Collaborative Activities vs Competitive Ones

Think back over all the team building sessions that you have attended over the years. There is a very good chance that at each and every one of them the facilitators organised your group into teams. Any that weren’t were probably small groups. Sound familiar? Why do they do that?

Are you focused on competition?

Well, one answer is to encourage maximum involvement from the participants. Small team sizes help ensure that everyone joins in. Quieter people will be less likely to fade into the background the smaller the team they are in. But that’s not the only – or even the main – reason.

Most team building events are run as competitions. Teams are usually given identical goals and are awarded points as they move towards them. Points mean prizes and the winning team members get to take them away. Why?

There are a few answers to that one:

• Competitive events are relatively straightforward to run
• Put a group of people into teams and it is easier to justify using the training budget
• Competition generates a buzz
• Many conferences are for sales people, who are naturally competitive

If all of these factors are relevant to your conference, then a competitive event is probably a good decision for you. However, two factors might make it a less good decision. Organisations are increasingly looking to arrange events for non-sales functions and many of these see competition as a bad thing. Secondly, senior managers often prefer to stress the “one big team” approach as important to a large department or the organisation as a whole. If either or both of these are relevant to your group, then a competitive event is not the best choice.

The opposite of a competitive event is a collaborative one. The whole group is given a common goal to work on together rather than multiple, identical ones to work on in isolation. They may still be organised into teams or not, but the key characteristic is that everyone is collaborating with everyone else to achieve something as a whole group.

Collaboration for all-round involvement

Options designed to be collaborative not only exist – they are among the most enjoyable conference or away day events for the participants themselves. They can deliver a superb mix of camaraderie, corporate message, learning and fun.

Isn’t that combination a great outcome from a team building event? Indeed, isn’t that an outcome that you want from your teams at work – day in, day out? Sure, you want your individual teams to aim to be the best – but not at the expense of the corporate goal or goals. You want the natural motivation that the best teams feel to be productive for the organisation – not detrimental to other teams and, thereby, detrimental to the organisation.

So what does a collaborative team building activity look like? I have written a number of other team building articles that describe the characteristics that you can expect to find in good options generally. Rather than duplicate them here, I shall concentrate on those elements that can focus on the collaborative aspect specifically. They are:

• There is a single, common goal that all individuals and / or teams have to work towards.
• There is a genuine possibility – indeed probability – of the group achieving it.
• Not all individuals and teams are doing the same thing – multiple, different functions is a feature of the workplace and needs to be a feature of a team activity if the learning is to be relevant.
• As at work, the participants need to exert some form of overall co-ordination to maintain the focus on the common goal.

So at your next team building event, don’t send your people away bragging about how they managed to outdo their colleagues – send them away thinking at least in part how well they worked with them. Then maybe back at work something might just rub off.

Team Building the ‘All Inclusive’ Way

More and more people are booking “all inclusive” holidays. These are the ones that have all meals and (usually locally produced) drinks included in the base price of the holiday. Providing the food is appetising and (for me) the beer is drinkable, they do just fine.

What’s new?

Flicking through a travel brochure the other day, I got to thinking what other commercially available offerings could be all inclusive. I decided that effective team building is certainly one.

“What’s new?” I hear you ask. “I’ve never had to pay for my drinks or food on a corporate away day.” Well, food and drink are not the only – or even most important – resources at an away day or conference. The people are.

So how does the term “all inclusive” apply to the team members themselves? It’s easy – think about it. They all need to be included in the activity. Sounds simple, yet I’d wager that most team building days don’t follow this simple piece of advice.

What does the term “team building” bring to mind for you? Whether they enjoy them or not, most people think of quad-biking, abseiling, orienteering or some other outdoor activity. These are activities that appeal to a certain type of person but not all. As and when a manager chooses such an option, he or she is probably forcing some members of the team to go against their wishes – or feign illness on the day. Those diligent enough not to “pull a sickie” are more likely to dislike – and perhaps even hate – every minute of the day.

