You've probably been involved in a team-

building activity at some point.

Perhaps it was a weekend retreat, or an afternoon at the climbing gym
learning to rely on one another, or a day on the golf course getting to know
everyone.

But, whether or not you and your colleagues enjoyed the experience, what
happened when your team members returned to the office? Did they go
back to their usual behavior perhaps arguing over small assignments, or
refusing to cooperate with each other? The 'day of fun' may have been a
nice break from business, but did your colleagues actually use any of the
lessons that they learned once they were back in the workplace?

Too often, managers plan an activity with no real thought or goal in mind.
This tends to be a waste of time and managers risk losing the team's
respect when they plan an exercise that doesn't actually help those
involved.

Team-building activities can be a powerful way to unite a group, develop

strengths, and address weaknesses but only if the exercises are planned
and carried out strategically. In other words, there has to be a real purpose
behind your decision to do the exercise for example, improving the team's
problem-solving or creativity skills rather than because you felt like giving
your people a nice day out of the office.

This article shows you what to consider when planning a team event, and
we offer a variety of exercises to address different issues that teams
commonly face.

Team Building That Actually Builds Teams

The most important step when planning a team-building activity comes at
the very beginning: you must start by figuring out what challenges your
team faces. Only then can you choose exercises that will be effective in
helping them work through these issues.

Spend time thinking about your team's current strengths and weaknesses.
Ask yourself these questions to identify the root of any problems:

Are there conflicts between certain people that are creating divisions within the
team?
Do team members need to get to know one another?
 Do some members focus on their own success, and harm the group as a result?
Does poor communication slow the group's progress?
Do people need to learn how to work together, instead of individually?
Are some members resistant to change, and does this affect the group's ability to
move forward?
Do members of the group need a boost to their morale?
If you'd like to test how well you and your team work together, try our Team
Effectiveness Assessment . Once you've identified the causes of your
team's issues, you can plan exercises that will address these problems.
This will help your team to derive real benefit from the event and feel that
it was worth their while.

Examples of Team-Building Exercises

There are literally hundreds of team-building activities that address a wide
range of issues. We've separated just a few basic, straightforward
examples into sections that focus on the most common challenges for
teams.

If you'd like to learn more about team building, read our Bite-Sized Training
session on Team Building.
Here are some basic exercises you could try, if you're faced with issues of
communication, stereotyping, or trust in your team.

Improving Communication
Back-to-Back Drawing Divide your group into pairs, and have each pair sit
on the floor back to back. Give one person in each pair a picture of a shape, and
give the other person a pencil and pad of paper.
Ask the people holding the pictures to give verbal instructions to their partners
on how to draw the shape without actually telling the partners what the shape
is. After they've finished, ask each pair to compare their original shape with the
actual drawing, and consider the following questions:

How well did the first person describe the shape?

How well did the second person interpret the instructions?
Were there problems with both the sending and receiving parts of the
communication process?
 Survival Scenario This exercise forces your group to communicate and agree
to ensure their 'survival.' Tell your group that their airplane has just crashed in
the ocean. There's a desert island nearby, and there's room on the lifeboat for
every person plus 12 items they'll need to survive on the island. Instruct the
team to choose which items they want to take. How do they decide? How do
they rank or rate each item?

Eliminating Stereotypes and "Labeling"

Stereotype Party This is a fun exercise for a medium-sized or large group.
Write on nametags many different 'personality types (see the list below), and pin
or tape one tag to each person's back. Don't show people which tag is on their
back they'll be able to see everyone else's tag, but not their own.
Now, ask each person to figure out which personality type is on his or her back
by asking stereotype-based questions of other people Am I a man? Am I an
athlete? Am I an entertainer? and so on.

Allow group members to answer only yes or no, and encourage participants to
ask questions to as many different people as possible.

Here are some personality types you could consider:

Auto mechanic.
Olympic medalist.
Professor.
Fast-food restaurant worker.
Postal worker.
Movie star.

