Team Building

It is a paradox of team building that people need to retain their individuality in order to function at their best as part of the group. Only by maintaining their uniqueness will they develop the self confidence to work to their full and special potential. This will enable them to function at their best within the team and will, in turn, make the team a more unique and effective unit.

A good team leader will recognize the need for individual expression within the team and will encourage team members to accept and tolerate the differences they find in each other. This fostering of acceptance is an important aspect of the conflict management that is so essential to successful team building. The need for acceptance needs to be addressed openly and objectively, so that the team learns to accept the individual differences within its ranks.

Through a variety of team building exercises and ongoing encouragement, team members can learn to work with each other’s differences without allowing those differences to become issues that affect the team’s work adversely. As tolerance grows, any tension within the group resulting from those differences will decrease and will, eventually, occur less frequently. While its members remain free to work to their full potential as individuals, the team will also function increasingly well as a group that is, as the sum total of its parts, a special and distinctive organization.

Successful organizations owe much of their success to teamwork. Effective teamwork, in turn, owes a lot to team building activities. Through a variety of team building exercises and games, individuals learn to work together as a motivated and cohesive group. They even have fun while learning!

There is a great diversity of team building activities that organizations can use, and many ways in which they can use them. They can arrange a specific team building event such as a camp, workshop or conference, or they can incorporate the activities into regular work training sessions and meetings. Team building activities are not limited to work. They can be used to break the ice and to add enjoyment to social events. They can also be built into any other activities in which the organization participates, such as school talks and community work.

As well as assisting with motivation, team building exercises help people to improve their communication skills, encourage them to help and support each other, educate them to respect each other’s differences and inspire them to develop their individual potential while working together to achieve the common goal of the team. They also teach skills to help with problem solving and conflict management. Team building activities can be provided by professional companies or developed and presented as adaptations of the many examples available on the internet, in books and as part of training programs.

If conflict develops within a group, it is difficult for the members of that group to work co-operatively and effectively. Unfortunately, conflict is a frequent fact of life between members of teams, especially in the early stages of team building, because of the many differences between individuals. As well as having varying backgrounds and a diversity of views on such matters as religion, politics and values, people often have different ambitions and attitudes in regard to the group to which they belong. Factions also have a tendency to form within a main group, and conflicts can develop between these groups as well as between the individuals belonging to the main group.

Team leaders need to be able to recognize the potential for the development of conflict within the group and to exercise conflict management planning in an effort to avoid its development. If, despite this, conflict does occur and is likely to have an adverse effect on the team’s performance, there will be a need to resolve it as soon as possible. Methods of conflict management initiated as part of team building should involve a strong focus on keeping up team morale and an emphasis on the fact that each member of the team has an important role in achieving a common goal. Team members should be kept up to date with information that affects the group so that they continue to feel part of it and to care about its achievements. They should also receive credit for good performances and be encouraged to support each other’s work. Ensuring the team has a good public reputation is also good for its private morale. Through such conflict management methods, potential conflict can be avoided, allowing successful team building to continue.

Mutual support within a team is an important part of team building. When members of the team enjoy genuinely good relations with each other they will, as a result, find it much easier to provide each other with support for the common objectives they share. This mutual support and trust of individuals within the team will, in turn, help the team itself to function with more enthusiasm and effectiveness.

Successful team building includes the ability to create a team whose individual members bring to the team a diversity of supportive characteristics. These characteristics should enable individual members to give each other enough ongoing encouragement and support when necessary to keep the team functioning and focused. If team builders can stack their teams with at least one of each supportive type of person, the team will be stronger and better for it. These should be chosen during the initial stages of team building and should include a person who can be emotionally supportive to the other team members by being empathetic and a good listener, a person who is capable of developing ways of keeping colleagues up to date with relevant news and information, a person who is able to help with technical support and a person with evaluative skills that the team can use to make sense of specific problems. With this strong, balanced and internal support system, a team is well equipped to succeed in its work.

The leader plays a major part in fostering and maintaining activities that contribute to successful team building. One of the main roles of the leader is to stimulate the team to motivate itself as a whole. In order to do this, the leader must understand how important it is to encourage individual members of the team to find the best in themselves, so that they improve in areas such as responsibility, personal growth and team spirit. This helps team building to progress with the team functioning as a self-energizing unit rather than depending on the leader to empower it.

