Three Essential Outcomes of Any Team Building Activity
In any company today there are talks and plans being made to host a team building activity or weekend retreat in order to improve overall team performance. Team building games have become an essential ingredient to any organizational success – no matter if it is a business, a religious organization, hospital staff or school. Team building can be directly attributed to more than half of an organization’s continued success.
How?
The answer is both short and long. Simply put, a team building activity has several outcomes that create a highly effective, highly developed, team that can tackle problems, think innovatively, and communicate with ease. The more complex answer is found within the three essential outcomes that any team building activity must have.
Read more on how to plan a team building activity.
There are thousands of different games, events, tasks and challenges that can be placed under the moniker of ‘team building’. However, in order to truly be a team building asset there must be some essential outcomes; outcomes that are measurable, can be tracked, and can be built upon.
Team Building Activity Results
Holding a team building event is a lot of fun for everyone involved. The games can get crazy, people leave the event with memories, and hopefully new skills are learned. But, what skills? What are the desired outcomes of a team building activity?
Emerging Leadership Skills – The backbone of any organization is those who lead. Leadership guru John Maxwell wrote;
“The single biggest way to impact an organization is to focus on leadership development. There is almost no limit to the potential of an organization that recruits good people, raises them up as leaders and continually develops them.”
Team building activities and events are a tremendous breeding ground for strong leaders and grooming emerging leaders. A team building activity should always result in improved leadership ideas and skills.
Innovative Thinking – You really have to appreciated a mind like Albert Einstein’s. He once said, “We cannot solve a problem by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” In essence, that is another outcome, or result, of a team building activity or game. There should be some work that goes into the game or challenge which leads to opening doors to innovative thinking. Coming up with new ideas is essential to continued success in a volatile economic world.
Interpersonal Communication – Communication is something that should never be taken lightly. And, it should always be worked on. People who communicate better, have better relationships and trust implicitly are going to be people who continue to meet every trial and succeed through it. Any organization that has a focused approach to building strong interpersonal communications will always rise to the top.
Build your company today through the results of team building. As you incorporate a team building activity into a work week, or host a full weekend of team games, measure the results of leadership, innovative thinking and communications to see if any improvement has been made.