Team building activities help team members to see each other in new perspectives, facilitate collaboration, connection and teamwork. One of the most powerful reasons for team building is to reach set results and goals. Through a series of planned team bonding activities, personally selected for each team, such skills as communication, planning, problem-solving, conflict resolution and much more – can be improved. Team building activities help to facilitate long-term improvements and set the higher rate of productivity, as well as success.
So what actually is a team building definition? It’s a set of specific type of activities that include collaborative tasks, and are used in matter to develop social relations and define roles within teams. The main aim of team building exercises is to spot and identify interpersonal and social problems inside each team in particular. Great teamwork is one of the core reasons of organisational development, and team building exercises – is the tool to make it work.
There are many variations on how to describe team building, however, talking about the formal definition, it includes 4 main points:
– aligning around goals;
– building effective working relationships;
– reducing team members’ role ambiguity;
– finding solutions to team problems.
Since group-development activities in organizations are being so widely used, many approaches were created and tested to reach the final goal. It has been proven, that organisational performance is raising faster under team-development, in comparison, for instance, with financial bonuses.
And here’s the important question, what are those approaches that make the team work so much better? Find here presented 4 main approaches, that help to reach set goals.
Clear objectives play a big role in any team, that wishes to reach particular goals and results. Ability to identify main approaches on each task define success, failure and helps to achieve goals more productively and with higher success rate. In other words, to involve team members in action planning – is a must. Moreover, due to the identification of specific outcomes and tests of incremental success, setting goals is intended to strengthen motivation, improve a sense of ownership and measure the progress within the team.
The understanding of each team member’s’ respective roles and duties is a big part of clarifying your own. Role clarification not only promotes members’ interdependence, but and motivates each to focus on their own role, and not be distracted by worrying about tasks of others. Team success comes from reducing ambiguity and understanding of importance of the structure; just follow a simple step – define and adjust roles.
After improving the ability of identifying problems within the team, team develops a skill of working together and finding solutions on ongoing problems. One more perk of owning mentioned abilities – it can enhance critical thinking. Have a look at our Problem Solving Workshop.
Communication, sharing, giving and receiving support within the team, or simply – teamwork, gives a huge advantage to the team members, that are not capable of keeping a harmony within it. Teams with fewer interpersonal conflicts, overall, are functioning more efficiently and stay productive over longer periods of time. Compared to the ones, that are having issues. The key to make a step towards great teamwork – is to communicate; developed mutual trust and open communication between members.
Team building is great, but planners and participants of team building activities within the organisation unfortunately often turn the whole action into just another team meeting, which doesn’t change a lot. However, there is an excellent opportunity to build the bond inside the team and foster company culture by removing the team itself from their daily pressures and distractions – away from the familiar office environment to an inspiring offsite destination. That’s what we call a team retreat.
Team retreats are a growing trend in the corporate and startup world. There are so many benefits of team retreats that even smaller companies think about how they can take the office out of the office for a week, or just for weekend. When used correctly, team retreats they can help accomplish a great deal, address problems in organisation, help boost productivity and motivation even long after return to a traditional office environment.
Putting time and investment into sending employees for an exciting team retreat, rather than organizing another vague team building activity inside the corporation, can really make a huge difference on the outcome of the day. A successful team retreat can have much wider impact on the organization, creating new ways to communicate and sustainably and positively changing team dynamics. At NextRetreat, we understand the importance of team dynamics and specialise on facilitating team retreats in unique and inspiring destinations that can also help your team.