Insights
As a business owner, you are probably aware that a tight-knit team that get along in perfect harmony is essential for the success and growth of your business. This is where team building comes in.
Many businesses find that their employees who work closely together effectively will perform higher and complete tasks quickly enough to remain competitive. Building team morale within your company is vital, as teamwork is extremely necessary to your business. If your staff don’t get on, then you have a serious problem on your hands. Morale will be low and this will in turn slow down and hinder progress. This is why team building exercises are crucial for maintaining the happy medium in the office.
Calming conflicts
Easing conflicts can be a tough hurdle to overcome in business, as there may be a few varied personalities within the office, and unnecessary clashes may occur. If you were to introduce team building exercises or activities into working life and make time to do this once a month, or even quarterly, this will indeed play an important role in easing conflicts between colleagues as they will have time to build rapport with one another and bond through the planned activity.
The best type of team-building exercises are obviously the ones that allow colleagues to get to know each other on a personal level, rather than a purely work level. There are many varieties of exercise you could try, but you could begin with role play exercises or situations where your employees can share interesting bits of information about themselves within the group.
If your employees do tend to be the constantly conflicting with one another in the office, you may want to host your team building activity away from the office environment so that they feel much more relaxed. A neutral location such as a park or a function room, or even a restaurant can divert away from the usual animosity between co-workers that usually arises.
Developing trust
Trust is definitely a crucial element to business; even more so when teamwork is required on a daily basis to achieve clients’ objectives; so team building exercises can help develop trust among your employees. If trust is not present, it can be to the downfall of a team; some will see this as a make or break situation as business can’t grow without teamwork.
Developing a mutual trust by introducing team building activities can make your team more dependable on one another and in turn aid them to being more productive, as well as efficient. A considered method for building trust that is used in many team building exercises is splitting your team into pairs and asking them to look at each other and maintain eye contact for a minute without turning away. This activity is said to improve trust issues within business, as it allows your team members to loosen up and become more comfortable and trusting of each other through eye contact.
Improving communication
Your employees can learn how to communicate more effectively with each other through team-building activities; and this is likely as they will have to solve problems and work together to complete tasks as a group. Splitting your staff into two groups and giving them a problem solving task where they are competing against the other team is a great way of getting your team to chat to one another informally.
Working together to pool their ideas and resources with the aim of winning the task is a common communication exercise which will intentionally force people, who don’t tend to get on, to work together for the purpose of the team and to win the task against their competitors. This type of exercise will translate into every day working life in the office, and hopefully this will improve productivity and efficiency within the team. Talking out issues and problems that may arise is also encouraged, as it will help to air differences and approach arguments in a more professional way to resolve their problems.
Increasing teamwork
Sometimes you don’t expect that your entire team will get on harmoniously, but you can attempt to improve their working relationship through team building activities so that they are able to establish a stronger bond with one another for the professionalism of the office.
Helping to create a bond through various exercises can definitely help increase participation in projects, as many individuals will realise that taking a collaborative approach to ideas or tasks in the office is imperative when working towards the same goals. An effective team is definitely one that will work in tune, rather than teams with certain members adamant to work independently. By allowing your team to participate in team building activities that require everyone’s input, it will help to improve this.
Make it regular
Team building programs can be very effective and do a lot for boosting team morale on a short-term basis, but you need to ensure that you are making these activities compulsory and regular to maintain productivity. There is no use in organising an activity for your staff once a year, because you are not going to see any long-term results.
Make sure that you are implementing time into your yearly business strategy for team-building exercises, as it is extremely important in the fine tuning of your employees. Most importantly, you must ensure that these team-building activities are fun for all staff members, and don’t leave any member out. They should be very relevant to your business model and meaningful for the whole team. Planning a team-building initiative can help to make them run smoothly, as you will be able to decide what structure they are going to take and what particular topics you will be discussing.
