, some special exercises developed by psychologists, regular meetings, or occasional events.
A leader of the team may introduce team building intentionally, for example, by organizing certain events, or team building may become a part of work of your team. For example, if team members have meals together, it has a positive effect on the atmosphere within the team.
According to Kevin Kniffin, ‘Eating together is a more intimate act than looking over an Excel spreadsheet together. That intimacy spills back over into work’. Of course, you cannot make your employees have a lunch together but you can encourage them to do that.
Team building helps to relax, become more open to colleagues, and get rid of all fears and prejudice concerning spending free time with people you work with.
What to Know About Team Building
To make team building more effective, we recommend you to check these 7 important things that you need to know. They will help you to develop a more effective program for working with your team and introduce some important ideas that will be useful in team building.
1. Become an Organizer
As a team leader, you carry a certain responsibility for how your team works and how the members of the team communicate. Besides, you need to control this communication.
One of your main tasks is to become an organizer who will choose proper time for having fun and proper time for doing work. You should never be a despot who prohibits your employees to spend half an hour per day just talking about some topics that are not related to work.
However, you need to understand when a proper time for such talks comes. Of course, these are just the basics as the organizational skill also means you should be able to prepare your team for team building exercises.
2. Set a Proper Time and Place
First, you need to work on the preparation and solve some problems connected with the organizing of team building.
The matter is that there are always some people who do not want to go to the corporate events, even to the important ones. You need to make sure that these people are ready to leave their comfort zones and give a try to team building. Also, you need to make sure that all team members have free time and choose a date and a place that will be perfect for everyone.
In this way, you will avoid unexpected situations where some people will not be able to come to an event that is important for the team.
3. Travel Together
This is not the most obvious way of team building and most of the companies do not use it. The matter is that travels are suitable only for small teams. However, it does not mean that big company cannot organize such events. The matter is that teams within certain departments can travel independently from other teams.
When talking about travels, we do not mean long trips to other countries. You can simply spend a weekend in the country or visit another city. You can take a bus or use a couple of cars. During a trip, you do not need to talk about your work. This is the time when your colleagues can open up as personalities.
4. Never Force Your Team to Participate in the Events
We have mentioned already that some people may be against such types of events. You need to find some ways to persuade them to join your team building exercises but you should never force them to do that.
Forcing has an opposite effect to team building. If a person hates such events, you just need to accept this fact and use some other methods that can help this employee become a part of the team.
5. Play with Your Team
Games are another effective way to make your team a cohesive group of people. If you have a possibility, bring a PlayStation to your office and organize Mortal Combat tournaments. Board games are another good option, especially if your colleagues prefer this way of having a rest.
Find out what your team members think of sports games. Perhaps, you can gather a football team or play basketball together!
6. Add Some Extreme
Extreme is the best way to make your team work as one. It has been noticed that people who have been together in extreme situations, frequently become friends and feel each other better.
Of course, you do not need to create extra extreme situations for your team but you may choose a pastime with a certain level of extreme. For example, you can try climbing or do some complicated quests.
7. Be Ready to Pay Money
You need to understand that team building requires money. This is like corporate education – you teach your team to communicate and work together. In fact, you will return the money that you spend on team building very soon. The effectiveness of every individual will increase and the general productivity will also become better. You can always save some money on this way of creating a perfect team but the results will also be worse.
Every company, department, and the team requires team building for better productivity. The most important and valuable resource is people and if you find a way how to make them show better results and stay involved in the working process, you will succeed.
Try all available methods of making your team a single entity: organize lunches, corporate parties, weekend events, encourage them to participate in games and quests, and turn the working process into a functioning organism where every organ works for one result.
