According to Helen Keller, “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much”, simple words but with a lot of weight. Team building is the process of bringing together every team member and turning them in a cohesive group. This would help them to work cooperatively and collaboratively to meet self, team and organization’s goals.
Teamwork has always been the center attention as far as employee-focused initiatives are concerned and its ability to bring in workplace happiness has been non-debatable. Various benefits can be derived from corporate team building activities as it involves games and tasks designed to build behavioral competency.
Corporate Team Building events are more fun, as compared to instructor led sessions. In any team building session the facilitator poses a challenge to the team to achieve a goal, without explaining how to do that. Participants must work together and communicate effectively as a team to reach out to a solution.
The learning happens with experience succeeded by reflection, discussion, analysis and evaluation of experience. Team building activities help the participants to discover their inner strengths and how to relate that to their workplace. It also allows them to learn soft skills required and in turn brings out their natural leadership style.
Team-building benefits including the following:
- Enables motivated and collaborative team members, as this is a move towards bringing individuals together
- Helps in quick problem solving and decision-making process as large number of heads contribute in it
- Assists in creativity and unconventional thinking as employees are moved away from their usual workplace, which refreshes them
- Enhances productivity by discovering and eliminating hindrances and improving current ways of working
- Boosts morale of employee, as they feel organization and co-workers are interested in knowing and developing them.
After completing team-building activities together, employees better understand each other’s strengths, weaknesses and interests.
Below are some interesting team-building activities for energized learning:
- Team building kits. This is an enticing game where you mix an escape room, a movie and team building together to bond fun with teamwork productivity. In a group of 3-5 members, teammates try to solve a case with the help of clues and documents. They need to work together and develop theories to solve the mystery. It eases coworker bonding while focusing on communication and trust.
- Scavenger hunt. This team-building activity never fall and motivates teams to connect creatively. Divide the group in two or three teams depending upon the number of participants. Make and provide them a list of items to find or do within a deadline. The first team which finishes it, wins. This activity can be made more fun by including riddles, twists, etc. to lead their way to final rounds. This activity is popular to promote teamwork and creativity.
- Who am I? Teamwork is often hindered by stereotypes. This activity will help to break groups’ preconceptions. Make name tags for different kinds of people like, “Go-Getter”, “Sincere”, “Cooperative”, etc. Place these tags on the back of the person so that they can’t see it, but others can. For a time, let the group mingle and ask each person to guess what their label is by the way other persons are behaving with them. As each team member figures out what they are, they can exit and let the rest continue with the game.
- Photo-shoot. This is a great activity to promote teamwork and task distribution, thereby mixing learning and fun together. Split the group into teams of 4-5 members, ensuring all the members have camera phones with them. Make up a list of objects/situations/ things/people that they need to capture as a team. Depending on the difficulty level, assign them different points for different things. Ask them to meet back after a specific time limit.
Try testing and find out the best activity that works out for you. The activity that you choose depends upon the number of participants, your purpose and preparation time. Combine fun-activity with learning to derive the best results.