Tips for Creating Proper Team Building Activities

Team building, as we already know, is a term for enhancing social relations within teams that often involves different tasks that foster collaboration.

It is your job as a leader of the “team” to do your best to get the best out of that team.

Why are team building activities important?

If you want to maintain a successful and efficient company, you and your employees need to work well together. However, this isn’t something that occurs on its own. In order to work well together, you all need to know each other well. Here is a list of benefits you’ll gain from organizing team building events.

Increased morale

Almost every monotonous work day can be improved with team building activities. Not only will everyone get a chance to get out of the office a little bit, but it is also something your employees will look forward to. After the event, everyone will be energized and get a huge office morale boost.

Improved relationships

Team building is all about building new relationships and strengthening the already existing ones. Those activities are designed for it. Better relationships will lead to increased abilities when it comes to collaborative work, which will make work days, as well as work activities and tasks, run much easier and smoother.

More productivity and improved efficiency

The office morale directly affects productivity. So, since your employees will work much better together and be more effective because of better mutual understanding after team building activities, your business will grow more and more.

Better working environment

No one is excited to get up for work every morning when they know they’re going to one boring, monotonous and miserable place. Friendly relationships achieved through team building can eliminate this problem. That’s why you need to make sure you organize these events at least twice a year.

Fluid communication

Since these activities will encourage your staff to communicate, they will eventually develop this extremely important skill, thus making workflow much more efficient.

How to do this the right way

Due to some bad experiences with team building activities, the staff can often be somewhat apprehensive when someone mentions them. However, you have to understand that the most important part of these activities is the method, not the concept itself. In order to really improve the way your team functions, you should follow these guidelines:

Know the reasons

What is it that your team needs? There are three situations where team building activities are the best way to get over difficulties. Number one: is your team freshly assembled and its members just need to spend some time together and establish goals, roles and collaboration methods? If the answer is yes, you should opt for relationship building activities and games where they can learn about each other the best way possible.

Next, is your existing team going through some kind of conflict or becoming dysfunctional? Maybe they’re simply exhausted by the workload and keep snapping at each other. If any of these are true, book an event management company because it is time for a party! There is nothing that releases tension among employees like happy hours do, right?

Finally, maybe your team has simply become stagnant and needs a morale boost. In this case, you will have to show they’re appreciated by acknowledging and awarding their accomplishments, reminding them what is your mission and how important that mission is for all of you.

Focus on actual work

Team building activities that have nothing to do with the real world should be avoided because they are a waste of time. The activity should be analogous to the work your team does. Make sure that it also requires that members of your team work in small groups when completing a task. The collaborative mindset is your final goal.

Everyone should participate

Every person is unique. This is why you have to carefully assess how much extroversion every single person your team can handle. The one thing you don’t need is unnecessary tension. Be patient, as they mature, spend more time together and feel more ease with each other, the openness is going to come naturally to them.

Action plans

The “so what” factor must be avoided at all costs. Each and every activity from your team building session should be completed in planned time. The team must always know their commitments.

By doing team building the right way, your employees will not just work better, but they will also enjoy their job much more and you will maybe even be responsible for many new friendships, which is the best feeling in the world. In other words, everyone will enjoy the benefits of increased effectiveness, productivity and collaboration.