Teamwork, how many times have you heard about how beneficial that can be? We hear that we should be ‘part of a team’, we should be a ‘team player’, and that we need to be ‘all about the team’. Why? Because there are major benefits to be had from working as part of a team, not only for the business, but for the employee too.
We’re all human beings, and part of being human is a pre-programmed need to be a part of something, to feel like we belong. When we’re within that space, we work better, we immerse ourselves into everything much more, we develop close relationships, and we generally feel much happier and more productive as a result.
If you’ve been looking at your office lately and wondering whether you could benefit from a greater sense of teamwork, then this guide is for you. We’re going to give you all the information you need on how to build teams within your workplace. You don’t have to have just one team; you can have several, all focusing on different areas, perhaps rotating from team to team on a rota. It doesn’t matter how you arrange it, as long as it works for your business and for your staff.
Of course, there are challenges to changing the way you work, and the biggest challenge can be getting your employees on board with change. If you have older employees, and sometimes with younger ones too, they can often find changes to be hard to cope with, and you may come up against a small amount of resistance. The key to overcoming that is communication and helping them see how team building and working together as a team overall can be a major step forwards for everyone.
So, enough of the procrastination, let’s get into the nitty gritty of team building, starting with what it actually is.
What is Team Building?
Team building is the process of taking a group of individual members of staff, and turning them into a well-oiled machine, e.g. a team who work together, and pull in the same direction, in order to meet a common aim. Team building is the total opposite of individual working practices, and instead, it is about collaboration, communication, and idea sharing.
You’ve probably heard the old ‘there’s no ‘I’ in team’ saying, and that’s really a truth. In the workplace, you may find it hard to bring together strong personalities, but putting in place a real team ethos will help everyone achieve together. Nobody is more important than anyone else is, nobody has more kudos than another member of staff does, and hopefully, everyone pulls their weight in equal amounts.
Therefore, team building is the process of putting all of this together. Once you have established teams, the process doesn’t stop, as you need to constantly reevaluate the team’s goals, look at progress, sort out any issues or personality problems (there’s bound to be a few along the way on occasion), as well as looking at budget issues from a managerial point of view. Team building involves activities, communication encouragement, and delegation of tasks within the team, working towards the common aim.
It really doesn’t matter how you put that team together, because we know that every individual within your workplace is different, and you need to make your teams as individual as they are, but there are some ideas and activities you can use to help smooth the waters from individual working, to team working.
Types of Team Building Activities in The Workplace
It’s important to remember that every team is going to be different, and depending upon the types of personalities you group together within that team, really depends on the types of activities they will respond to best. If your team is made up of very strong personalities, with plenty of extroverts, you should focus you activities on expression, communication, listening to others, and making them fun and as outgoing as your staff. If on the other hand your team is made up of quieter workers, those who listen well and communicate in a more low-key way, you should focus your team building efforts towards trust, expression once more, yet more communication, but perhaps tailor your activities to be less ‘out there’, and more suited to an introverted type of person.
Knowing your employees and tailoring activities towards their personality is key. This is called personality-based team building. There are a few other activity types, namely activity-based team building, skills-based team building, and problem solving-based team building. You can really guess what each is about from their name, e.g. activity-based is more about challenges, which are outdoors, activities like climbing, and creating trust bonds. Skills is more about workshops to help team members communicate better, perhaps problem solving and conflict resolution. Problem solving is a mixture of everything, and can be done through outdoor activities, like the activity-based model, but is more about learning how to solve problems together as a team.
There are countless examples of exercises you can try in your team building endeavors, but let’s check out just a few, to give you an idea of the sorts of things you can use.
• Truths Versus Lies - This is a great icebreaker and can help your team members to get to know each other much better. Basically, sit everyone down at random office desks, and each team member takes a piece of paper and they write down two things about themselves which are true, and one which isn’t. It’s up to the others to figure out which is the mistruth, by asking questions, having an open communication and finding out new things about each other as a result.
• Replication Rebuilding Together - This game involves splitting employees into small groups of four and allowing them to recreate a puzzle. You will have ideally already built a structure of some sort out of building blocks, and placed it in the middle of the room. Each team needs to identify one member to go and have a good look at the structure, memorise it, and then go and report back to the rest of the team. They then need to rebuild it together. The team, who get it closest, wins! The reasoning behind this is to build problem solving, communication, and trust.
