Team Building - 7 Steps to Success

"We're going to build a team." Replace the "team" with the word "house" the word - or any other name that can be built and it will take more than a few minutes - and people who want to adopt a more sensible approach structured.

The plans will be drawn up and approved. People will receive copies of the plan and we will work to ensure everyone understands. Progress will be monitored against the plan. Lessons will be learned along the path that will be used to improve the next step. Nothing less will bring the best to mediocrity and underachievement.

Why, then, team building so often treated in an ad hoc manner? Did not take into bricks and mortar, show them a good time and expect to reorganize themselves into something better just because they had a nice break. So why expect a group of people to do better?

The only answer to that question with any merit is that the bricks can not think and people can. That sounds like management by abdication. Or perhaps management by trusting to luck. It certainly does not look like a structured approach.

So if you take people out for some fun team building is not - what is it?

Traditional options for a day away, there are group training exercises - and that is different. Take a group quad-biking, paint-balling etc and will help participants to bond through shared experience. You can also justify the use of some of the training budget, if you will, arguing that helped them to develop as a team. Just do not believe it - or you will be disappointed to discover that, while the group is closer is no longer effective.

No - if you want to build a team rather than individuals closer tie, you need a structured process. You must decide before beginning the improvements that you want and can realistically expect to achieve the team. Then you can decide how long it will take to achieve these results.

Often, the fun remains a key objective for this session. If it's the only - or is only in combination with the desire to join the team to become closer - the organization of a group training session is the ideal solution. However, if your expectations are higher than that - then you need something more structured.

But what are the key features of a real team building session? I suggest the following 7 steps will lead to success:

1) Having defined session and long-term goals and know how the objectives of session leading to the longer term.

2) Use a base engaging and varied activities involving each participant in something that he or she enjoys doing.

3) Use an activity that allows you to get that commitment, although parallel to the real workplace and has relevance to the objectives of the session.

4) Select a task that requires the same kind of skill sets and team approaches are needed to work - albeit one that is removed from the work itself.

5) Consider using an independent facilitator (internal or external) - to allow all levels to participate as equals and to avoid the feeling of a "sermon from above."

6) Debriefing with a default process that highlights the similarities in the workplace and allows participants to pull their own learning, rather than being preached.

7) Use a tested mechanism to transfer the return to the workplace learning, ideally integrated into the debriefing process.

If none of them seem important, you're probably looking at a session of fun links. If this is a trip to the nearest bar (or far) or something that gives the group an experience that all members can enjoy not matter too much.

But if any of them seem important, then I would suggest that they all are. If one or more missing then the team building session will be compromised. And this is a word that sits well with mediocrity and underachievement.

Sandstone Limited ......