Team buildings are not a waste of company resources and time if planned properly; they can massively improve the team’s productivity and efficiency. Among the skill sets that can be boosted by team buildings include your team’s communication skills, problem-solving skills, and leadership chops. While improving the company morale, team buildings can also humanize persons of authority to their rank-and-file subordinates and foster innovation and creativity in them.
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Picture for a moment a basketball or volleyball team composed of all superstars – all MVPs in one team. The dream of all fans and the bane of all other teams, this will be the biggest cakewalk in any basketball league’s history, right? Wrong.
Team sports like basketball and volleyball are not just dependent on the actual skills of its players. Granted, all of them are very much skilled and are coveted by other teams, but you’ll still remain winless if those superstars don’t gel. The same goes for company departments or teams, the dream team needs to be whipped into shape and conditioned to work with each other and not against or despite each other.
Enter team buildings. Nope, these activities are not just an excuse for your team to embark on out-of-town trips or for management to punish rank-and-file employees. Team buildings are so much more than that. Here are ten reasons team building might be the one thing that your company needs right now.
Establishes communication lines
More often than not, the key to a project’s or campaign’s success rests solely on communication between the team members in charge of it. If employees are struggling to get their ideas across or their voices heard, a team building session will be the perfect opportunity for them to establish communication lines with each other.
Once they’re more comfortable talking to each other, communication will vastly improve. There are a lot of team exercises that can be done during team buildings to improve the workplace’s communication. Just be sure to do post-challenge recaps to determine which communication barriers you should focus on when you eventually get back to your office.
Familiarizes everyone with the company culture
The perfect opportunity to introduce and inculcate everyone into the company culture is during the team building and not really during new employee orientations. Management can use the opportunity where everyone is relaxed or having fun to orient everyone on the company’s goals and vision, values and beliefs, and even the operational structure – both formal and informal.
Employees will be more open to these ideas if they associate them with feel-good exercises such as the team building. They will also be more willing to participate in company events and foster a positive view of the company as a whole.
Identifies the team’s strengths and weaknesses
While it is perfectly normal for teammates to have their own weaknesses as their blind spots, it is also entirely possible that even their own strengths are blind spots, too. Team building activities that are aimed at developing collaboration and communication will uncover these strengths or hidden talents.
These might include unknown leadership skills from the quietest and least vocal officemate, strategic thinking from your officemate who just plays Mobile Legends at lunch, or even artistic chops from your money guy. Having a deeper insight into the lives of your officemates will make you understand them better, making working with them easier. Also, this will provide unexpected boons for the company at the right time.
Improves company morale
An out-of-town trip that is also all-expenses-paid by the company is a good way to boost morale among your employees. This will also be an excellent time to get your minds off the routine things you do at the office every day. There will be shared laughs, good-natured competition, and most certainly, fun and excitement. At the end of the team building, your employees will return to the workplace recharged and greatly motivated, thus boosting productivity and improving the overall atmosphere at the office.
Trains budding leaders
Team buildings are not just avenues of fun or relaxation for your employees – it can also serve as a training ground for your leaders. The numerous activities will not only foster collaboration or improve your problem-solving skills, they can also serve as training for your budding leaders or launchpads for employees who have never been put into positions of authority before.
You can gauge their leadership skills and see them rise to the occasion once they are actually leading their teammates in some of the team building activities that you or the organizer will devise.
Improves problem solving skills
Leadership skills are not the only skill set that your employees will bring home with them once your team building ends. They will also see a massive improvement on their problem solving skills, especially those that are looking for the most practical way to finish a challenge or obstacle. Your employees will learn how to combine their own individual ideas into a proper and cohesive strategy – something that you want to see every day in the workplace.
Part and parcel of problem solving is risk analysis; when you’re calling the shots in the office, you often need to weigh in a lot of variables before coming to a decision. This will also be developed in team building activities.
Increases productivity of everyone
People who are more familiar with each other are more likely to be more proactive when pitching new ideas or concepts and also be more productive when laden with tasks. Employees who are comfortable with each other will also be more open to suggestions for improvement from other team members. Some employees might have a problem accepting criticism, but then, coming from someone whom you’ve shared moments of victory with or bonded with during your team building, those employees will most likely be more amenable.
Trust within the company, in an ideal scenario, is given implicitly especially when it comes to functions that are part of each other’s key performance indicators. You trust them to perform in the way they are supposed to perform. However, that is in an ideal scenario. More often than not, trust is earned. And what better time to earn or build that trust than during your company team building?
Fosters collaboration
Just like what the name itself says – team building - this endeavor will surely foster a collaborative spirit among your employees. Collaboration between employees is very much needed in the workplace since every department of your business is interconnected with one another. If people are more willing to work with each other, work will be done faster and more efficiently.
Also, your employees might also be more willing to hear other departments’ ideas or suggestions rather than immediately shutting them down or being contemptuously dismissive of them. Working with people that you trust to do their work properly or you’re sure wouldn’t give you bad advice, will be a real boon especially to remote teams who don’t share office space with each other.
Encourages innovation and creativity
Most likely, team building activities involve obstacle courses or even puzzles that not only demand brute strength but strategy as well. Employees participating in these activities are more likely to develop ingenious ways to pass the obstacle or win an activity on behalf of the group. This form of innovation and creativity will surely manifest itself in the workplace once those employees are placed in charge of projects or campaigns of their own. Also, their newfound creativity and innovative spirit will make them more practical and more open to look for practical solutions instead of orthodox ones.
Creativity and innovative solutions are very important for all teams, even those that are not in the creative field. Team members who feel that they’re stuck in a rut or unable to come up with new ideas of their own will surely get a boost of creativity once presented with fresh perspectives from their teammates.
Humanizes Management
There’s probably nothing funnier than seeing your bosses participate in team building activities that involve mud, running, or even obstacles of some sort.
Contrary to what most would expect, employees wouldn’t lose respect upon seeing their bosses let their hair down, as to speak. Instead, team building activities humanize them, make them look more approachable and personable – two qualities that are very important when you’re handling people. You wouldn’t want to have subordinates who are too afraid to voice out their opinions or contradict you because you’re too intimidating for them.
Making the dream team a reality
A dream team in the office is essentially the same as a dream team on the court – skilled players that work well with each other to get the W or achieve goals and objectives. Although before achieving that team chemistry or kick starting synergy in the workplace, these skilled players need to gel first. As part of management, you need to build the team first – from talented individuals to an unstoppable workforce.
Enter team building. Some might view them as a complete waste of time and money for the company, but then, with the potential results in significantly improving your team’s efficiency and productivity, they might as well be worth the cost. Once whipped into shape, your team will definitely be working well with each other, against challenges from within and without, and despite their differences.