So what is the answer? Select an option that meets the lowest common denominator? Choose a tea party with charades? No – this has exactly the same problem at the other end of the scale. The more extrovert, adrenaline junkies will savour this kind of activity every bit as much as their less physically-inclined colleagues would enjoy jumping off a cliff.

Does this mean that team building days are doomed to mediocrity? Selecting something that offends the least rather than inspires the most?

Ditch mediocrity and get tangible results

No. You can choose an “all inclusive” option. And these tend to have more parallels back in the workplace as well, making real team development more likely.

An all inclusive activity is one that has a core challenge or task that is ongoing throughout the session. This core challenge will contain the overall goal of the group, or teams within the group if it is a competitive activity. It will be something that everyone can either do or play a part in. Ideally it will also be something that people will most likely enjoy, although it is not essential that everyone does enjoy it.

Parallel to the main challenge should be ancillary challenges that are optional and wide-ranging. These tasks should make sense within the overall context of the main challenge. That is, people will not wonder what relevance they have to meeting their overall goal or feel that the link is unrealistically tenuous.

Chosen well, these discrete yet integrated challenges are what make a team building session all inclusive. Include some that will appeal to those who like a physical challenge and the adrenaline junkies will be happy and involved. Include some construction tasks and the engineering-inclined will be ecstatic. Include some more cerebral tasks and those who enjoy using their grey matter will be in their element.

Make each of these ancillary challenges optional and people can choose their own idea of fun for the day and genuinely contribute to their team’s achievement. Everyone will leave happy and the opportunity is there to highlight the similarities to the workplace and identify real team improvements.

The best teams have people within them with a mix of interests and skill sets. Their effectiveness is determined by how these different skills are used within a team context to maximise the outputs of the team. Different people using different skills in parallel. An all inclusive team building session is simply one that mirrors real life.

Making the Whole Greater than the Sum of the Parts

When was the last time that you heard the phrase "variety is the spice of life"? In what context was it used? Was it applied to experiences? Well – it can be. Was it applied to teams? Well – it should be! And variety in team building can help add that spice.

Dare to be different

My definition of a team is one in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Otherwise, it is just a collection of individuals. I find it impossible to imagine how my definition can be achieved if the team is comprised of clones of a single individual – no matter how good that individual is. Making the whole greater than the sum of the parts is about exploiting the differences between people, not the similarities.

Yet all too often, the differences become weaknesses instead of the strengths they should be. What is the key symptom of this? Unproductive conflict within the team. What is the usual remedy for this? Those in conflict keep apart – either on their own initiative or because they management steps in and enforces the distance.

I see this as a waste. Difference is good. It leads to more options, better decisions and higher performance. If it can be channelled. The hard part is in recognising the value. Without seeing the potential, what’s left are problems.

Why are even fundamental differences between individuals in the same team collectively a positive characteristic? Let’s take an example.

Suppose Sam is an energetic "up and at ‘em" kind of character. Sam likes new things, enjoys a challenge and is naturally extrovert. Sam doesn’t care much for detail and always wants things done now. A colleague, Pat, is a much quieter and infinitely more diligent individual. Pat believes that there is a place for everything and everything should be in its place. Attention to detail is amongst Pat’s greatest strengths and Pat doesn’t like to start something without all the resources necessary to complete it being at hand.

Sam thinks Pat is too slow and far too pedantic. Pat thinks Sam is slapdash and a show off. They don’t much like one another. Their relationship is a source of tension in the team.

Difference pays dividends and brings rewards

Enter Sam and Pat’s manager. What does he or she do? Option one is to keep them apart. Put them on different projects if possible. Move them to opposite sides of the department, maybe. And never, ever feed them after midnight. With luck, the disruption to the team’s achievements will be kept to a minimum. Option two is a harder decision for the manager – but isn’t that what he or she is paid for? While their natures provide all the ingredients necessary for gunpowder in the right proportions, Sam and Pat actually have highly complementary skill sets. If the manager wants something done well when time is not of the essence, Pat will surely get the job. If it is new or needs to be done quickly, Sam will be first choice.