• Creating The Winning Team Member - In order to help teams identify the skills and traits, which work, together to create the ultimate team member, the team is broken up into smaller groups and they are given a pen and paper. They should brainstorm down and write the skills and personality traits they come up with, and then at the end, everyone joins together to present their findings. A large team discussion as a whole then ensues. This teaches team awareness and helps to build communication. Remember to use office partitions or screens, to help conversations flow without overhearing someone else’s chat.
• Create a Tower - This exercise might sound simple, but it’s super effective for building problem-solving skills as a team. Every person is given just one sheet of paper and they are told to build the largest structure (height wise) they can, using just that sheet of paper. After five minutes, everyone has to present his or her findings, and a discussion can the place over what could have been done better, planning, etc. Do this within a comfortable and low-key setting, e.g. using comfortable office chairs and perhaps bench desks, to ease collaboration and make the exercise more comfortable overall.
• Plan a Trip - Give everyone a map, a pen, and a paper, and split your teams up into smaller groups of four or five. Make sure everyone is placed comfortably and within easy reach for collaboration, using modular office furniture, perhaps. Every group has to plan a journey from one point to another, within a specific space of time, e.g. the journey can’t take more than four hours. They then need to plan the rest of the holiday, e.g. activities, and it all has to be within a budget, as well as returning home. Give everyone an hour or so. This group collaboration and planning will help to build communication, problem solving, and planning skills.
• Awkward Eye Contact - Everyone hates making eye contact, but the fact is that if you can do it, you’re building up trust and a deeper relationship. Group everyone into pairs and get them to stand opposite each other. They then need to look into the other one’s eyes, without breaking contact for 30 seconds, and then for one minute. It’s likely to be a giggle-fest at some point, but it will certainly help to build that team bond and trust. If you can do this activity in a comfortable place, e.g. sat on an office sofa, for example, you’ll find it pans out much more easily!
These are just a few ideas of team building exercises, but it really gives you the general gist of the types of things you can do. You don’t need huge team building days out, you don’t need to take your team to the nearest outdoor adventure centre and have them skydiving with each other, there are many simpler, yet still very effective exercises you can do, right there in the office. Of course, getting your staff out of the office and somewhere they can do outdoor team bonding is a good idea too. You don’t have to go down the skydiving route, but how about indoor rock climbing? If you wanted to go social with it, you could arrange for a team lunch outdoors afterwards, just to break the ice and bring everyone together.
The reason many people opt for outdoor activities is because of the natural aspect of being surrounded by fresh air. This boosts concentration and helps lift mood, which is ideal if you have a number of introverts within your organisation. This is a more encouraging and freeing environment, compared to being in an office with a huge, imposing conference table, or a lunchroom, surrounded by canteen furniture! Of course, it’s also more fun to get out of the office on occasion! Agreed?
As we said before, get to know the individual personalities within your office space, and tailor your activities to their particular types. Don’t push a shy person past their limits, but instead, gently encourage them. Don’t expect a loud, extroverted person to deal well with an academic, quiet activity, and instead, think of something, which can utilise that character, whilst building the team’s ethos, skills, and trust at the same time.
The Benefits of Team Building
There are many huge benefits to putting together teams within your working environment. Of course you could opt for one team, you could opt for two, or even three, it’s really about what works for you. Be careful not to encourage or allow a sense of competition to develop. Whilst a little healthy rivalry could be a good way to motivate teams, having a fierce competitive edge could actually work to drive wedges between staff members who have a tendency to become too competitive on occasion. If you want to rotate your teams around at any point in the future, or perhaps someone is off sick and you need someone else from another team to step in, you might have personality clashes to deal with due to that competition. Instead, keep it all-neutral, and keep the entire workplace lined up with the final aim - to please the customer and make a profit!
So, we keep talking about why you need to get on board with team building, but why exactly? What are those benefits we keep mentioning?
The aim of team building is to bring a greater sense of motivation to the workplace, and as a result, increase productivity. Of course, we know that increased productivity means greater profits and a greater edge over the competition. You’re also aiming to create a more pleasant work environment for your staff too. Working within a team is much more enjoyable than working alone overall, and that means that staff are going to want to come to work, they’re going to want to get that project done, because they don’t want to let other team members down, and they’re going to feel a ‘one for all, and all for one’ feeling every time they come to work. That’s the aim, anyway. Happier employees are more productivity employees, every single time.
