Why is team building important?
Building a strong team is about more than just hiring people with the right skills, mindset and personalities. Because it doesn’t matter how good you are, if you’re not in an efficient, productive team, chances are that you’re not reaching your full potential.
And that’s where team-building activities come in. Team building is about actively bringing team members together in order to strengthen and deepen their existing relationships.
As we’ve already stated, team-building activities are an important part of building an effective team because they…
1. Strengthen trust
Mutual trust is one of the most important basic requirements for an effective team. In fact, one part of our brain is constantly fixated on our desire to belong. When we finally feel at home somewhere, this part of our brain relaxes and we free up space for other things.
Trust creates a safe environment where employees feel empowered to make their own decisions, dare to make mistakes, proactively pursue their own ideas, and have less difficulty being vulnerable.
2. Improve communication
Whether you decide to go bowling, hit the karaoke bar or take a workshop, doing fun things together is also a good way to practice communication. It might sound strange, but it’s a great way to get to know each other in an informal manner.
You’ll get to learn other people’s communication styles and you’ll sharpen your own communication skills in the process.
For example, if someone struggles to get involved in discussions during meetings, team-building activities might help them to open up in an environment where there’s less pressure.
3. Resolve underlying conflict
During team-building activities, you create space for minor conflicts, competition and other forms of interaction that don’t have a place in a work environment. At work, politeness usually takes precedence, which means that conflicts are repressed, making them bigger than necessary.
Team-building activities function as “social norming activities”. In a safe and playful way, you can explore as a team which behaviors are acceptable and how to navigate each other’s boundaries.
4. Make people more approachable
During team building activities, everyone is the same. A manager or somebody with a lot of experience might come across as unapproachable or intimidating in the workplace, but over drinks, at a workshop, or during an activity, that almost always changes and the manager becomes part of the group.
This was a crucial part of Google’s start-up phase: They organised street hockey games for the whole company where everyone went all in.
5. Renew energy within the team
A “change of scenery” is the perfect energy boost. When the team heads back to the office after a day of fun, this will have a positive effect on the energy levels in the office. And even afterwards this can carry forward, for example, when the team starts reminiscing about their fond memories.
6. Strengthen cooperation
This one may seem obvious, but it’s no less important. If your team members don’t know each other (very well), then it’s harder for them to work together. By doing fun things together, colleagues will learn to understand each other better in a more casual manner. They’ll develop a respect for each other, learn what their colleagues are enthusiastic about and what irritates them. All of this is good for cooperation.
7. Help with the hybrid working model
If part of the team isn’t (always) working from the office, this has an impact on social ties. Particularly in these kinds of situations, it’s important to organise regular team activities. Try to get the whole team physically together because just seeing each other through a screen isn’t really enough.
8. Improve creativity and innovation
Team-building activities break up your daily routine. Removing a team from their normal work environment is good for their creativity and helps them to develop new ideas.
In addition, it fuels our imagination because we are social creatures. This is also good for creativity.
And finally: By bringing team members, who would usually have little or perfunctory interaction, together in a new way, you increase the likelihood of creative and innovative ideas arising.
9. Make for happy team members
A little outing every now and then keeps colleagues satisfied. It’s a way to express your appreciation as a company for the contributions everybody is making to the success of the business and it encourages them to keep going.
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