Building Interdependence and Trust

Human spring Ask group members to stand facing each other in pairs. Their
elbows should be bent, with their palms facing toward each other. Instruct them
to touch their palms together, and gradually start leaning toward each other, so
that they eventually hold each other up. Then, instruct everyone to move their
feet further and further back, so that they have to depend solely upon their
partners to remain standing.
Mine field This is a great exercise if you have a large room or outdoor field.
Set up a 'mine field' using chairs, balls, cones, boxes, or any other object that
 could potentially be an obstacle and trip someone up. Leave enough space
between the objects for someone to walk through.
Next, divide your group into pairs. Pay attention to who you match with whom.
This is a perfect opportunity to work on relationships, so you might want to put
together people who have trust issues with each other.

Blindfold one person, the 'mine walker' this person is not allowed to talk. Ask
his or her partner to stay outside the mine field, and give verbal directions,
helping the mine walker avoid the obstacles, and reach the other side of the area.

Before you begin, allow partners a few minutes to plan how they'll
communicate. Then, make sure there are consequences when people hit an
obstacle. For example, perhaps they have to start again from the beginning.

What Not to Do
If you were a marathon runner, would you train just a few times a year for
your next race? Of course not. You would run almost every day. Why?
Because only through regular, continuous training and exercise would you
have a chance at winning.

Team building works on the same principle. Most managers plan one or two
events per year, and that's it. There's rarely any regular 'training' or follow-
up, and this can hold back the group's long-term success.

Effective team building needs to happen continuously if you want your

group to be successful. It needs to be part of the corporate culture.

If you lead a group, aim to incorporate team-building activities into your

weekly or monthly routine. This will help everyone address their different
issues, and it will give them a chance to have fun, and learn to trust one
another more than just once or twice a year.

Finally, make sure that your team-building exercises aren't competitive.

Think about it competition tends to make one person or team work
against another. This probably isn't a good way to build team spirit and
unity. More likely, it's a way to divide a group.

Many companies use sports for team-building activities. Yes, baseball and
soccer can be fun, and some people will enjoy it. But these activities can do
far more harm than good if they focus just on competing, and they can
really de-motivate people who are not particularly good at these sports.
Plan an event that makes people truly depend on others to succeed, and
stay away from competition and 'winning.'

Key Points
For team building to be effective, leaders must first identify the issues
their group is facing. Then they can plan activities to address these
challenges directly and make sure that the team will actually gain
some benefits from the event. Keep competition out of the exercises, and
aim to make team building part of the daily corporate culture, instead of
a once-a-year event.

10 Quick and Easy Team

Building Activities
There are many different reasons why
companies use team building activities. A
small sampling of these reasons include:
Improving communication, boosting morale,
motivation, ice breakers to help get to know
each other better, learning effective
strategies, improving productivity, learning
about ones strengths and weaknesses and
many others. Team building activities can be
used by any business, large or small, to
promote better teamwork in the workplace,
and as most business owners and managers
know, great teamwork is one of the key
factors associated with a companys
success.
There are four main types of team building activities, which includes:
Communication activities, problem solving and/or decision making
activities, adaptability and/or planning activities, and activities that focus
on building trust. The idea is to perform various activities that are both
fun and challenging, and that also have the side effect of building
teamwork skills that can help improve employee performance and
productivity at the office. In this first installment, well take a look at 10
highly effective team building activities designed to improve
communication and problem solving skills. These 10 team building
activities will have your company well on its way to building a team of
peers that work well together, are productive and have a renewed focus.
Stay tuned for part 2 of this series where well focus on 10 team building
exercises designed to improve employee planning skills and building
trust within a team of peers.

