Team Building as a Modern Team Development Tool
They say that one head is good and two are even better. What about the whole team, whose joint work is properly coordinated? It doesn’t matter if you are running your own project or managing a department in a company – it is important to know how to manage a team and motivate employees to achieve the best results. So, how to succeed with the help of a team?
The modern world is developing quite rapidly and requires the use of modern tools to improve the quality of human activity, but the most important and relevant today is the issue of identifying and using human resources.
There is such a catchphrase as “The personnel is all-important” and it is so common not by chance because employees remain one of the most important resources of the company. According to that, the competitive advantages of the company depend on how quickly and efficiently it adapts staff to new society requirements, the innovation process, and how to form an effective team of employees, which in turn contributes to the development of the company and strengthens its competitive advantages.
Through the years the world developed a number of team engagement tools that help to form the necessary work relations among all employees in the right and positive direction. One of the effective tools is team building. This term can be interpreted from two sides:
- firstly, as a philosophy of job design, in which employees are considered as members of interdependent teams, not as individual workers;
- secondly, is the ability to identify and motivate individual employees to form a team that stays, works, and succeeds together.
Rules of Effective Team Building
- Proper communication
- Responsibility of each team member
- Encourage discussion and active participation
- Create and maintain motivation
- Create and develop common team goals
According to these rules, we present you with 5 life hacks to make your team and business better in general.
Proper Communication
Proper and quality communication is the key to success, it’s no secret. Communication can affect teamwork both positively and negatively. Lack of communication leads to misunderstandings in the team and misinterpretation of tasks. The more collaboration and interaction your project requires, the deeper the communication should be. Do not neglect to communicate in informal circumstances – your team may need such measures for better team building.
How to build this effective communication among your employees? Organization of various events based on games, entertainment, and collective problem-solving is the first thing you need outside the office or even inside. Trips, workshops, games, thousands of outdoor activities – anything that aims to form team skills and create team spirit will do.
It is very important not to neglect inner communication in the company or firm. Your team deserves to stay tuned. Don’t forget about a simple yet effective notification system through e-mails, SMS, messengers, social media, etc. as a part of a team engagement process. In this matter, it is essential not to run your roots too deep and keep your distance as some things must remain private.
Responsibility of Each Team Member
Delegate. Do not leave all the responsibility to yourself. Each team member in your business must have a specific role and perform it well. Explaining these roles will help your team achieve a common goal. Ask yourself: “How clearly do our employees understand their roles? Your and their specific responsibilities? Where do roles and responsibilities among individual team members cross? Where do roles and responsibilities of different departments coincide?”
In practice, you can use the following tools to make each team member responsible: during any game or event, participants must share roles, choose a leader themselves, and clarify who is responsible for which part of the work. For this purpose, the tasks like “conveyor” or “manufacture” work well.
Encourage Discussion and Active Participation
Increase the involvement of your team members. Make sure participants are involved in the process. Find out what motivates them the most in the process. Keep track of how much team members are personally interested in achieving the goal. Ask yourself: What activities will be best for your team members? What topics are relevant to them?
This can be achieved through anonymous questionnaires or polls, and during the team-building event itself, apply the “everyone should speak or write what they think” principle.
Create and Maintain Motivation
A motivated team is more likely to perform all the tasks set before it, because motivation moves a person from the inside, regardless of external stimuli. The most important thing for a leader is to include this motivation correctly. Decent pay, comfortable workplace, clear goals, the opportunity to develop professionally and personally, promote teamwork and a caring attitude – all this creates motivation in the team and maintains enthusiasm.
Tools needed during team building: small prizes, promotions, cups, medals, awards, diplomas – whatever fits the activity.
Create and Develop Common Team Goal
It is very important to break down goals into smaller goals and steps. The path to team success must be clearly defined, consistent and clear. A shared vision for all team members is very important both at the team-building stage and at the finish line stage.
Ask yourself: “How clear is our vision? Do all team members have the same vision? Do all team members know what role they play?” Make sure your organizational, project and program goals are understood and supported by all team members. Participants need to understand how their efforts come together for greater goals.
How do obtain such information during activities? Simple. First, you give this goal. Then, you listen to your co-workers and modify it. If you have done anything we wrote about in the “Encourage discussion and active participation” paragraph, you would have already managed to collect ideas from your staff.
If You Still Don’t Understand Why It’s So Cool and Necessary…
Today, teamwork is an important trend. The combination of people from different backgrounds and spheres allows you to look at the problem from different angles and find new, creative and relevant solutions.
In order for the company’s employees to have enough motivation for daily work, and for the corporate atmosphere to inspire and evoke the most pleasant emotions, managers began to actively use team building. They are an excellent way to increase the efficiency of teamwork and form a positive attitude towards their profession.
Team building helps to establish trust, and expands the boundaries of communication, perhaps during team building, colleagues will discover new sides and opportunities for verbal and nonverbal communication. These discoveries allow us to develop an understanding of another’s picture of the world, but will not solve all existing problems.
It is a good opportunity to gather all employees together to improve the corporate atmosphere and identify ways to solve existing problems. Such activities should not be neglected, because creating a dream team requires time, patience, and a great desire to work on common goals.