Of course, what usually happens is that the manager needs it done both quickly and well. A mix of the two is what is needed. Combine Sam’s natural ability to rise to a challenge quickly with Pat’s diligence and attention to detail and the ideal combination is available. If Sam and Pat can be helped to appreciate one another’s strengths and work with one another effectively.

That’s what we call team building. A manager may choose to blend team members into a genuinely effective team in a number of ways and real team building doesn’t have to be done during an away day session. However, such a session is a great way of tackling such issues in a less emotive and independent environment and well worth considering.

Carefully choosing activities that require people with diametrically opposed personalities to work together using all their strengths to good effect. Creating that safe environment to explore the benefits of such collaboration and using a structured debriefing process to ensure that the learning points get documented – and get transferred back to the workplace. That really is team building.

Variety may or may not be the spice of life. But it surely is the basis for improved team performance.

What can Team Building Achieve?

“Complete waste of time”. “Just like the last time”. “We never seem to learn from these”. Sound familiar? Someone is talking about a team building session. Or are they?

Genuine value team building

I’d argue not. I’d argue that they are comments commonly heard after a team bonding session. A proper team building session is one that focuses on real development. It delivers something of genuine value back in the workplace. As well as fun.

The difference between the two is immense and yet people all too often think that they are the same. Indeed, most commonly, people set about organising team bonding days without realising that they are missing a really important trick. Team bonding brings people closer together but only deliver improvements in team effectiveness by luck. They usually focus on fun (always important!) but without a commensurate emphasis on team development.

So – team development requires a true team building session rather than just a team bonding one. Which begs the question – what can be done to genuinely improve a team in a session that only lasts a short time? Perhaps as long as two days, more commonly just the one day – or even less?

How do you get there?

What are the steps to focusing on the M in ACME to deliver real team improvements from a session?

1. Choose an exercise that requires the same team approaches that your team need in the workplace – albeit something sufficiently far removed from the day-to-day work that people can enjoy it.
2. Use trained observers with an understanding of the issues that the team faces and a structured observation guide to help them pick up the key points to feed back to the team. Set a time – probably between 4 and 6 weeks away – when the plan will be reviewed and make it plain that the action points are expected to be delivered within that time.
3. During the debrief, ensure that the focus is on generating an action plan – one that is sufficiently detailed that everyone involved knows what they are going to do to implement it.
4. Also ensure that each action point is assigned to a named individual who is responsible for making it happen – even if he or she does not do it himself of herself.

Eliminate the negative

I argue that to be the best that it can be, a team needs 4 key elements – which happen to form the acronym ACME:

(A) – Ability
(C) – Commitment
(M) – Methods
(E) – Experience

If you look at these, a team building session can only realistically and significantly affect just the one of them. Let’s look at each.

People are born with their ability. A session that lasts a year isn’t going to increase a single person’s ability. So it can’t help this.

A good team building session will improve every participant’s commitment to the cause – but only for a limited period. If you think how long it takes when you get back from holiday until you forget that you’ve had one, you’ll understand what I mean. The real world will quickly dull the initial flush of enthusiasm that a good team day will instil in the group.

Skipping to the last one, a day spent for a team of say 30 people will add 30 “man days” of experience to what will be literally hundreds of “man years” experience – negligible at best.

When it comes to the third letter in our acronym, however, we’re in with a chance. We get to work with many organisations of all sizes in all sectors and industries and our most common reflection is that we see good people achieving things despite the way they go about them – rather than because of. We see people’s ability, commitment and experience papering over the cracks of their team methodology.

Follow this guidance for your next team building day and I’ll be surprised if you hear the comments this article started with at the end of it.

