Apart from eating and drinking, what else can we do in team building?
Six months ago, I was promoted to head of the department, hoping to enhance cohesion through team building. However, every time team-building is just a meal, but our team cohesion has not improved.
Answers ( 5 )
Try an escape room. Escape rooms are great for testing how well you are at managing resources, thinking under pressure, and working together as a team
Team-building activities are a headache for many managers. Anyway, I don't know when, every year, or even every quarter, leaders always have to bring team members to have dinner, chat, or sing songs.
What on earth is the purpose of our team building?
Let me first introduce to you that the purpose of team building must not be to eat, drink and be merry itself.
If you want to eat and drink, go directly to your good friends, why do you have to go with your colleagues who usually see you every day (even bored with them)?
What is the purpose of team building?
The term "cohesion" is a relatively big word, and I prefer to interpret it as "informal collaboration".
"Collaboration" is easy to understand. Work following the standard process SOP, the first step, Tom to do, the second step Jerry to do, this is "collaboration".
However, in the workplace, there happens to be a large number of collaborative work, there is no standard process SOP.
Teeth will inevitably bite the tongue. If people quarrel all day long over trivial matters in the workplace, putting on an air of business, then the team is likely to fall apart.
At this point, the "informal collaboration" outside the workflow will come into play.
Team members are familiar with each other's background, experience, hobbies, style of dealing with people and friends.
Then, in the workplace, in the face of some small bumps, we will be able to understand each other.
And usually, everyone is busy at work, and they don't even cooperate in the same city, so team building is a good place to get to know each other.
There is a need for "informal collaboration" not only between peers, but also between you and your subordinates.
Sometimes, in the workplace office scene, some words are difficult to say.
What everyone enters is the script of the superior and subordinate.
Team building is an excellent place to create a level communication scene for you.
Help you have the opportunity to say something "that you won't say in the workplace, but you want your subordinates to hear."
I remember that when I started my business, I encountered a severe setback, and I also had great differences and conflicts with my superior, CEO.
At a dinner party, CEO poured a glass of wine and clinked glasses with me.
"I was really in a hurry some time ago," he said. "this is my first time as a CEO. I hope you will forgive me."
His words touch me at once, and the previous contradictions were cleared up.
Our relationship has also changed from simple superiors and subordinates to entrepreneurial partners who share weal and woe.
This "informal collaboration", like an adhesive, binds scattered employees together.
From then on, the team is no longer a simple pile of bricks.
The usual team-building work is nothing more than eating, drinking, and singing. These methods are of course, effective, but the results are often slow.
If you want to enhance team cohesion through a team-building quickly, I recommend the "life map" method.
This is an excellent tool to enhance the understanding between superiors and subordinates and to "enhance informal collaboration".
I will take my subordinates to a quiet place, everyone will sit around, and then I will tell you:
Today we are going to play a game of "sharing the map of life" to understand each other better.
Each colleague, please draw a horizontal axis along the folded line on a horizontal piece of A4 paper.
From left to right represents the time from the past to the present.
Then write down the five most important things you have experienced in chronological order.
The things that bring you happiness write just above the horizontal axis.
Let oneself regret, sad things, put below the horizontal axis.
The farther away from the horizontal axis, the stronger your feelings.
Because this tool can quickly learn about other people's past, it is called "life map".
For some introverted colleagues, you can deliberately arrange for them to sit in the seats where they will speak later, so that some extroverted and expressive colleagues can speak first and stir up the atmosphere.
Generally speaking, superiors are the last to make a summary.
Each person's sharing time is about 15 minutes (so if you are a small team of about a dozen people, it will take you about three hours).
Prepare more snacks so that everyone can eat and chat, which can also relax the nervous mood.
When subordinates say, superiors can ask appropriate questions (such as "for things that makes you happy, why things A make you feel stronger than things B", etc.) This is also a great opportunity to help you understand the values of your subordinates.
Through this two-to three-hour-long talk, it can resolve the misunderstandings and hostility among team members well, and make subordinates realize that "our superior is first of all a flesh-and-blood person, and then our manager."
So in the future work, the chemical reaction between all of you is entirely different from that of "going to work is just my business."
I once had a respected boss who took us to play this game.
We always thought she was too serious. Why is she so strict? Why is she always finding fault with our work?
The atmosphere of the team was tense for a time.
However, in this sharing, she told us for the first time about a life-and-death car accident she had experienced: why she was so serious, even solemn, because she was lucky to have survived the disaster. So she vowed to cherish all the rest of her time and not to muddle through with things carelessly!
Did it make our whole team understand her attitude towards work and resolve the misunderstandings between them?
Of course, in addition to the relatively quiet team-building approach of "Life Map", I suggest you try some team sports to enhance the "informal collaboration" of the team.
Such as fun Games, Orienteering, real-life CS, Chamber of Secrets escape and so on.
The characteristics of these activities are,
first, team participation,
second, clear goals,
and third, competitiveness.
These three points are actually close to the real work!
You can cultivate team collaboration through informal activities, to guide people to migrate effectively in future work and bring this collaboration to formal work.
