It is a no-brainer that if you want your staff to be productive in the workplace, they must work as a team. Employees working as part of a team feel valued and it strengthens the bond between staff members. Activities that require team building are not only an integral part of the management practice; it builds self-esteem, respect, successful communication strategies and allows employees to feel their contribution matters. Employees who work as a team also have a lasting impression to business clients, resulting in good word of mouth and higher credibility.
As far back as the 1920s, Elton Mayo was looking into the relationship between human factors and productivity. In his classic Hawthorne studies of the 1930s he found that the most significant factor was a sense of group identity; the feeling of support and cohesion that came with increased worker interaction. In other words, productivity improved when people worked as a team.
Employers began to acknowledge the importance of team spirit, and looking for ways to create it. The activities that emerged to meet their need included everything from harsh, military-style boot camps to touchy-feely emotional bonding. Today, while the range of activities is wider than ever, professionals tend to steer a middle course. And, despite having no clear definition beyond ‘something that helps improve a team’s performance’, team building is now firmly established as an integral part of management practice. But is it really a worthwhile investment?
Rachael Seymour has no doubt that it is. As area leader at a regional Flight Centre, she organised for teams to climb Borneo’s Mount Kinabalu, hike on Cradle Mountain and kayak through the Whitsundays. She was so impressed with the outcome that the two businesses she founded, Cornerstone People Solutions and the Retail Leadership Academy, both incorporate team building activities into leadership, sales and service training.
“At Flight Centre I moved from managing a team of six to a group of 100,” she says. “My experience with small numbers taught me that a good, solid, united team can achieve anything they want to. It really is true that the power of a team is far greater than the sum of all of the individuals.”
Seymour used staff retention, total sales and profit to assess the effectiveness of team building over time. “When I took on the role of Area Leader, the staff turnover was 36 per cent. After two years, it was down 17 per cent,” she says. “I know now that people perform better and are more likely to stay if they feel valued and that their contribution matters.”
Kathy Angelidis runs boutique corporate hospitality and events company akEvents. Many of the events she organises include team-building activities, and she, too, was inspired by experiences on the other side of the fence. As sales and marketing manager for a multinational pharmaceutical company, she regularly participated in team building activities at both state sales meetings and national sales conferences.
“In my experience, a sales and marketing team typically consists of a diverse range of individuals, all working independently on a day to day basis,” she says. “It can be hard to feel as though you’re really part of a team, that you can rely on each other for support.”
Angelidis found that team-building activities gave each member an opportunity to demonstrate leadership skills as well as identify each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
“We also learned to respect all personality types, and this helped strengthen the bond between us, and enhanced our ability to work on specific team goals,” she says. “I always found it interesting to observe the different characters that evolved throughout the course and how we worked together to get the best out of each individual. It brought a strong feeling of teamwork and purpose to the group and gave us an invaluable insight as to how we could capitalise on our capabilities in the future.”
Bo Hansen Talks Team Building with Team8
Four times Olympian and triple Olympic medallist Bo Hanson has a rare insight into team dynamics; he was a member of the UTS Coxless Four. He founded his company Team8 to share the experience.
“Rowing is the ideal way to greater levels of trust as you learn about a team’s strengths and address its limitations,” he says. “It takes people out of their comfort zones in a safe but highly engaging way. The culture at the boathouse and in the rowing boat demands that successful communication strategies and a common language are created and shared. And, when you’re rowing in a boat together, you can physically feel the difference between being in and out of synch with each other.”
Hanson also understands the need for a measurable outcome.
“However great the activity, it needs to be combined with diagnostic tools and assessments which can measure the team’s starting point and then how far they’ve come,” he says. “That gives them a great sense of satisfaction. Improvement is a fundamental need for any individual or team and leads to feelings of personal esteem, accomplishment and morale. This brings greater staff engagement and improved ongoing performances.”
We tend to assume that team building will include some kind of physical challenge, but Wendy Mak provides a very different experience. A personal and corporate stylist, she began by specialising in wardrobe consultations and shopping trips for women. Now her biggest growth area is team building activities based around corporate dressing and grooming.
“There is a strong correlation between how employees dress, groom and present themselves and the perception clients have of a company,” she says. “A well-dressed and well-presented employee is the first and lasting impression your clients receive of you and your business. It garners more respect and makes business communication and negotiation more equal between you and your client.”
While generally skewed towards women, Mak’s style of team building is increasingly popular with men.
“We learn together, individually and as a team, how we can best present ourselves the business that we represent,” she says. “The learning around dressing, grooming and presentation helps to build confidence, and confidence is a benefit that stays with someone for a long time.”
When team building is on the horizon, it’s easy to focus entirely on which activity to choose. The excitement of the event can certainly be a great motivator but, if you’re looking for a meaningful return on your investment, it you might want to view it more as an important starting point than an end in itself.
Most committed professionals will encourage you to take the longer view. Hanson, for example, creates transfer activities designed to anchor the experience of a training day. These include providing each participant with an action plan for use when they’re back in the workplace. “We help them to create team goals,” he says. “Each member needs to fulfil an obligation to further both self development and the development of the team.”
Piet Croes, director of Halcyon Consultancy, factors two follow-up sessions into the cost of his programs. “The key to keeping a change process going is to put into the system,” he says. “People forget what they learned, and new people are coming in all the time. If it’s left to human motivation, the learning will be gone within six months.”
Consolidating change and incorporating learning and can also be sticking points for a company trying to go it alone. “A lot of the processes aren’t rocket science; they can easily be picked up, bastardised and duplicated, even learnt straight from a book,” says Croes. “It’s the qualified interpretation and experienced support of the process that make the difference between a fun activity and an effective training experience.”
Tips to Bring your Team Together
Define the need. What is the large, desired outcome? What do you want to improve? Eliminate? Change?
Recruit the right people. Find the talent that is willing to commit to your vision. Choose members who represent a wide range of backgrounds, skills and abilities, and a wide mix of cultural and professional viewpoints.
Shared values. Not only must team members embrace your mission, they must share your values. Effective teams demand close collaboration, trust, honesty, passion and genuine appreciation for each member’s contributions.
Develop common goals. Winning teams thrive in an environment where they can unite behind a common and compelling purpose, such as a cause everyone can understand, identify with and commit to.
Set ground rules. Make sure team members understand why the team exists and know the roles each member plays. They need to know how decisions will be made, how to deal with conflict, how to communicate and how results will be measured.
Communicate. Ensure that team members communicate openly and honestly, refrain from personal assaults and stay focused on the task.
Promote curiosity. Curiosity, and the search for new solutions, fuels every great group. Members are engaged in a process of discovery that serves as its own reward.
Keep score. A team must be committed to constant improvement, which means you have to measure performance.
Reward. Acknowledge individual achievement during group meetings and compliment the team as a whole on working well together. Highlight interim successes with mini-celebrations. People repeat performance that garners reward and recognition.
Back off. If you’ve implemented the above steps correctly, then get out of the way. Trust the team process, even if you think you know better. Nothing undermines a team faster than for their moves to be trumped.
All content (c) 2007 Kelly Services (Australia) Ltd. Reprinted with permission from the original article at www.smartmanager.com.au