Time Required: 5-10 minutes

Begin by asking all participants to empty their pockets, purses, and

wallets of any coins they may have and place them on the table in front
of them. If someone doesnt have any coins or only has very few, others
in the room can share their coins with them. Instruct each person to
create their own personal logo using the coins in front of them in just one
minute. Other materials they may have on them, such as pens,
notebooks, wallets, etc. can also be used in creation of the logo. If there
is a particularly large group, people can be broken up into teams of 3-6
people and instructed to create a logo that represents them as a team or
the whole room can gather to use the coins to create a logo for the
organization/group/department/etc. Each solitary participant can explain
their logo to the group or if the room was split into groups, the leader can
have each group discuss what led to the team logo and what it says
about them. Not only does this activity promote self and mutual
awareness, but it also enables participants to get to know each other on
a more personal level.

using and planning team-building activities

People are best motivated if you can involve them in designing and deciding the activities -
ask them. Secondly you will gain most organisational benefit if the activities are geared
towards developing people's own potential - find out what they will enjoy doing and learning.
Games can be trite or patronising for many people - they want activities that will help them
learn and develop in areas that interest them for life, beyond work stuff - again ask them.
When you ask people commonly you'll have several suggestions which can be put together
as a collection of experiences that people attend or participate in on a rotating basis during
the day or the team-building event. Perhaps you have people among your employees who
themselves have special expertise or interests which they'd enjoy sharing with others; great
team activities can be built around many hobbies and special interests. If you are planning a
whole day of team-building activities bear in mind that a whole day of 'games' is a waste of
having everyone together for a whole day. Find ways to provide a mix of activities that appeal
and help people achieve and learn - maybe build in exercises focusing on one or two real
work challenges or opportunities, using a workshopapproach. Perhaps involve a few
employees in planning the day (under your guidance or not according to the appropriatelevel
of delegated authority) - it will be good for their own development and will lighten your load.
See also the guide to facilitating experiential learning activities.

team exercises and events for developing ethical

organizations
Team-building exercises and activities also provide a wonderful opportunity to bring to life
the increasing awareness and interest in 'ethical organizations'. These modern ethical
business ideas and concepts of sustainability, 'Fairtrade', corporate social responsibility, the
'triple bottom line', love, compassion, humanity and spirituality, etc., are still not well defined
or understood: people are unclear what it all means for them individually and for the
organization as a whole, even though most people are instinctively attracted to the principles.
Team-exercises and discussions help bring clarity and context to idealistic concepts like
ethics and social responsibility far more effectively than reading the theory, or trying to
assimilate some airy-fairy new mission statement dreamed up by someone at head office
and handed down as an edict. Fundamental change has to come from within, with support
from above sure, but successful change is ultimately successful because people 'own'
it and see it as their change, not something handed down. See for example the Triple
Bottom Line exercise.

Ensure that team-building activities and all corporate events comply with equality and
discrimination policy and law in respect of gender, race, disability, age, etc. Age
discrimination is a potential risk given certain groups and activities, and particularly so
because Age Discrimination is quite a recent area of legislation. Team-building facilitators
should be familiar with Employment Age Regulations and wider issues of Equality Law and
its protections against discrimination for reasons of race, gender, disability, etc. While this is
UK and European legislation, the principles are applicable to planning and running team-
building exercises anywhere in the world, being consistent with the ethical concepts.

corporate events and social responsibility

Also consider the effects of team building and corporate events in terms of effects on
employees' families and people's broader life needs. It is easy to become very narrowly
focused on the organization and the community within it, without thinking of the families and
social needs outside. Alcohol is another increasing area of risk for organizers of team
building and conference events.

An employer's duty of care (and potential liability) at corporate events traditionally was
fulfilled by ensuring no-one tripped over the electrical cable for the overhead projector.
Nowadays organizations have a deeper wider responsibility, which is progressively reflected
in law. Alcohol and discrimination are big issues obviously, but arguably a bigger
responsibility for employers is to the families and social well-being of employees, which
impacts directly onto society as a whole.

Today's well-led and ethically-managed corporations understand that divisive treatment of

employees' partners and families undermines loyalty and motivation of employees, and
creates additional unnecessary stresses for workers in close loving caring relationships,
especially for young families, which have evolved a strong sensitivity to such pressures.

If you read about Erik Erikson's Life Stages Theory you will understand why parents of young
children especially are not helped by this sort of work pressure. Thwarting or obstructing
people's instincts - evolved over millennia - to be with and take care of their partners and
young families is extremely destructive. Employers who have a blatant antipathy for these
crucial life needs of their people are therefore socially irresponsible.