In order for the team building to proceed effectively in this way, a team leader should have a positive personality and good interpersonal skills. The leader should also make sure that the team members understand the work they have to do and how to do it. Another part of the leader’s role is to assure the team that its goals can be attained. Without skilled help and encouragement, a team facing a difficult task may lose motivation, but a leader who is skilled at team building will know how to break a complex whole into achievable parts. Team members will then realize they can aim towards each of these small goals and will be motivated to continue working towards the overall objective.

Problem solving tasks are an integral part of team building activities. Through developing solutions to the various problems with which they are presented, team members improve their ability to work together successfully. Some of the problems solving tasks centre on energetic outdoor activities such as team races and tug-of-war events. These can provide a combination of entertainment and education during camps and outdoor workshops. Other problem solving tasks involve think-tank type activities, with team members working together on situations such as survival scenarios to decide how they would help and support each other through the hypothetical ordeal. These problem solving thinking tasks are particularly useful for indoor team building meetings and workshops when no outdoor area is available for the more physically strenuous activities.

As well as being suited to a variety of locations, the many problem solving activities available for team building purposes can also be adapted easily to suit all ages and abilities, from school children to corporate groups. In all cases, the role of the facilitator is important to ensure that the problem solving activities are positive experiences for the participants and that they help with the team building objectives. When a problem solving exercise is completed, a group discussion about how the participants approached the problem and its solution provides a valuable learning experience and an opportunity for team members to reflect on the benefits of the exercise for team building and performance.

When building a team, it is important to ensure that the various skills of its members balance each other. One way to accomplish balanced team building is to select a group of individuals who are experts in different areas. In this way you will have a group equipped collectively with the diverse practical and theoretical talents that are needed to achieve the goal for which you are aiming.

Once you have selected the people and skills you need when team building, it is also important to assign appropriate specific roles to each team member as soon as possible. As well as the required skills, other factors influencing the allocation of each of these roles can include such things as the person’s individual preferences, interests and work background. These factors should be taken into consideration because team members who are genuinely interested in their roles will function much more effectively than those who are bored with their task.

As well as understanding his or her role, each team member also needs to be aware of the roles that have been assigned to each of the other team members. Knowing how all these roles relate to each other facilitates team building and makes it more likely that people will be prepared to help each other if necessary. With the roles of each person clearly defined and their purposes understood, your team can then begin to work as an efficient and productive unit.

Motivation is an essential ingredient of successful team building. The motivation needs to be ongoing and individual as well as general. By giving the individual team members incentive to continue working at a high standard you will strengthen the team as a whole, thereby maintaining and often increasing its productivity.

Incentive can be provided in material ways such as promised rewards for effort and achievement, both in the early days of team building and after the team is well established. These rewards can include trophies, trips and other motivating gifts as well as cash. Wanting to win these rewards can motivate a person or a team to work well, especially when a special effort is required.

As team building continues, non-material incentives can also provide strong motivation for team members and the team as a whole. These incentives include an enjoyment of the job, an awareness of being a valuable member of the team and a perception of being valued. Factors such as these provide continual motivation for team members to work well and constructively. This type of motivation results mainly from the team leader’s ability to create and maintain a climate in which the team members find their work enjoyable and interesting, and know that their contributions to the team are appreciated. Once this climate is established, it will generate the non-material rewards that motivate the team’s successful work.

The setting of team goals that are challenging but realistic will make a constructive contribution to the task of team building. A team faced with goals that are unrealistic and therefore unachievable will eventually lose belief in its ability to succeed. By contrast, a team whose goals are less extreme and therefore achievable will be inspired with confidence in its ability to continue succeeding.

A leader who sets realistic goals for individual members of the team will be helping the team as a whole to develop the ability to take on increasingly difficult challenges and to overcome them. The individual challenges can be structured during team building to encourage each team member to achieve personal best performances, and then to go even further next time. Each time the person achieves the next goal, he or she will be encouraged by this success to continue striving. This is a much better result than setting an unrealistic goal for a person who will probably fail to achieve it and will then feel a failure. The perception of being a failure will lead to a lack of confidence the next time the person is set a goal, with another failure therefore likely to result. Team building will be much more successful when goal setting increases rather than decreases the confidence of team members to meet and overcome challenges. As a result of this confidence of its members to achieve goals, the whole team will eventually be inspired with the belief that it can meet the level of performance required of it.