Team Building with a Large Group

Organising a team building session for, say, 25 people is relatively straight forward. You have enough people to be able to choose from a wide range of activities without having so many that logistics becomes a problem.

What factors affect your decision?

The majority of team building activities really start to creak once you hit 50 people and 60 is an absolute upper limit for probably at least 80% or more of the options. 40 people and one or two options start to drop out as the extra people can’t physically be accommodated at a specific venue or mean that a limited resource would need to be queued an unreasonable amount of time for.

So what if your group size is larger than this? For example, if you are organising a team building event for the entire sales force of a large organisation? Or even an entire company? What are the challenges involved and how can you pick something that delivers the outcomes you want without making a Sir Elton John party budget seem tiny by comparison?

The challenge

The challenges are probably twofold: space and logistics. Unless your team building event is being held in guaranteed sunny climes, you are going to need (even if only as a backup) something that can be run indoors. For many options, you’ll also need enough space to run it for that number of people in addition to the space that they’ll take up just by being there. So if you have, say, 300 people at the event, you could well need to book a venue with space for 900 just to add the extra space you need. Alternatively, you could select an activity that can be run at the tables they’ll be sat at anyway. There are very few good options that cope with large numbers of people, yet require little in the way of space or facilities. But they do exist.

Logistics as a problem increases exponentially with the size of the group. Most of the options that can handle large groups do so by using more people and/or equipment to increase the size of the bottlenecks. For example, if you choose to offer people something based on the TV show "Crystal Maze", the suppliers will bring in multiple copies of each of the challenges (and maybe even the crystal dome itself) and effectively run multiple concurrent smaller events. This can add to the cost considerably – and also feel like it isn’t really one activity.

Understand the problem and you’ll get the answer

If you have in mind definite objectives that include helping people appreciate that they are all part of a wider team, then you are best off with something that targets those objectives and has everybody working towards the same goal at the same time. You might, of course, still choose to create a competitive spirit by organising the group into teams and offering prizes to the best performing. However, it will be important to choose something that integrates with your key messages and makes people feel that they are part of the wider group and not independent of it.

Bold Solutions

Using technology as a base offers a great way of handling large groups within a single, integrated team building activity. Carefully chosen to meet the desired outcomes, technologically based activities don’t need to add large numbers of expensive people, large amounts of bulky equipment or multiple zeros at the end of the invoice amount. What they can add is a sense of fairness to all participants and teams and an extra dimension in terms of how believable the activity is. Some team building simulations really can "suck people in" to their scenarios and deliver amazing experiences.

Another option is to keep to a very simple activity that requires the whole group to work together to achieve it. Your choice, as always, should be based to a large degree around what you want to achieve, how long you are able to dedicate and – of course – your budget. Simple activities have the advantage that they are usually priced accordingly.

Whichever option you plump for, make sure that the activity providers have a track record in handling groups of a similar (or larger) size to your own. Hundreds of people all moaning about an activity is an experience well worth avoiding. On the other hand, there’s nothing like the buzz of a successful large group team building session!

Choosing the Right Activity

When a prospective new client calls us up and expresses an interest in team building, we ask a simple question – what do you want to achieve out of it? You might be surprised at how many people don’t have an answer. After a short pause, we might get a reply along the lines of "well, we want it to be fun…" and then it tails off again.

Figuring out what you need

If you don’t know what you want from a team building event, you shouldn’t be surprised if you don’t get it. Of course, you might get lucky and hit upon the right team building activity to deliver the outcomes you needed even if you didn’t realise that you wanted them at the time. You might win the lottery next week as well – but it is probably best not to plan for it though. Ahh – "plan". Now there’s an idea…

All good plans start with the desired end result. What is it that you are trying to achieve? Before you select a team building activity, you probably want to have two types of goal – session and longer term. The latter should help make it plain where the former sits in the development process. That is, a team building session needs to be happening for a reason and have a defined role in moving you towards what you are trying to achieve overall. The session goals should be measurable and understood by the team’s management, the team and the activity provider. That is, a team building session needs to achieve its part in the development process.

