A team is a cluster of peoples working towards a familiar goal. ‘Team Building’ is the process of enabling that group of people to accomplish their goal. It is therefore a management issue, and the most effective form of team building is that undertaken as a form of management consultancy, rather than as pure training (though there is a role for training within a programme of team building).
The primary skill in this process are recognizing the right issues, and tackling them in an appropriate way. Team building can also take a different form depending on the size and nature of the team.
In a project environment, where team composition is continually changing, the emphasis must be on developing the skills in individuals to be effective team members. The ‘scale’ involved is 1 person, and the team building consultant is endeavoring to change the skills and abilities of the individual at operating within a team (or within multiple teams).
In teams where membership is static – typically in management teams – how the individuals within the team relate can have a big bearing on team performance. If a member leaves, or another joins, the dynamics of the team can be changed greatly. Here, the scale is small – say, 2 to about 12 – and the team building consultant endeavors to improve relationships between team members, using tools such as the MBTI and/or the MTR-i team roles.
A larger scale operates between teams. Where the teams do not relate well, they are called ‘team islands’, and it is the relationship between the teams that becomes the focus for the consultant.
The largest scale is that of organizational team building. With the exception of the senior management team, the ability of individuals to make an impact on the corporate culture is very limited. One of the key aims of the team building consultant is to change the behaviors and attitudes prevalent in the organization, which are almost independent of who actually works there – new recruits who are ‘different’ often start behaving in accord with the existing culture.
Team building is a process that develops cooperation and teamwork within a work unit. To constitute an effective team, its members must share a common goal, have respect for each other, and be motivated to use the strengths of each member to achieve their objectives. Current corporate philosophy stresses that each member of a team plays an integral part in the success of the company.
With understaffing, burnout, outsourcing, and other morale-defeating activities on the rise, many corporations realize they must nurture communication within the organization. In addition, many businesses form teams, or committees, for varying purposes; therefore individuals can be members of several teams. For an effective team, time should be established for getting acquainted and the exchange of ideas. From the employee’s point of view, being part of a team usually provides a sense of loyalty and ownership.
Through activities known as team building exercises, individuals can practice brainstorming, collaboration, creativity, trust, and feedback. Most team building activities focus on areas such as problem solving, organizational development, and conflict resolution. Participants can also develop leadership, interpersonal, presentation, and negotiation skills.
Team Building refers to a wide range of activities, presented to businesses, schools, sports teams, religious or nonprofit organizations designed for improving team performance. Team building is pursued via a variety of practices, and can range from simple bonding exercises to complex simulations and multi-day team building retreats designed to develop a team (including group assessment and group-dynamic games), usually falling somewhere in between. It generally sits within the theory and practice of organizational development, but can also be applied to sports teams, school groups, and other contexts. Team building is not to be confused with “team recreation” that consists of activities for teams that are strictly recreational. Teambuilding is an important factor in any environment, its focus is to specialize in bringing out the best in a team to ensure self development, positive communication, leadership skills and the ability to work closely together as a team to problem solve.
Work environments tend to focus on individuals and personal goals, with reward & recognition singling out the achievements of individual employees. “How to create effective teams is a challenge in every organization”Team building can also refer to the process of selecting or creating a team from scratch”.
Team building exercises consist of a variety of tasks designed to develop group members and their ability to work together effectively. There are many types of team building activities that range from kids games to games that involve novel complex tasks and are designed for specific needs. There are also more complex team building exercises that are composed of multiple exercises such as ropes courses, corporate drumming and exercises that last over several days. The purpose of team building exercises is to assist teams in becoming cohesive units of individuals that can effectively work together to complete tasks.
This type of team building exercise is exactly what it sounds like. Communications exercises are problem solving activities that are geared towards improving communication skills. The issues teams encounter in these exercises are solved by communicating effectively with each other.
Problem Solving/Decision making exercises focus specifically on groups working together to solve difficult problems or make complex decisions. These exercises are some of the most common as they appear to have the most direct link to what employers want their teams to be able to do.
These exercises focus on aspects of planning and being adaptable to change. These are important things for teams to be able to do when they are assigned complex tasks or decisions.
A trust exercise involves engaging team members in a way that will induce trust between them. They are sometimes difficult exercises to implement as there are varying degrees of trust between individuals and varying degrees of individual comfort trusting others in general.
Team interaction involves “soft” interpersonal skills including communication, negotiation, leadership, and motivation – in contrast to technical skills directly involved with the job at hand. Depending on the type of team building, the novel tasks can encourage or specifically teach interpersonal team skills to increase team performance.
Team building generally sits within the theory and practice of organizational development. The related field of team management refers to techniques, processes and tools for organizing and coordinating a team towards a common goal – as well as the inhibitors to teamwork and ways to remove, mitigate or overcome them.
Several well-known approaches to team management have come out of academic work.
In the organizational development context, a team may embark on a process of self-assessment to gauge its effectiveness and improve its performance. To assess itself, a team seeks feedback from group members to find out both its current strengths and weakness.
To improve its current performance, feedback from the team assessment can be used to identify gaps between the desired state and the current state, and to design a gap-closure strategy. Team development can be the greater term containing this assessment and improvement actions, or as a component of organizational development.
Another way is to allow for personality assessment amongst the team members, so that they will have a better understanding of their working style, as well as their fellow team mates.
A structured teambuilding plan is a good tool to implement team bonding and thus, team awareness. These may be introduced by companies that specialize in executing teambuilding sessions, or done internally by the human resource department.
A team-building consultant is responsible for each component of a team building intervention. He will likely interact with the team once, or for a limited number of times. During these first contacts, actively assessing the team, making recommendations, and providing activities (exercises that compose a team building intervention) for the team are the main responsibilities of the consultant. Moreover, usually a written proposal is required after the evaluation process, in which the trainer indicates how he or she would go about improving the team’s performance.
Once the organization and consultant determine which recommendations to utilize (if not all), the consultant is then responsible for providing a useful intervention that will transfer back into the organizational setting. This responsibility usually requires the consultant to create a detailed plan of events, while allowing for flexibility. After the intervention has been employed, the consultant will typically evaluate the team-building program and communicate the results to the organization.