Team building activities: The one activity your team can’t thrive without

When done right, team building activities can be great in making your colleagues feel more connected and better able to collaborate.

The end goal, of course, is to help employees feel greater fulfillment in their roles, which ultimately leads to greater success for the company.

And just to be clear, team building is important whether your team is just one clog in a big corporate machine, or you’re in a smaller business and your team is the company.

Regardless of where you sit on the scale, you need to take a proactive approach to team building and hold regular sessions - at least biannually - as people come and go from the group.

Team building: Why there’s plenty of room for improvement

Unfortunately, team building activities are seldom done well. 

They’re often approached in an ad-hoc manner, left to managers and team leaders who, at no fault of their own, are expected to be experts in team building and development. 

In reality, managers have usually been appointed to their roles because of their technical expertise which is totally unrelated to team building and performance.

For example, we’re yet to meet a chief financial officer who secured their role because they were good at building high performing teams as opposed to their ability with numbers and accounting!

And while People and Culture Offices are often more capable when it comes to team building activities, we increasingly see these departments stretched to the point where they don’t have the resources to devote to such initiatives. 

Team building activities: the good, the bad and the ugly.

Team building activities that run with little thought or process can actually do more harm than good for your group.

Anyone who has spent considerable time in the corporate environment would have, at some point or another, been part of some of those cringe-worthy team building activities - you know the ones we’re talking about.

Competitive activities (think paintball), so-called ‘constructive criticism’ exercises, and physical or intimate activities (such as trust falls or ‘the human knot’), can not only make people feel uncomfortable, but isolated.

Just because a team can participate in a certain activity does not necessarily make it a true ‘team building activity’ that will have a positive impact on how you work together.  

The most important team building activity: Unearthing your team values

If the goal of team building activities is to help forge stronger bonds, more collaboration and greater productivity, then it’s best to focus on the foundations of what makes a high performing team.

There are three core factors, psychological safety, an environment to be vulnerable, and a united purpose.

The common starting point for establishing all of these factors is for teams to understand their values. The character traits, beliefs and behaviours that resonate with them most..

When we understand our values and these values are linked to our roles, our team and the broader company, it provides natural motivation to perform well, guidelines for members to align with and a clear direction for the team to aim.

This is known as intrinsic motivation. If team members are intrinsically motivated, they find joy and fulfillment in the day-to-day activities of their role, and are subsequently more productive.

So how does this apply to team building activities?

As a group, we can create a set of team values that everyone can unite behind, and which aid stronger bonds and collaboration. 

A quick guide to unearthing your team values

While you might have a sense of your personal values, chances are you’ve never taken the time to proactively create a list of values that you want to live by, let alone within a team environment.

Here’s a quick guide to help create a list of values that can be used in a team context.

First, as a team, brainstorm a laundry list of potential values you want to guide you as a group. There are 3 ways you can brainstorm a range of different values. These are:

Using your current environment

• Have your team think about their current workplace, and identify the things they admire most. It might be the communication, leadership styles, humility, camaraderie etc.

Using your desired environment

• Have your team think about what the workplace would look like in a perfect world. Is everyone leaving on time, do individuals have manageable workloads, does the team operate in harmony etc.

Understanding what you don’t want

• List the things you’d want to avoid as a team. For example, finger pointing, gossiping, wearing stress/fatigue/high workloads as a badge of honour etc. With these, create a list of opposite traits. So for those examples we used it might be taking responsibility, avoiding hearsay, and encouraging work-life balance.

With those three lists of values that you have brainstormed as a team, group similar values together and then start to shortlist the values you want to operate by as a group.

Ideally, your group will choose 8-12 values you want to follow as a team. This becomes the ‘social contract’. 

Not only does the team developing these together lead to greater buy-in, but the process allows team members to be vulnerable in sharing what’s important to them. A shared experience which can become the seed of origin for the first crucial factors - psychological safety and an environment of vulnerability. 

Having greater impact through team building activities

When it comes to team building activities, the main objective is to ensure there’s purpose in what you’re doing.

Our specialist coaches perform as an extension of your team, and use researched, evidenced-based techniques to help create your own high-performing teams.

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