For a small team one would not think that team building is of much significance neither would they be keen to spend money and time on that. But my view on this was challenged this week when the owner of a Business that has less than ten employees asked me to facilitate a staff capacity and team building retreat for the team. I gladly took it up with my focus biased towards capacity rather than team building. At the end of the retreat I asked the team to fill in an evaluation tool that had four questions, two of which were; ‘What stood out for you during this retreat? and, ‘What improvement would you want to see in the next retreat? For the former 80% of the team indicated team building activities is what stood out for them, mind you I was biased so the activities were few. For the latter an almost equal percentage indicated that they would want more team building activities and less of training in the next retreat, I was embarrassed. While I tackled other sessions during this retreat that were quite relevant and interesting, it turned out that these ‘fun’ activities that can pass for ‘time wasters’ is what the team appreciated most.It is no wonder that team building is one of the most widely used group-development activities in organizations and is said to have the strongest effect (versus financial measures) for improving organizational performance. With the time we spend with our employees, the benefits of investing time and money in teambuilding cannot be overemphasized. Some of the benefits of team building include; responsive and meaningful communication, facilitates collaborative and motivated work culture, identifies and develops strengths of the team members, creates self-awareness of one’s own strengths and weaknesses, helps in problem-solving and decision making, boosts morale and job appreciation, helps in creativity, innovation and out of the box thinking, enhances productivity and improves organizational performance.
You may consider one or more of the following approaches;
- Interpersonal-relations; This emphasizes increasing teamwork skills such as giving and receiving support, communication and sharing. Teams with fewer interpersonal conflicts generally function more effectively than others.
- Problem solving; This emphasizes identifying major problems within the team and working together to find solutions. This can have the added benefit of enhancing critical thinking & creativity
- Role clarification; This emphasizes improving team members’ understanding of their own and others’ respective roles and duties. It also emphasizes the members’ interdependence and the value of having each member focus on their own role in the team’s success.
- Setting Goals; This emphasizes the importance of setting clear objectives, individual, team and organizational goals. Team members become involved in action planning to identify ways to define success and failure and achieve goals.
I applaud my client who did not hesitate to invest time and money in building their ‘small team’; it was worth every minute and every penny. Isn’t it possibly time that you considered investing time and money in your valuable team regardless of how few/many they are?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”835″][vc_column_text]Mary Kamore is the Founder and Lead Consultant, M_OliveS Mentors[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
great