You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned the exercise itself yet. That’s because choosing it comes last on the checklist. Once you know what you want it to achieve, then you can set about finding the activity that best delivers against your criteria. Yet all too often people start with an idea of what they want to do rather than what they want to achieve.

Where Sandstone comes in

A surprisingly common opening comment to us is "In a previous job I went on a treasure hunt and I think it’d be good for my new team to do the same". When asked "why?", the answer is usually "well, it was fun". That’s fine if fun is the only thing that you are looking for, but it seems such a waste when it is possible to combine fun with something that also has a point to it. Something that improves the team rather than just placates it.

If we ask "would you like to bring the whole team closer together?" and the answer is affirmative, then an activity that is naturally competitive such as a treasure hunt strikes us as a bad idea. Similarly, taking people to naturally individual activities such as quad-biking or clay pigeon shooting isn’t the best way to illustrate how to make the team more effective.

So what are the key elements in selecting the right exercise? My experience suggests the following four components:

1. It should be relevant to the group. For example, if the team is office based, they will struggle to see the relevance of climbing mountains back in the workplace – as much as they might enjoy it.
2. It should require the same kind of skill sets and team approaches that are necessary for the group’s real work. For example, if you want a team to develop their decision-making skills to improve their effectiveness at work, it needs to have strong elements of decision-making within it.
3. It should be fully inclusive. That is, all team members need to be enthused by the activity. Exercises are sometime chosen by a clique within the team to their own preferences and this can actually split a team rather than build it if their idea of heaven is one or more colleagues’ vision of hell.
4. It should have a proven track record in delivering the kind of outcomes that you are looking to achieve. Or you need to trust the deliverer implicitly if it is a new activity.

Now that sounds like the makings of a plan.

From Fun Event to Genuine Team Improvements

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.

What did you learn? What has changed?

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

It’s 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. 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.

Successful debriefing

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.

7 Steps to Successful Team Building

"We are going to build a team". Replace the word "team" with the word "house" – or any other noun that can be built and will take more than just a few minutes – and most sensible people will want to adopt a structured approach. The same goes for successful team building.

Planning

Plans will be drawn up and approved. People will receive copies of the plan and efforts will be made to ensure everyone understands it. Progress will be monitored against the plan. Lessons will be learned along the way that will be used to improve the next phase. Anything less will lead at best to mediocrity and underachievement.

Team Building Shouldn’t Be Ad Hoc

Why is it that team building is so often treated in an ad hoc manner? You wouldn’t take bricks and mortar out, show them a good time and expect them to rearrange themselves into something better just because they had a nice break. So why expect a group of people to do any better?

The only answer to that question with any merit is that bricks can’t think and people can. Which sounds like management by abdication. Or perhaps management by trusting to luck. It certainly doesn’t sound like a structured approach.

More Than Just Fun

So if taking people off for some fun is not team building – what is it? Traditional away day options are team bonding exercises – and that is different. Take a group quad-biking, paint-balling etc and it will help bond the participants through a shared experience. You can even justify its use of some of the training budget if you like by claiming it has helped them develop as a team. Just don’t believe it – or you’ll be disappointed to discover that while the group is closer it is no more effective.

A Structured Process

No – if you want to build a team rather than just bond the individuals closer, you need a structured process. You need to decide before you start what improvements you want and can realistically expect the team to achieve. Next you can decide how long it will take to achieve those results. Often, fun remains a key objective for such a session. If it is the only one – or is only combined with a desire to get the team to become closer – organising a team bonding session is an ideal solution. If, however, your expectations are set higher than that – then you need something more structured.

