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If you are in need of a way to get your employees to work together, you should contact a professional team building company. These companies are available all over the world, and have many years of experience in the field. They have helped to improve the team building skills of companies in many different ways. One of the nice things about a team building company is that they will have many different activities that your employees can choose from. The team building activities that are available will differ from company to company, but rest assured that you will be able to find one that suits your needs because there are many to choose from.

One of the most popular team building activities is one that takes place on a boat. In this activity your team will be drilled on how well they work together. They will learn that working together to achieve a goal is much easier than trying to accomplish it on your own. Employees will be in charge of all aspects of the ship, and the activities that they have to complete will all help to make them better team players. When you have team players, productivity goes up and that means more to the bottom line. In management, we concentrate on the bottom line much of the time. With team work, the bottom line will reflect the work involved.

Another popular event is a team obstacle course. These types of team building activities will build the problem solving and decision making skills of the employees. Employees will be pressed to work together to solve both physical and mental tasks. The fact that you have to use your mind and body to complete these tasks makes the obstacle course one of the most effective team building activities. This has been used by many team building companies with great success. Once you get your people to work together as a team, the better the flow of communication, safety, and productivity.

Every company offers many different team building activities to choose from. There is no right or wrong decision. It all comes down to what your team is looking to accomplish, and what kind of activities they are interested in. Always remember one thing, team building activities are meant to be fun! When team building activities are fun, you will see more participation. More participation means better team work. Better team work leads to happier employees.

Keith Londrie II is a well known author. He has written many great articles on many topics,
including team building. For more information, please visit http://www.my-team-building.info/
You may also be interested in Keith’s other offerings at his site http://keithlondrie.com

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What does the phrase “team building” mean to you? Quad-biking? Abseiling? Propping up the bar with your work colleagues? Allow me to disagree.

Let’s look at the word “build” and see where that leads us. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines the word “build” as “Establish, make or accumulate gradually”. This definition implies a sense of time passing and growth. This, in turn, implies a modicum of care and attention to maximise the growth - or at the very least monitor the development.

So what kind of process works best to turn a team building session into something that improves team effectiveness back where it matters?

It is not uncommon for trainers and facilitators to like the sound of their own voice. Yet we all know that it is far more powerful if people can learn something for themselves rather than be told it. People turn off very quickly even after a very enjoyable team activity if the next thing they hear is the facilitator telling them his or her view of their performance.

I’ll go further - the tried and trusted technique of “What did you do well? What could you have done better?” isn’t much better. All too often you can hear people leaving team building sessions saying “every time we do one of these, we fail at the same old things” closely followed by “we’d have been better off talking about the real issues at work”. If you are lucky, they might add “I enjoyed it though”. So here’s the dilemma. If you leave it up to the participants themselves to come up with the improvements, their blinkers stop them from seeing the obvious development opportunities that the activity unveils to those observing. Yet if the observers tell them what they see, the participants don’t listen - or worse, become defensive.

I can hear you thinking “but a truly skilled facilitator will lead them to the learning without them realising it”. Don’t you believe it. Only the most naive of the group will fail to spot a facilitator guiding them somewhere they don’t really want to go. And that taints the learning - or at least the chances of it being applied.

So if the participants can’t see the learning and won’t listen if someone else tells them, is a team building session doomed to mediocrity before it starts? No - there is a third option.

A team building debriefing guide, tailored to the activity and (ideally) to the participant group, is a superb mechanism to guide the learning while not interfering in the process. So what are the key characteristics that such a guide should have? My experience suggests the following seven elements are all key components:

1) It should be tailored to the activity and focus on those aspects that have one or more direct parallels in the group’s real working environment.

2) It should provide an opportunity for individuals to reflect before any discussion within the team on the points it makes.

3) It should be constructed such that the input of every member of the team is necessary to complete the process.

4) It should not make value judgements in the way in which it describes particular aspects of the activity that might have gone well or less well for the team. Rather it should provoke discussion and encourage transfer back to the workplace.

5) It should provide places for individuals to capture their own learning and for the team to capture the group learning.

6) It should be useable purely by the participants themselves after brief instruction.

7) It should offer a framework for the team to invite observer input so that any “external” comments are requested by them rather than forced upon them.

Achieve all of these and you will have a superb base to build team improvements upon. And that feels like what the Oxford Concise English Dictionary is getting at.

Alan is Managing Director of Sandstone, a leading UK team building company. He enjoys creating innovative activities that combine fun with genuine team development. In his spare time, he does voluntary work for the RNIB.
http://www.sandstone.co.uk

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Many of us are very confident with regard to completing tasks at work or at play. In our everyday lives the simple tasks can be done by one person but work is a different story. As much as most people are concerned they feel that they are the best choice for any chore and that they can do it by themselves. When it comes to complex tasks, the ones most often needing to be completed in a work environment, multiple people are the best option. Ever wonder why your boss saw fit to hire more than just you to run the company? The thing about groups of people doing a task is that there are often a whole lot of opinions from a number of people who all think they are the only right ones. This can lead to problems.

Being part of a team is a hard thing to do but an important one. Most of us like to be part of a group but how many of us are truly good leaders of a team and good members of a team. Most of the people that love to lead a team are not good followers and many of the good followers are not good leaders. Team building allows the cross training or the entire team to occur benefiting the individuals and the team in the process. Studies have found that team building in the form of activities and exercises really helps to push the team beyond the level of just a group of individuals and turns them into a cohesive and efficient team.

There are numbers of different types of activities and exercises that can be used to build teams up from isolated people. Role playing games allow everyone to take charge or follow as needed without any risk of problems. Lower level employees can have a chance to step into their manager’s shoes for a window of time without the fear of messing anything up. We have found that employees that participate in team building activities have a higher appreciation for their fellow workers as well as their management. It is also found that the managers that switch with their employees for a time see more what they are going through and become more understanding and effective leaders.

If you are part of a large company we recommend that you look into the team building information your company has on hand. If none is available use our provided resources below to research team building. Bring them to you company and implement them. Teams are necessary to the success of a company and the team building exercises and activities can propel your company into the next level.

For more information about team building or team building activities and team building exercises follow these links.

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