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 .

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.  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. 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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.