We would argue that team building exercises aren't only for bringing a team together; they're essential for the success of your business in that it can aid productivity. We've all heard the saying "no man is an island" this is certainly true when it comes to running a business. This is why it's so important to keep your whole team working productively together. The question is - how do you do that? Part of the answer is to incorporate team building exercises into your corporate routine. It's fair to say that the small-business owner who can build a culture around cooperation and collaboration enjoys more success. Effective team building exercises, (it's why we are called Team Building Solutions!), can help cultivate trust, support and respect among the group, positively affecting the work environment. These exercises can also help to shine a light on the strengths and weaknesses of participants, which gives management a better idea of job fit. When you may need to use team building exercises We are sure that most if not all small-business owners know when it's business is not progressing as well as it could. When you see persistent problems-such as decreased productivity, conflict, lack of cooperation or involvement, hostility, apathy and complaints about favouritism-it's in your best interest to look at team building as a way to restore camaraderie and a positive work environment. Determine your team building needs Let's be honest - team building exercises aren't effective in a vacuum - that advice comes directly from a company that provides these exercises! In order for your company to benefit from these exercises, you must be clear on exactly what you're trying to accomplish. Identify your reasons for the team building exercises and share them with your employees. What are some of the most common reasons? The reasons we most often hear from our clients include a need to improve communication, develop creativity and build trust and team work between different departments. Once you know the qualities you want to encourage, you can choose the team building exercises designed to accomplish your goal. 5 Categories for team building exercises There are five main categories of team building exercises that we can focus on. They consist of activities that build communication, promote problem solving and decision making, encourage adaptability and the ability to plan, work to build trust, and develop a cooperative spirit. The team building exercises that promote these various skills are meant to be enjoyable and instructional. Depending on what you want to improve on your team, you can try some of the following activities:
- Build communication. Activities that develop open lines of communication and listening increase communication. Have two or three colleagues sitting back to back with two or three other colleagues. Give one of the groups a diagram containing some simple objects and words that they will need to describe to the other group who need to draw what is being explained to them. Give them a good amount of time, but don't let the drawing group communicate with the describing group. It's a great activity that highlights various communication issues - from the amount of info we can process to the speed of communication. There will be a lot you can discuss on this!
- Promote problem solving and decision making. We really like the Paper Tower activity for this. Give the team around 100 sheets of A4 paper, a roll of sellotape and a cream egg. The task is to build the tallest freestanding tower that will support the egg at it's highest point. If you have a bigger team, split them into smaller groups to promote a little bit of friendly competition. You will be amazed and the different designs!
- Encourage adaptability and planning. Survival scenarios work well to encourage planning and adaptability. We use a NASA based scenario where the team has crash landed on the moon and the items that survived the crash have to be listed in terms of its usefulness. This can be found easily on the internet.
- Build trust. One of the harder ones to do on a shoestring if you want to get away from the old 'trust fall'! These activities tend to be based around activities where a person is blindfolded and must therefore 'trust' their colleagues. However, if you expand this out, then a number of different decision based scenarios can engender trust as the group must trust in it's own decision making process.
- Nurture a cooperative spirit. Assigning employee teams to volunteer with charitable causes is a good way to encourage cooperation. When people work on a cause that the team cares about, they will bond. The opportunity to give back to those less fortunate often creates a charitable, cooperative attitude among everyone involved. We have been involved in connecting companies to various charitable causes and is usually easily done as charities can always do with a helping hand (or two!). Alternatively, most smartphones and tablets now contain movie making software. It's easy to use this in a fun way to get the team to create an advert for something work related. It gives roles that everyone can embrace - from the actors to the writers and from the director to the editor.
Armed with these simple ideas for team building exercises, it's up to you to create the best working culture for your business. Remember, however, that these won't resolve any deeper issues you may be experiencing, but are part of the cultural change that may need to happen within your business. If you think you need deeper interventions, call us now on 01425 629327 to discuss your requirements and let us offer you our solution! For example, our Krypton Maze activity has a range of exercises, (like those listed above), to work on team work generally, but with an emphasis on different aspects in each activity.
Kite Making
I just wanted to say a huge thank you to you and Pete for your facilitation of the Kite activity yesterday. Feedback from the team has been fantastic, we all enjoyed it immensely and look forward to reviewing the ads & photos....
Venue Treasure Hunts
The whole event was a lot of fun and very engaging, we learnt a lot from a behaviour perspective both working and communicating effectively with in a team. The staff were funny and relaxed and provide a great service. I will be sure to pass on my rec...
The Great Decoration Bake Off!
The Great Decoration Bake Off!
It was good to meet you and we had a great time in Cambridge. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the cake decorating - it was good fun and got everyone's creative juices flowing after 3 days of late nights. I would definitely recommend Team Building Solutio...
Teambuilding Activities
The day was a complete success and Andy, Steph and the team were brilliant. Steph was very organised and always easy to contact in the lead up to the day. Andy met is on site a few weeks before which helped me to see how everything would work. The eq...
I have to say that we had a brilliant 2 days at Careys Manor, the team building exercise was seriously good fun and brought us all together in a way that we hadn't previously. The dinner was excellent, and we ended up in the pub playing games and hav...
Emperors Aqueduct
The team at Team Building Solutions are brilliant. We find the tasks they do real help our staff come out of their shells, and definitely work better as a team. Quarterly team building sessions are now a regular feature our ongoing training sessions....
Teambuilding Activities
An excellent day which achieved all the objective that we set out to achieve. The staff were very good, made it fun and knew their stuff. I will recommend to others in the business....
