The problem with normal team building is that it often only works to develop a group of people once. Team building should be aimed at enhancing the process, efficiency, or success of any organization that invests time and money in it. Hence, a themed team building is more valuable than just a traditional team building because it provides a framework to measure progress before and after the training. The following are some reasons why themed team building is worth your time and money.
Nowadays, team building sessions are very important in the workplace. Most of our jobs require us to perform routine tasks in one way or another. Employees wake up, report to work at 8AM and leave at 5PM, expecting to return tomorrow and do the same thing as yesterday. In many cases, employees feel they are not moving up the career ladder, which affects their motivation. If they are honest, they may describe their jobs as boring and stagnant. Due to low motivation and boring nature of the position and the roles, most team members end up doing it just to do it, ignoring interpersonal and intrapersonal skills that are very important for day-to-day interpersonal communications, reporting to work simply because there is nowhere else to report to, and developing an attitude of hatred towards anyone they encounter.
The results are more negative than they appear. As a result of poor communication, you discover someone postponing saying something very essential for others to achieve their daily goals. Conflicts rise among employees and they begin to perceive one another’s strengths as threats to their positions and status within the company. Many times, blame games are played throughout the day, and a negative attitude is developed towards those who perform. Most employees begin showing up in the office or at work solely for formalities rather than because they are contributing value. In the worst case, the toxic culture starts to spread to the organization’s most valuable asset, its customers, and this negatively impacts the organization’s financial performance and ability to survive.
Today’s world is characterized by easy access to information due to globalization and technology growth, which has resulted in an explosion of local and international competition. The game changer and the biggest differentiator are to how your organization culture supports customers inside and outside the organization. Organization culture can be shaped through regular training and team building.
A team building should be structured in such a way that it provides employees with a chance to pause, reflect on their past and strategize for the future. Also, a teambuilding session should be a process that will start with shaping a culture in an organization to an organization where employee understand strengths and weaknesses of the team members, employees understand different their personalities and that of their colleagues, employees understand how creativity can be a solution to routine and norm, participants understand failures which result from in effective communication, negative attitude and unsolved conflicts. A themed team building should focus on personal growth and organization growth.
Team Building should involve fun activities which will help the team to unwind and create space for new energy. Also Team building should include debriefs of those activities clearly reflecting issues at hand and based on practical examples from the organization. Team Building planning should include a pre team building analysis and post team building analysis which will help team building facilitators to walk with the organization step by step to ensure all the soft skills issues are addressed and there is performance.
Investing in team building will potentially increase your organization performance because most customers will be attracted by the positive culture of the organization which can be created from a successful team building session.