The best team building event

Team building is essential in high performance teams. There are still lots of managers that look at these events as expenses, but I rather look at them as really cheap investments. At OutSystems we even have specific budget per team for these events. I’ve been a part of a couple of them like karting at “Serra da Arrábida”, segway tour in Lisbon, learning how to bake “pastel de nata” or beer crafting in Braga.

Team building events don’t have to be highly expensive or have a specific budget: beers at a given point in the week to relax, snooker at the end of the sprint with all team to do a 3 vs 3 or some office moves. Yep, office moves are fun and great to have all team relaxing.

All these are great. However, my top favourite team building event is probably not something you would expect. Ready?

It’s long night hours when sh*t happens!

Yep. That’s it.

Don’t get me wrong: I have a family, great social life, lots of hobbies. I lack free time. And these events are likely to be very expensive to the company as they are probably connected to customer problems or project delays. But when things are not going well, in crisis, when everyone has to bring their best to the game… that’s the ultimate team building event. That’s when I created real bonds with people. When it’s 1 a.m. and you have 10 people at the office having a hard time fighting to make things happen, to turn the ship around. That has no price.

Oh and having pizza and coke, putting “Quim Barreiros” to relax 10min between stressful troubleshootings? Damn… I hate to say it, but give me more long nights of work!

P.S.: I’m not suggesting you should have a stressful project or a crisis. Just saying that bad times are not necessarily that bad for a team.

P.S.1: Thanks Pedro!