Key Characteristics of Team Building

So what are the key characteristics of a genuine team building session? I suggest the following 7 steps will lead to team building success:

1. Have definite session and longer-term goals and know how the session goals lead to the longer term ones.
2. Use an engaging and varied base activity that involves each participant in something that he or she enjoys doing.
3. Use an activity that achieves that engagement while having genuine parallels to the workplace and has relevance with the session goals.
4. Select an activity that requires the same kind of skill sets and team approaches that are needed at work – albeit one that is removed from the work itself.
5. Consider using an independent (internal or external) facilitator – to allow all levels to join in as equals and to avoid it feeling like a "sermon from above".
6. Debrief using a predefined process that highlights the workplace parallels and allows the participants to extract their own learning rather than be preached to.
7. Use a proven mechanism to transfer the learning back to the workplace, ideally integrated within the debriefing process itself.

If none of these seem important, you are probably looking at a pure fun bonding session. Whether that is a trip to the nearest (or furthest!) bar or something that offers the group an experience that all of its members will enjoy doesn’t matter too much.

But if any of them do seem important, then I’d suggest that they all are. If one or more are missing then your team building session will be compromised. And that’s a word that sits well alongside mediocrity and underachievement.

Taking part in Corporate Team Building events encourages individuals to work together as a unit and will inspire them to listen, communicate, and share.

Why team build?

Each of your employees brings something unique to your organisation. Separately, although their individual skills and qualities achieve good results, pooling their talents and teaching them how to work together as a team encourages a sense of community, ultimately leading towards the benefits of a common goal: the advancement of the company.

Corporate team building enhances co-operation between individuals, building on their unique strengths and talents. Coupled with your company culture, the team building activity you choose should empower your team to work more effectively and productively.

How do we do it?

Our team building activities are designed to show team members that success comes from trusting and respecting each other. All team members must assure a place for openness in communications and an environment where everyone is willing to give space to others’ ideas and feedback. Our well designed and structured team building activities allow the development and recognition of all the essential ingredients of successful teams; and build in opportunities to discover what worked and what didn’t.

The Goal

Whatever your chosen activity, building co-operative team members is the goal. Team members will learn how to:

Listen

Careful listening requires conscious effort. If a person’s life depended on listening carefully to, and following the communicated instructions of a colleague, then paying close attention and listening to the communicator would become as natural as breathing.

Communicate

Working on the adage that anyone can be a teacher but not everyone can teach, a poor communicator creates misunderstanding, which leads to wrong decision-making – a sure-fire recipe for low morale and workplace conflict.

Share

Once everyone’s got the hang of listening and communicating effectively, the spirit of team building is to foster enough trust in each other to share knowledge. Knowledge is power but sharing knowledge is empowering.

Good collaborative team building activities are designed to encourage good collaborative practices and to aid creative team work in the pursuit of a common goal. Although these activities are “designed” this doesn’t mean that all the fun and rewards get taken out.

The right ingredients

Indeed, just as ultimately the ingredients of a successful product development and launch for example, come from solid team work, a good collaborative team building activity needs to be:

• Goal orientated
• Engaging
• High energy
• Challenging
• Fun
• Rewarding

We spend a lot of time figuring out how our collaborative activities will bring rewards for both company and individual. One size doesn’t fit all – we’ll ensure that whatever challenges you are facing, our team building activities will achieve the objectives you’re looking for.

How do we do it?

Sandstone team building activities are designed to show team members that success comes from trusting and respecting each other. For a team to succeed, all members must assure a place for openness in communications and an environment where everyone is willing to give space to others’ ideas and feedback. The well structured and designed team building activity will allow the development and recognition of all the essential ingredients of successful teams; and build in opportunities to discover what worked and what didn’t.

A team building day in itself can have a short term positive effect on morale and bonding within a group of individuals but it will remain short term if Leaders fail to establish and communicate the kind of team they are trying to build. A “sense of team” is a different animal to an effective team, focused on achieving a specific objective.

Go back to work with real results

It’s not unusual to hear participants report on their experience as having been a great team bonding experience but not contributing much to helping them achieve work goals.

