People Leadership | No. 4

Team Building

Team building is a powerful tool for a people leader to maintain good working relationships and improve the bonds within the team. Planning a team building for your people with a specific purpose and objective can bring your team to the next productivity level.

There are different kinds of team building, you could have team building being centered around activities, skill development, or the community. Despite what will be the central theme you will choose, all of them would have at their core building stronger bonds between your team member.

Knowing your people and the purpose you wish to achieve with this tool can help you determine what type or if a combination of types is more appropriate. Then you can decide if it is something you would like to plan solely on your own, or with support from professional companies that specialize in corporate team building events.

How to prepare a team-building event

As a leader is important to know the strengths and weaknesses of your team and how good is your team culture. Sometimes this might not be possible or easy for obvious reasons, such as being new in a leadership role, corporate restructuring, team members changing, and so on. No matter if you have been working for very long with your people or your team is new, team building is a tool that can help you understand and improve your team’s culture and bonds.

Prior to planning a team-building event, you need to define what will be it's objective and why you would like to have a team-building event for your team. Even high-performing teams need team building as strengthening the bonds between people can always be improved, however, it would be important to know which particular area you wish to direct this tool for your people.

Define the Objective

The list of purposes for a team-building could be long but here are some main objectives you could aim to achieve:

• Improve communication

• Increase motivation

• Build trust

• Establish team values and purpose

• Informal training

• Build companionship

• Introduce team members and share views

• Promote creativity and collaboration

Consider what is going well and which areas would be good to improve in your team and have that as the main objective. Having a clear objective will help you prepare and plan the event. Once the team building event arises share it with your people at the beginning of the event.

Planning the event

Once you know the purpose then you can decide which activities would support this purpose. The activities could be either related to work tasks or not, being intellectual or physical. For example, an activity for building companionship could be that the team members participate in a memory-sharing exercise of positive memories during work tasks. Others that could promote creativity and collaboration could be skill-based volunteering or a team cooking event.

When planning the day, consider a good blend of activities relevant and non-relevant to the workplace. It is important that you create a fun and relaxing environment but of course, you should still be able to see how this environment would enable you to meet your objective. Another aspect to consider is how much time you will spend outdoors versus indoors; this would mostly be depended on the type of the team building and also the time of the year, but it would be good to take some time outside even for a short while if you have planned a several hours indoor event.

Furthermore, we recommend preparing some small gifts for your people. It could be a team outfit (for example jacket, shirts, etc.) or objects with your team logo or of the same color. Wearing the same outfit on the team days even for a while would give a good sense of belonging to everyone and being part of a larger group.

Another aspect to consider during the planning is having involvement from executives. It would be a strong signal to your team if you do invite some of the senior management to attend your team building even for a short while. This could be having a one- or two-level senior people leader joining the team building, during lunchtime or for a short session if not for the total duration.

Lastly, once you have all the planning ready communicate and promote the event to your team. Do this as soon as possible in the weeks, or even months, beforehand so everyone can participate. As we described the format and the duration of a team-building event can vary, but overall see team building as something regular for your people.

Facilitating the event

In the team-building event, your work in facilitating and observing is crucial. When planning the event, you can consider having external professionals supporting you with facilitation, which would allow you more time to focus on observing your people.

At the beginning of the event communicate clearly the purpose and the event agenda so everyone understands why they are there and set the scene for a good event. If you have prepared some gifts for your team, you could distribute them at the start too.

While going through the different activities your role is to observe and capture areas for learning and improvement. Here you will be looking for behaviors linked to the goals and purpose of the team building. It is important that you make sure that you keep a good mood, encouraging people to lean in and avoiding complaining about work.

If you have activities that need to be done in groups you can try to group your team members in a way that can foster new relationships and dynamics that you usually have at the workplace. Try to notice overall how the energy and team culture is and how the different member behaves with each other throughout the activities.

Team building closing activities

At the end of the team building considering have a short debrief on how the overall event went. Ask the team how they found the agenda and how you have designed the overall day. Try to summarize what was learned and give the opportunity to reflect on the activities. This could be good feedback for you as a leader in planning the next activities. If there is some clear feedback that you have captured during the day from the team, inform them of your plan and your next actions in following up.

Close the day with a photo of you and your team. This is something simple and nice, that you can share later on and create some good new memory for your people.