Team building: boost your company’s success

At its most basic, team building means bringing different people or employees of a company together to form a working group. This may be a permanent team or one assembled for a single project. Teams usually consist of people with different skills and fields of work, often with different interpersonal skills too, so that they complement one another as well as possible.

Business success is built on teamwork

A company’s success rests not only on compelling products and services, but above all on the quality of its employees and on teams that work well together. Thoughtful, well-planned team building brings together a mix of knowledge and qualifications, allowing team members to complement one another and inspire each other. This means the team can tackle the various tasks involved in a project using its own expertise, without anyone having to step in from outside.

The benefits of teamwork are also one reason why many companies resist the trend towards increased home working. Team spirit and effective group work simply offer more opportunities to improve efficiency and productivity: communication is more direct and decisions can be made more quickly. Teams that work well together give each employee considerably more motivation and a stronger sense of connection with their company. It is hard to disagree, then, with the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who said more than 2000 years ago: “The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”

Team building and team development: a comprehensive process

Yet team building involves much more than simply choosing the people who make up a group. As a manager, you can of course pick, say, five of your employees and announce: “Right, you’re all Team ABC now, and your job is to make sure Project XYZ is completed successfully by such-and-such a date.” The employees’ professional qualifications may be enough. But mutual trust and the dynamics within the group are at least as important – perhaps even more important than each individual’s skills and knowledge.

Team building is a process that unfolds over time, partly on its own and in different phases. But it can also be actively guided to keep improving cohesion and collaboration. One way to do this is to review how the team is working together at regular intervals. Questions might include: What is going well? What is going badly? What could we do better? Which structures need improving? Specialist literature and relevant websites offer plenty of ideas and instructions for group exercises that reveal how team dynamics develop and work, bringing both positive and negative aspects to light.

The most important requirement for addressing problems and improving collaboration is open, trusting communication, both between individual team members and between the team and its manager. Training, coaching, feedback techniques and facilitated workshops are useful ways to develop skills and reshape structures. Team-building events are at least as important: occasions that involve the whole team but are not directly related to work.

Team events support team building in the long term

By now, probably every company open to modern management methods recognises that team events encourage and strengthen collaboration and communication within a group. There is an incredible range of ideas for what such an event might look like. Sporting activities, creative events, cooking and eating together are just a few ways to bring a team closer outside working hours.

These shared experiences give every employee a chance to reveal and contribute abilities that may come as a surprise, casting their interpersonal and professional skills in a whole new light. An otherwise rather quiet IT specialist, for example, becomes a very chatty cook, showing and explaining to his colleagues the best way to prepare a particular dish. Or a matter-of-fact saleswoman, whose job involves juggling nothing but figures and statistics, discovers unexpected creativity with a canvas, brushes and paints.

Successful team events outside work create a relaxed atmosphere among colleagues and improve their sense of wellbeing. Both, in turn, have a positive effect on their work and on communication in the workplace. The new experiences employees share at a team event help them develop their conversational skills and find themselves appreciated in new ways by their colleagues.

Every company can benefit from team events

An active team-building event combining guided teamwork on the job with more light-hearted events outside work leads to greater satisfaction within the group, a stronger bond with the company and a greater sense of belonging. It creates a working atmosphere in which rivalry takes a back seat and a new sense of togetherness shapes daily life. Satisfied employees are more productive and motivated, communicate more openly and are more willing to discuss weaknesses and mistakes.

Investments in team events and active team building are therefore worthwhile for every company, as they boost motivation and productivity. Satisfied employees also reflect well on the business, improving its image among the public and its target audiences.