There are so many activities out there – seminars, group retreats, events, meetings – billed as “team building”. To be effective, you should have a specific type of team in mind; without this, leaders and team members are quite possibly going to be disappointed.

What team building activity will work for you?

Without a doubt, a team building activity will always deliver but your contribution will make the difference between a short term feeling of euphoria and achievement and a much longer lasting bond of commitment, participation, and focus.

To help you make the decision, we’ll talk about expectations, context, the competencies required, and whether you have a committed team. It’s important to have communicated what you want from your team in terms of performance and results.

• Do your team feel supported by your executive managers?
• Do your team members even know why they’re on the “team”?
• Have you told them where they fit in?
• Do you know how their contribution will help accomplish the expected outcomes?
• Have you got a clear idea of the commitment of your chosen team members?
• Do they have some expected rewards – whether monetary or skills or both?

Making the decision together

Ask the Sandstone people about what team building activities will help you create or reinforce the team you want and need. Our experts will guide you through the entire process so you get the best team building experience possible. All over the UK, Sandstone have worked with top organisations, to create winning teams.

Our superb activities include Wild West, Liberation and Romanbar all designed to give individuals the skills they need to work together to accomplish successful outcomes. For more on our range of activities, visit the Team Building section.

Team building games tend to mean team bonding. Which is great if you just want a fun day out with no real lasting effect on the people taking part.

Working for Real Change

Change takes a concerted effort. Do you want a real change back at work?

Take the Challenge

You’ll need something unique and different from all other team building offerings and that’s why you would come to Sandstone. We’ll challenge you to look beyond the traditional games. There’s so much more to motivating and inspiring individuals and creating the perfect team. We offer more than just games; we offer you the chance to get real value out of a day spent working together and laughing together.

Complete Team Building Management for any team, anywhere

Team of 3? No problem. 3000 people? Again, no problem. Want to take your team to Africa? We’ll take your team building event anywhere in the UK or the world. Don’t have a team building venue? We’ll find one for you. Never worked with a team building company before? Don’t worry – we’ll work with you to make the venture a complete success!

Taking time out for whatever reason can often prove a catalyst for renewed energy within a group of individuals. Jaded by the everyday, it's possible for usually motivated and vigorous people to lose focus. The term "away day" can cover a huge number of activities, all designed to reinforce the bonds that keep a team effective and energised.

Helping You Get it Right

Tell us why you need an Away Day. At Sandstone, we'll help you determine what kind of activity will work for you. It might be that any one, or all, of our activities can be effective in encouraging your team members to work together. We'll also give you tips about what further work will consolidate the day's events when you find yourselves back at the workplace. It's what you might call "serious fun". It has a purpose and if you can drill into that learning experience the rewards could be without limit.

An Away Day can be a Great Team Builder

A team building event taking place under the title "Away Day" can just as easily be tied into your business strategies, or performance management processes. A little bit of thought and guidance about the best team building activity (or activities) for your team will deliver real benefits both on a personal and business level.

Find out more about Sandstone Team Away Days

Team building is about putting people into unfamiliar situations, and guiding them through challenges in an environment of support, creativity and open communication.

There are so many good reasons to hold an away day and popular activities like Wild West, Liberation and Romanbar are designed to challenge individuals so they develop the skills they need to work together to accomplish successful outcomes. Not sure what you need? We'll help you decide what activities will best address your particular needs so you get it right. It's important to us that you see measurable results from your Away Day; helping everyone on your team find out what makes both them, and their fellow workmates tick and breathe a new lease of life into all team members.

How does team building activity translate into the work environment? Like all good things, it certainly depends on the motivation of individuals. It’s a common theme – how do you take all the good, the excitement, the motivation of the corporate away day – back to the workplace?

The Day After…

What happens when everyone comes into work the day after the team building event?