Team building can:
• Improve morale within the workplace and create a more upbeat environment
• Help to build leadership skills, as well as giving communication skills a major boost
• Allow team members to develop problem solving skills and helps them learn how to work with others, when perhaps they haven’t done so quite so closely before
• Knock down creative barriers, and help problems be solved in more creative ways
• Help to define aims much more clearly, and gives the team an overall objective. This reduces confusion and gives everyone a clear goal to work towards
• Increase productivity in a big way, which has a direct affect on profits, and can edge out the competition
• Help individuals to understand their strengths and weaknesses, so they can learn to develop them, with the help and encouragement of the other team members
• Help tap into potential which team members perhaps didn’t know they had
• Help team members push past their own limitations and knock down barriers
• Create a ‘one for all, and all for one’ team ethos, which helps to make the workplace a lighter environment, but also ensures that the common aim is much more likely to be achieved
There’s not a lot of downsides in that! Of course, everything in life does have a potential upset and for the sake of completeness, and because we need to keep everything balanced, we also need to talk about some of the potential drawbacks to team building too. Let’s explore.
Potential Drawbacks to Team Building
Every single drawback we’re going to talk about can be overcome, so it’s really about how you effectively put together your team, the people you gel together, and the ways in which you run the team on a day-to-day basis. We’ll cover some of that in a later section, but for now, let’s talk about the potential downsides you might encounter when building teams.
• Decisions can be harder to reach - it makes sense than when there are more people involved, a decision can be more time consuming to come to. You can overcome this by having a dedicated team leader who makes the final say, based on majority votes
• Not everyone is going to work equally - you may encounter a situation where certain team members do more work than others may. Some people have a tendency to let the other people do the work, which can cause disharmony. Keeping an eye on how things are going and spotting things early can help calm the waters
• Whenever you pull people together, there may be conflicts - people are people, and that means not everyone is going to get along. Conflicts are commonplace in any work environment, but they can cause issues within teams. Helping team members to develop their communication skills and conflict resolution skills can help with this
• Not everyone is designed to work within a team - some people just work better on their own, and sometimes you can’t change that. If that is the case, you need to assess how best to integrate this type of person, or perhaps give them a more independent type of role. You may also find that older members of staff, or certain personality types, may have a certain amount of resistance to team building at the start. The way you sell the idea is the key to unlocking this issue
• If issues occur, sometimes team members may blame each other and cause conflict. Again, how you put the team together in the first place, help make the bond and develop conflict resolution skills, will help with this potential issue
We’ve talked about the potential issues, which can occur, with team building, and it’s not likely that you will never experience at least one. On the positive side, we have talked about how you can minimise the problem or solve it, so it just goes to show that there isn’t an issue that can’t be solved when it comes to bringing together employees into teams.
Theories and Studies Behind Team Building
Here at Calibre, we are all about team working, and we’re not the only ones; some big named companies also share our vision, including social media giants like Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Buffer. All across the country, you will see examples of team working, and whilst it might not be as apparent as it is in some of the companies we’ve just mentioned, the subtle nuances bring major benefits to the company as a whole.
You don’t have to simply take our word for it, as there are several studies and theories into why team building and team working as a whole, is super effective. Belbin’s Theory of Team Roles is perhaps the most famous and therefore the one to focus on.
This theory basically surrounds the idea that in order for a team to be effective and highly functioning, there should be a certain number of people, who all make up the team by having different personality-based roles. For instance, the theory identifies that a team should have the following:
• Resource Investigator - Someone who is curious and always looking for ideas
• Ultimate Team-worker - The glue behind the team, helps to hold everything together
• Co-coordinator - The one who focuses on the objectives of the team and delegates work fairly
• Plant - Someone who is imaginative and creative, and comes up with unique ways to solve problems
• Monitor Evaluator - The logical one, the one who makes judgements which are impartial and based on what they see
• Specialist - The one who has a specific in-depth area of expertise, pertaining to the team’s aim as a whole; this isn’t a lot this person doesn’t know!
