5 Ways To Conduct An Effective Team Building Activity

You’ve given it your all, but it still wasn’t enough — what could you possibly be doing wrong?

No, we’re not talking about failing relationships with your significant other. Rather, that your employees are crucial to implementing an effective team activity. This could certainly help your company in becoming more productive and successful. But perhaps, it’s time to reevaluate your strategies when doing effective team building. But first, what is the importance of team building anyway? Why should you invest in one?

Also read: 10 Ways to Motivate Employees Aside From A Salary Raise

Team building activities are usually aimed at one thing — to grow and develop your employees so that they collaborate better with one another and produce results. These activities can take a few hours to days depending on the size of your company and how much planning you’ve put into the activities. But overall, you should achieve the following by the end of your efforts.

Employees learn more about themselves The best way to get your employees to know each other isn’t by hearing about them from another employee. This is especially true when they don’t get to interact at the office every day. Instead, you bring them together and open all communications for them to collaborate directly. These things are part of most team building activities, thereby making the latter the ideal venue for your staff to learn about the other person’s personality, interests, and skills. These could prove beneficial should they get the opportunity to work together.

Employee engagement is promoted When we think of employee engagement, there’s often the misconception that it solely means encouraging everyone to engage in whatever activities the company asks them to do. May it be participating in special projects or other events in the hope of improving their work-life balance. But from a hirers’ point of view, it goes deeper than that. Rather, it’s really about improving your employees’ attitude toward their job. Are they still interested in what they do? How dedicated are they to finishing their tasks in the given timeline? Doing team building activities can help rekindle such behaviors.

Employees practice working with one another Team building activities may seem like fun for the most part. But hirers usually use these events to see how well employees can achieve specific goals when they’re no longer just doing them alone. By allowing them to band together in engaging and fun activities without the pressure of evaluations, they can further assess each other’s strengths and weaknesses. These activities don’t necessarily have to do with their work responsibilities either. Otherwise, they will see them as more of a chore than an avenue to let loose.

Employees gain new helpful skills After letting employees test the waters of working together with their peers, they not only learn about their personalities. But also, they discover skills that can translate to their work. These can include creativity, resourcefulness, collaboration, and even leadership. Sometimes, it’s better for your employees to explore and experience them for themselves rather than you or a trainer simply telling them theories or techniques in a class or meeting room setup.

Employees enjoy better company culture Employees feel more optimistic about their work if they see that their company is taking care of them. Not just monetarily, or the benefits, incentives, and more trainings to supposedly help expand their knowledge. Rather, by prioritizing their well-being as well. This can translate to how they treat their colleagues. And when done right, it can create a lighter and more positive atmosphere throughout the workplace. In time, they would have mastered balancing and enjoying their work, while still creating efficient results.

Also read: Top Reasons Why Employees Resign and How To Keep Them

When teams fail, or are heading in that direction, companies resort to effective team building activities. These would be to preserve work relationships and avoid further complications that could affect how everyone is performing their job. However, there are times when even these activities fail. 

In order to solve a question or problem, you must first understand why a team isn’t functioning as well as it should and could. Moreover, what can you do about it, and can you do anything about it at all? Below are some scenarios for you to consider.

Too much independence Companies encourage independence among their employees, while also welcoming collaboration and team playing at some point. But there’s such a thing as wanting to work independently to the point that a person starts to only think about him or herself. They become unwilling to cooperate with others and compromise to achieve a common goal, mainly by putting their interests first. Worse, the employee lacks accountability to take the blame for something he or she did wrong, but insists on getting recognition for his or her successes.

Ignorance at its worst When working together with other people, everyone is expected to have basic knowledge of their purpose in the company. That way, they’d know how to delegate tasks to people, the time needed to do them, the best ways to accomplish them, who else can can work on the task, or where data should be presented or submited. So and so forth. If even one member of the team is misinformed in one aspect of the entire process, the consequences that could have on the team and the company can be detrimental.

Superiority galore Overconfidence can kill a team just as ignorance does. When one employee feels that he or she can do a job better than everybody else, the team will sacrifice a number of things: quality of the work, lack of creativity, longer turnaround time, and higher chances of unnecessary conflicts. In some cases, it can also lead to others resigning or getting terminated when they’re no longer able to contribute as much as they want to the company.

Not enough openness There’s a reason why a good number of team building activities include developing trust among employees. Trust is practically synonymous with safety. Do they feel safe in the workplace that they are in and the people that they are around every day? Do they feel safe doing a certain activity and taking risks without receiving punishment for it? Can they communicate openly and share their vulnerabilities so that others truly know how they feel about what they do? When there’s enough trust in a team, this means that employees are better able to explore one another’s potential and collaborate better.

Investing in team building activities won’t matter much when you don’t invest in the right talent to begin with. It can mean the difference between your company failing or succeeding. This means that as early as your hiring process, you must look out for possible signs of team dysfunction. Based on the above-mentioned reasons why a team fails, assess your possible next talents on the following:

1. 1.

   Will they be joining the team just for personal gains?

2. 2.

   Are they teachable or patient enough to learn new knowledge?

3. 3.

   Do they have a history of hoarding work?

4. 4.

   What were some risks that they took in their previous job?

Also read: 8 Best Ways To Win Over and Keep Top Talent

Start building a team that can lead your company to success by logging on to JobStreet, where you can find the Talent Search to look for new talents. To know more about how to effectively manage your employees, visit Inspirations.