Clay Shooting
Just wanted to thank you and the team for a terrific event yesterday. Everyone, without exception, really enjoyed the clay shooting so please pass on our thanks to Andy and Pete for their time, guidance and sense of humour ... and for laying on such ...
Country Sports
My contact was Steph who was very professional to the point of even on her holiday she was emailing me with updates. On the day of the event Andy & the team were very helpful. We had a great morning with the events chosen. Would recommend Teambui...
Food & Drink
Bespoke Cooking Event - I was really impressed with the presentation/setup of the activity and the quality of the team insight....
iPad Film Making
The iPad movie making was a huge success with the 80+ team. It brought out dormant talents and skills that aren't normally displayed in a professional environment, which allowed the team to really connect and appreciate each other. The challenge divi...
Country Sports
A fantastic day, great fun, the activities made us work together and support each other. I have been asked if we can do it again. Everyone throughly enjoyed it. Andy and the team were super. Hopefully will book our third event with you next year....
All For One
SDI & All For One - Very good doing the SDI feedback, very interesting. Need to keep this in front of mind when back in the office.
An extremely positive and informative day. Lots of learning to take away and take back into...
Sushi Making
Sushi making went down well with the senior leadership team. The activity allowed the team to split into three groups and test their dexterity and creativity in a competitive & safe environment. The event was run extremely well by Team Building S...
The Krypton Maze
We all really enjoyed the afternoon, and both Andy and Pete were understanding when our morning session overrun. I think the explanations at the end of each activity were great, and did make us think about things. I would definitely recommend your co...
All Activity Ideas
Belbin Team Roles - The day was very enjoyable. Better than I expected. I learnt a lot about myself and others and would recommend others to try the teambuilding activities. Excellent day that fully met the brief of what we were tryi...
The Krypton Maze
A somewhat apprehensive bunch quickly got "stuck in" and enjoyed the challenges - good variety of tasks. Everyone agreed that the event was far better than just go karting...
Canapé Creation
We had over-whelming positive feedback about the Canape making session. Pete & Steph were friendly, lively, funny and informative and offset each other very well. Despite the teams being pretty tired after their prior activities, the session rein...
Dash
It was a great set of activities engaging our staff. There was something for all to do. Well done to the team for coordinating such a great Dash Activity....
Countdown
The day and staff were all excellent, we had a great day and it really brought everyone together. Many Thanks...
The Krypton Maze
The feedback I had was brilliant, everybody had a really good afternoon and enjoyed the event....
Countdown
I just wanted to say thank you for making our event such an energised, dynamic and fun affair last week. Your guys were great, always smiling...You really listened to our brief and aims and adapted the activities to meet our agenda!...
Dash
Conference, Photo Mission, Dash And Quiz - A brilliant day was had by all and we have had some great feedback regarding the activities. You provided the right balance with nothing too strenuous and even those with health issues were able to participa...
The Krypton Maze
Andy, a quick note to thank you and your team for yesterday's event at Twickenham. It really was a masterclass on how to keep 60 competitive sales folk interested and active for almost three hours! The positive feedback has been flowing in today from...
Country Sports
Thanks for a great event today. All feedback has so far been extremely positive. Thanks...
The Krypton Maze
The feedback is very positive, everyone enjoyed the day and many people even commented that it was the best team building event they had been too!...
All For One
The day went down very well. All For One was a very effective vehicle to highlight some key patterns and brough out some of the key things that we had set out to achieve. Of particular note was the handover process and how there was some "blame" betw...
Casino Night
I just wanted to say what a wonderful evening we all had last night. I received lots of positive comments this morning from staff saying how much they enjoyed the Casino. Fantastically organised and excellent customer service - we would highly recomm...
All Activity Ideas
Change Management Workshop - Good blend of activities. The whole day just happened to fit perfectly in terms of timing with what is currently facing us. Thanks. Good balance of action vs setting and fun vs learning and serious messag...
Teambuilding Activities
Teambuilding & Belbin 2 Day Workshop Really enjoyed the workshop. Good mixture of theory and activities to keep the mind active. Good communication before the event and high quality course notes. Would definately recommend. Reall...
The Krypton Maze
Just wanted to say a big thank you to you and your team for the session yesterday. It went down really well, with many colleagues asking me how/where I found you....
All Activity Ideas
Interactive Orienteering Challenge - Just wanted to drop you a line to thank you for yesterday, feedback from everyone has been excellent and was thoroughly enjoyed by all. The egg toss was still being mentioned this morning!!! Needl...
Teambuilding Activities
Shoot 'Em Up Challenge - The teambuilding people were friendly and motivating. We would like to use them again!...
Just a quick note to say thank you for your time on Monday, the feedback from the staff I have spoken with has all been very positive! So well worth the effort, I'm just disappointed I didn't have the time to take part....
London Monopoly Treasure Hunt
The team are usually a quiet bunch but they had an amazing day doing something completely different! A great day and I will definitely keep your details for any events like this in the future. Thank you for all of your help organising the event and p...
Forest Adventures
Bush Tucker Trial - Thanks so much for today, it was brilliant and went really well - and was exactly what we hoped it would be!! - Lola You guys were brilliant. Thanks so much again. - Hannah...
Paul did an excellent job of keeping us interested and sharing his experience with us. He certainly left us wanting more. We had so many questions but not enough time to ask them all. Although we very much heard his message about how important team w...
The Krypton Maze
Thank you so much to you and the guys for helping us with our clients event. Everyone mentioned after how much fun they had throughout the day. I was really impressed with how well organised the day was! From the initial brief to the end, the day's l...
