Team Building Solutions for Business Improvement

Every business leader knows that finding that one ideal employee might oftentimes seem like the biggest enterprise of them all. Job interview questions have been busted for some time now, and every person eager enough to ace the test knows the expected answers to the challenges such are Describe your work style, Do you prefer to work alone or in a team, and so on. As a result, the employer is lucky if he hires a knowledgeable, skillful individual. However, what makes the worker prominent are not only his qualifications, but how well he manages to implement them while working with others. The perfect balance between personal competencies and office congeniality is absolutely essential, as it is hard to achieve. Therefore, the whole philosophy behind team management has been developed, and it’s most significant practice is team building.

The Concept

Team building is much more than informal co-bonding, but on the same level, this concept differs from the traditional team training. It can be said that, regarding the scale of formality, it is somewhere in between. Before it has been established as the organization activity, team building existed as a way of enhancing social bonds between co-workers, in order to make their combined efforts easier. Nowadays, the concept still focuses on social interactions and communication between individual employees, but suggests a more goal-achieving approach. As such, it has evolved under the wing of organizational psychology and group development. What’s important is that team building is not supposed to be a forced and formal intervention, but implemented as a spontaneous and long-lasting process of teamwork improvement.

Tasks and Goals

There are a couple of difficulties the employer might come across, which can be adequately surpassed with team building activities. In order to successfully target those difficulties, the process should include a number of different aims. Naturally, these aims are not to be approached separately, but through an all-inclusive process, as a sum of most common potential problems within a team, as well as their solutions.

The individual. Being an outstanding and productive individual inside a team is important, but the trouble occurs once the individual starts separating from the group, or undertaking the tasks outside of his primary niche. Team building is a great way of preventing this kind of anti-cooperative behavior. With one of its goals being role clarification, it helps the employees understand their position on the team, whether it’s organized as a hierarchy or not. Certain duties are assigned to each individual, according to his/her skills, knowledge and talents. For this reason, every participant should accept his/her place, and be respective of others’. The productivity of the entire team depends on a single member, and respective division of roles is, with that being said, of greatest value.

The alliance. Once the roles are determined, team building concentrates on their mutual relations. Basic work socialization covers supportiveness, communication, and most importantly, trust. When team members attune with one another, the ground is set for joint problem solving. By working together, employees are developing a work strategy, anticipating the outcome and concluding the required resources. The goal is set as a common interest, with different expertise and aptitudes of each individual being combined into one multi-sided approach. Ultimately, the process advances diplomatic skills and critical thinking at the same time, allowing the workers to grow from the experience.

Ideas and Activities

Even though team building is an ongoing process, there are some separate activities that can especially motivate the employees. Mostly, they are designed to be relaxing and implicated outside of the work environment, while simultaneously encompassing all of the previously cited aims.

Affiliation and acceptance. This kind of team building activities include pre-work introduction. Team members should get to know each other and make a connection based upon mutual understanding and reliance. First group of these activities should allow the employees to familiarize on the more personal level. For instance, as a group leader, you can invite participants to choose and revoke one particular event that has been the crowning moment of their lives so far. The other idea would be to suggest them a fictional scenario, and ask how they would manage a certain situation. Both activities will give other members an insight in one’s priorities. When it comes to the promotion of mutual trust, you can try the blindfold game, in which one person will allow another to walk him through the room while not being able to see. Eye contact game is the simplest of this kind, but provides excellent results, as it requires from the team members to be absolutely comfortable with each other.

Project collaboration. After the basic connection between team members has been established, you can proceed building the group’s partnership skills. Any kind of a problem solving game, like a puzzle or egg drop game can be used in order to get the participants to join intellectual forces on accomplishing the task. If this is their first collaboration, these games will spontaneously reveal their leading skills, since they will assume the role they are most equipped for and comfortable with. To explore their planning abilities, you can create more elaborate games that include a complex strategic approach. The paper tower is one of the classics, in which each of the participants has to put all of his/her creativity and ingenuity into building the highest building with nothing but paper. Also, the imaginary projects such as presentation making or business trip planning can be a great chance for the employees to exercise their adroitness and sense of timing, as well as resource managing before the actual one appears.

The ability of an individual to function inside a group has shown to be crucial for business effectiveness, especially in the time of industrial globalization. Not only that successful cooperation advances the entire business by making it more efficient and productive, but it also trains individual members and whole teams to overcome the difficulties of wider collaborations. The aim of each company is to expand its field to broader, international grounds. By learning to work with each other, employees are becoming competent for communication with other organizations, even when they imply cultural, intellectual and linguistic differences.