What do you think of when you think of team building?
The term has been around forever and the very nature of it, to me can be in the form of activities or team exercises that have a social element to it and help to cultivate collaboration and foster a team spirit amongst teams.
While the idea is well intended, as a company, when you’re taking care of your workforce, you don’t often have to resort to a team building activity to ‘bring people together’. Furthermore, when you invest in them regularly, the time or $$ spent on a team building activity can simply be an outing to spend time with your people. Why? Because you care and you want to invest in continuously cultivating your relationship with them.
The benefits of team building I think most will agree are great and ALL companies want to see this:
- Increased productivity
- Improved communication
- Improved and stronger teamwork/collaboration
- Improved problem-solving skills
- Increased employee engagement
Many of these benefits can be seen when you’re taking consistent measures every single day in simply investing in your workforce. Behavior that demonstrates you care for your people and are creating a culture where social outings occur as a way to spend time with your people. Instead of coordinating a team building activity that you do once every 6 months to help bring your ‘people together’.
In a past life time, I worked for a company where we had a social outing monthly. We were small enough where we could afford to do that, and it did wonders for getting to know my peers and colleagues on a different level. Not to mention, the political barriers and professional guards were down, and people were at ease being themselves.
Why does it take a social outing to create that dynamic amongst employees?
This monthly social outing came from the leader at the time who felt it was important to bring everyone together regularly and that’s where it should start. Yes, we used those gatherings to also celebrate the wins and learn from the misses we had as a company as well. Set the example as a leader and if you have teams below you, empower your other managers to follow suit amongst their teams as they see fit.
Corporate cultures that embrace their employees as human beings vs. the role they play at work can still generate the benefits listed above. Team building is a great idea, however, the benefits you can reap from a team building activity can easily be fostered when you create a strong culture of engaged employees.
I’d love to hear from you in the comments below! What are your thoughts?
What are you doing now in your organization that brings your people together?
With so much appreciation,
Lisa xo