Finally, I have four tips for building team culture and enhancing team effectiveness:
First, when your team has achieved phased milestones, you must give the team timely feedback through some ceremonial activities (for example, asking team members to cut the cake, opening champagne, etc.)
In particular, some integer numbers have been reached (for example, the number of users has exceeded 20 million, the customer complaint rate has been reduced by 10%, and so on).
You can even bet with your team: for example, when achieve the goal of a challenge, you give everyone a big surprise; if they fail, the team accepts a little punishment, and so on.
In short, team-building work should not wait for a big one once a year, but should be carried out in small batches and multiple batches when there is an opportunity to build.
Second, the good news sharing mechanism.
In work, it is normal to encounter difficulties, but it isn't easy to achieve results.
If the subordinates are buried in working and everyone is usually complaining, the team's morale must be low.
Even if an individual has made achievements, he will be embarrassed to say; as a result, the subordinates will lose confidence in the future because they can only see difficulties and lose confidence in the future because they do not have a comprehensive view.
Superiors should encourage subordinates to share their achievements through fixed channels. It can be through a formal email, a regular monthly meeting, or a few words/pictures in the group.
In short, as a superior, you should create this atmosphere of sharing, so that subordinates who have really achieved results feel that "I make achievements is the right thing to do."
Third, involve the families of team members.
For example, some family activities days, parent-child games, "sending gifts to employees' families during holidays," and so on.
Let the parents of the employees, be proud of their children, and let the lovers of the employees know the warmth or hardship of their working environment.
In many companies with a good team culture, when employees leave, their families will be the first to object.
Fourth, finally, with regard to the division of labor in team building, I also have a suggestion for you.
Don't turn team building into a one-person show for leaders or HR, but fully mobilize everyone to participate.
In particular, some employees who are usually unknown may be folk experts with unique skills.
Allowing them to increase their exposure within the company can also effectively enhance their sense of existence and sense of belonging.
I have had the privilege of being a member of some truly inspiring teams, both of the athletic variety and of the technical/scientific variety, and in every case the "team spirit" came from a common purpose for which we came together in the first place. Trying to build cohesion through socialization is completely backwards: socialization is an outcome of the cohesion that exists because of that common purpose. If you are unsure why the team was assembled in the first place, then so are the rest of the team; and they will (and should) probably disband before they waste any more of each others' time.
Hello Hannie!
Congrats on your new position. In order to enhance cohesion in team-building try organizing meet-your-co-worker activities. Playing simple games, sharing thoughts about particular topics, and other participation-centered activites are great for building and enhancing cohesion in work spaces.
Straight up:
Team building exercises are the last bastion of inept Senior-level Management; the idea subordinates need "team building" indicates the Senior-level's abdication of actual responsibility for, knowledge of and participation in subordinate-levels' tasks.
Yeah, that's harsh, but I'm here to tell you, the idea subordinate levels needed this kind of make-believe training and intervention was invented after the 1980s when business- especially Big Business- was going through a particularly inventive period called "The Me Decade". Greed is Good. Buy 'Em Cheap. Sell 'Em High. We are downsizing- you are being downsized. Your department is superfluous to Corporate's plans.
Which gave rise to some very unhappy workers. (1)
So, the newest bright-eyed Business Grads, four-or-more-years of boredom punctuated by Statistics, were given the task of coming up with ways to keep underlings from inconveniently jumping ship: Corportations wanted loyal employees, but had decided loyalty towards employees just cut too much into the bottom line and shareholder values- and that was acceptable in business culture- it was a HUGE change from the most productive business economy in our country's history- but it sounded good to Big Business. Using pop-psychology and newly minted parenting startegies (!!), these geniuses came up with Team Building Exercises to demonstrate just how much Corporate cared while cutting costs and down-sizing to benefit the CEOs' Golden Parachute packages.
Here's the truth: If your subordinate employees need Team Building, it is likely a symptom of disrespect for those workers from the Corporate-level. Don't want to believe me? Ask those subordinates, instead of playing a mind-game and sipping wine, to anonymously provide Corporate with a list of ways Corporate can help them. You'll find little of it has to do with not trusting their peers to carry their load, but not trusting Corporate to have their backs.
And that, my Millenial (or whatever we're up to now) Business Grads, is the straight up bottom line.
But, the way riding in the bed of a pick-up truck is something no child will experience now, I am afraid Team Building (please imagine me holding something nasty between two fingers as far from my face as possible while saying the words "Team Building") is here for awhile. And mid-level managers have to participate in the lie. Which is why there are literally HUNDREDS of Team Building websites with ideas for how you can torture your subordinates into believing Corporate cares about them. They're all just a Google search away. (2)
And then you can have cake.
(1) "Unfortunately, in that process, American companies have also come to neglect the most important engine in the U.S. economy: The tens of millions of “average employees” whose work allows companies to create value for their shareholders–and whose spending powers most of the American economy." https://www.businessinsider.com.au/economy-companies-wages-2012-6
(2) To get you started: https://www.wrike.com/blog/team-building-games/ (I would call in or go home sick that day- I mean it)