• Shaper - The motivator, the one who keeps the team moving in the right direction, keeping everyone focused
• Implementer - Someone who is able to plan work in a realistic and efficient way
• Completer Finisher - The one who can polish up the end result and check for any mistakes
It doesn’t mean that you need one person with each of these roles; it could be that one person covers three or even more, but these are the attributes you need within a team, in order to create the best blend, and the most successful team outcome. When looking to put together your teams, be on the lookout for these specific roles, and identify the people who can take them on, based on their natural skills and personality traits.
How to Help a Team Run Effectively
We’ve talked about how to build a team, but once you’ve put it together, how can you help the waters run smoothly, without it turning into a churning maelstrom of clashing personalities? It’s all in the planning in many ways, and if you covered the above study, the Belbin’s Theory, then you’ll have the basics already in place. On a day-to-day basis however, it’s all about providing support and being there to help with any issues.
For instance, if you see that there is a conflict brewing, it’s important not to jump in and sort things out right there and then. In order for your team to grow, and for your members of staff to develop closer working relationships, you need to let them overcome their own issues to a degree. Of course, if it starts to become a real problem and it is beginning to affect productivity, then you need to have a talk with those involved, but on the whole, oversee without stepping in first.
The following pointers should help you oversee your teams working as one cohesive unit, all pulling in the right direction:
• Have regular team meetings, to ensure that the team is pulling in the right direction and that objectives are clear. Have these meetings somewhere casual and comfortable, to avoid a strict feel. Reception office furniture is ideal for creating this chilled out atmosphere, so consider this in your team meeting room
• Allow team members to resolve their own personality clash issues to a degree, and only step in when you see major problems or productivity issues
• Have regular team bonding exercise time, e.g. once per month for half a day or so, when you use some the exercises we mentioned above, plus a few others, to keep everyone bonded and on the right road
• Provide support to employees who are perhaps a little adverse to changing roles into teams at first, and help them with their transition. Changing from one way of working to another, e.g. home working to activity-based working, team working to anything else, can sometimes take a little time in terms of everyone becoming ‘on board’ with the idea
• Be a sounding board for any problems, and ensure that everyone knows you are there to help if need be, but that you are impartial - it’s all about resolving things within the team if at all possible
• Reward your teams as a whole - if they have major success on a project, reward everyone in the same way, without identifying anyone as having worked harder than someone else, or contributed more
• Provide methods for your teams to work comfortably and effectively, by how you plan out the office space. Ensure you have comfortable furniture, from the canteen, to the reception seating, the reception desk, to the office as a general whole. Make it comfortable and functional. If you need help in that regard, check out our office furniture in London choices
• Make everything as interactive as possible, allowing collaboration when team members are perhaps working away from the office, or to facilitate video calling. Making things as easy as possible on a day to day basis, will help the team run much more smoothly
It’s not really rocket science on a day-to-day basis, and provided you put together your teams in the best way at the start, you shouldn’t notice much in the way of managing to be done, other than regular supervisory tasks.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
We’ve covered a lot of ground, but by now, you should be completely sold on the idea of team building. To make everything clearer, let’s check out some frequently asked questions, the points you should be taking away from this chat.
What is Team Building?
Team building is the process of pulling together a series of individual members of staff, and forming a cohesive, forward thinking team, all working together towards a common aim.
What Advantage is There to my Business?
Productivity, increased morale, and happier staff! All of this is a major boost for business, and there are several other advantages besides. Team working creates a happier environment for staff to work in, and it also ensures that productivity is as high as it can possibly be.
What if Team Members Don’t Get Along?
There are going to be occasional personality clashes, but by teaming together people who complement each other, and ensuring that regular team bonding exercises are scheduled in, you can help to calm the waters. You can also learn more about conflict resolution, just in case.
How Can I Integrate a New Team Member?
As a new member of staff joins the workplace, identify the best fit in terms of which team suits their personality. Then, have an induction period and regular team bonding exercises with the rest of the team. Ensuring they know the aims of the team is also vital.
How ‘Hands on’ Should I be With Team Management?
There should be a team leader within the team, and you should be there to oversee proceedings. Avoid getting too involved, but instead, keep a loose handle and step in only when you need to. This will help the team know that you trust them to get the job done.
To Sum it All up
Team building is a must for any business, whether new or old. The major benefits of team working should not be missed out on. Have you worked within a team in the past? How did it work for you? Have you actually put together a team? Share your pearls of wisdom with us!
Thanks for reading!