Translating the fundamental principles of a team building event to the work process can be a good start. These principles say that team work needs to be:

• Collaborative – with all people sharing a common goal
• Engaging for everyone
• Focused – with specific goals and expected outcomes
• Full of energy with huge amounts of encouragement from within and outside the team
• Challenging for everyone
• Rewarding – for individuals
• Rewarding – for the team
• Rewarding – for the organisation

Figure out what went right on your corporate away day, and see if you can re-create that environment and those structures within your work teams. In our experience, just making sure one thing from the above list happens, is a sure fire way of getting things moving.

Let Sandstone take your Business Forward

Sandstone are the UK’s experts in pinpointing the exact needs of a team. We provide the perfect environment and tools to make your corporate away day the best and most enlightening experience. We know that team members must work in an environment of trust and respect for each other. Open communication is key, as is a willingness from all parties to value and respect each other’s contributions.

Let’s talk a little bit about the psychology of team building and collaboration between individuals and groups. Why is it that we’re always being told it’s an important part of the business? Does it mean anything? Surely as individuals in the workplace we can’t help but collaborate – nothing would ever get done otherwise.

Experts tell us that this is far from the case, and that even if we appear to be getting a job done in a collaborative fashion, scratch below the surface and you’ll often find that there are yawning chasms of dis-unity to be observed.

Where does this niggling dis-unity come from? Think back to the first time you experienced the feeling that “teamwork” wasn’t about individual reward. Remember the joint history project you worked on at 12 years old? How you produced all the words? Helped the kid who couldn’t draw to save his life make a reasonable set of maps of Alexander the Great’s conquests? and made sense of the chaos that was work distribution? And then…. everyone in the team got an A! How fair was that?! Your disgruntlement is probably as keenly felt today as it was then.

Welcome to the concept of teamwork. It’s great! But let’s look a little deeper. What appears to be individual endeavour, is not so clear cut as it seems. As a race, we seem determined to laud the individual and forget about the numerous contributions made by everyone working alongside that person. How do we allow individuals to thrive, whilst ensuring that everyone in the team creates and contributes value?

Well structured and meticulously thought out team building activities can show individuals how to survive and indeed, thrive, in the spirit of the “team”. Team building away days with Sandstone are specifically structured to show every team member how individual skills can contribute to a successful outcome. Allowing each other space to shine is key – one team building away day can be worth a hundred days paying lip service to the concept of teamwork; whilst ignoring the fact that it may not actually be happening.

An interesting title for a team building article. Why else would you want a team building activity? Well, while most of the interest that we get for our options is indeed for work-based teams, we do get a reasonable number of requests for other groups. These include school pupils, families (even very small ones) and various sporting and other clubs. Occasionally, we are delighted to say, we can offer something suitable for these kinds of groups, but our main focus is on helping work teams improve. So how?

The answer to that question is a simple one. Parallels. if you want your team to benefit back in the workplace from a team building day, you need what they do on that day to have obvious relevance to what it does day-to-day.

Yet few would relish the prospect of a team building day if it came with the sales line of “We’ll be doing just the same as we do every day at work”. So how does that particular circle get squared away?

We believe that there is a limit to what we can expect to achieve with any team – whatever the size – in a day or maybe two at most. In that kind of time, we can’t change your individuals into superheroes capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound. But we can have an equally dramatic impact at the team level.

Our experience is that often teams at work achieve things despite the way they go about them, rather than because of. What happens in such instances is that the individuals use their own strengths to over the deficiencies in the team approach. Teams are more than just a collection of individuals. Core to any team’s effectiveness are its methods. In other words, the way the individuals within the team interact and work together. So each of our activities give participants a great experience, totally different to what they do day-to-day yet they all require the same kind of team approaches that are needed at work for teams to be as effective as they can be. As different as running a town in the American Old West of the late 1800s and learning how to gold pan and fast draw is to most people’s daily working lives, the parallels of having deadlines to meet, getting individuals to work together effectively and harnessing different skillsets are strong and relevant.