Inevitably strong work commitments put pressure on employees' families and partners. This
is particularly so in big modern corporations where travel and lengthy absence from home is
unavoidable in key roles. Modern ethical socially responsible organizations should be doing
whatever they can to minimize these effects, not make them worse.

Where possible employers should reward partners and families for their support and loyalty,
rather than alienate them by creating selfish staff-only events.

Laws are not yet clearly defined about the employer's liabilities arising from such situations,
however there are clear principles (e.g., related to stress, duty of care, social responsibility,
etc) which demand responsibility and anticipation from employers in this area.

Moreover, fostering a healthy work and home life balance tends to make organizations run
smoother and less problematically, notably in areas of grievance and counseling, stress and
conflict, disputes and litigation, recruitment and staff retention, succession planning,
company reputation and image.

risks and dangers of socially irresponsible events and

activities
I was prompted to add this item because I received a question about the implications of
running a staff-only dinner dance at a conference event.

If you are considering a staff-only social event - especially at night, involving alcohol,
dancing, overnight accommodation - or you are wondering generally where to draw the line
between working relationships and intimacy, or between fun and irresponsible risk, these
observations might help you decide.

Implications and risks of organizing socially irresponsible events concern chiefly:

1. Romantic/sexual relations between staff, whether extra-marital or not.

2. Stresses on partners and families, and thereby on staff too, if partners are excluded
from intimate social events.
3. Problems, accidents, incidents arising from alcohol.
4. Impacts on performance, management distraction, and staff retention arising from the
above.
5. Risks of litigation and bad publicity arising from any of the above.

The risks of running a socially irresponsible corporate event are emphasised if you consider
a scenario containing the following elements. Do not run an event containing these elements.
This is a negative example for the purposes of illustrating risk and responsibility:

1. Evening dinner and dance or disco.

 2. Dressing up - especially black tie, long dresses (and whatever the women will be
wearing - no, seriously..)
3. A bar, or other access to alcohol (the more freely available then the more risk).
4. Overnight accommodation.
5. Heady atmosphere of achievement, motivation, team-working, relationship-building
and general showing off (many conference events contain these features, especially
those aiming to motivate, reward, entertain, etc., and especially events for staff
involved in sales, management and the more extroverted people-oriented roles within
organizations).
6. Scheduled on the last night of the event (sense of climax, relief, tension release,
"...Tomorrow it all ends and back to normal...", etc.)
7. Partners excluded (for whatever reason - either because the CEO is a thrice married
and divorced dirty old man, or because the event necessarily brings delegates
together from a wide geographical area, which prevents partners attending due to
logistics and costs).

You do not need to be a professor of social anthropology to guess that the above
circumstances are unlikely to be a useful corporate defence against any of the following
problems which could arise, directly, indirectly, or ironically if actually nothing whatever to do
with the event itself - try telling that to the offended party afterwards...

1. Extra-marital liaisons of various sorts between various people away from home,
whether serial philanderers, or momentarily weak in the face of temptation.
2. Seductions or more serious sexual behaviours resulting in a victim or complaint of
some sort.
3. Abuse of power/authority/bar-tab by a senior staff member, resulting in scandal when
a junior victim subsequently emerges, and says it all happened because they got
drunk downing umpteen free sambucas with the directors and then got taken
advantage of.
4. Someone deciding to drive away on the night three or four times over the legal limit
and getting arrested or causing an accident.
5. Damage to person or property, or violence resulting from too much alcohol.

You could probably add to this list. There is no limit to human ingenuity when behaving
irresponsibly under the influence of drink and any other stimulants of emotion or substance.
A socially responsible employer should be able to demonstrate they have been duly careful
and diligent in minimizing such risks when organizing any work events.

Excluding partners from events...

Executives, managers and employees of successful organizations hopefully love their work.
They live and breathe it, which is great - but what about the partners and families? Do they
love the organization? Sometimes not. Overly demanding work is a threat to family life - and
thereby to society. And just because a few staff members and crusty old directors can't wait
to get away from their spouses (a feeling no doubt reciprocated by the spouses), doesn't
mean that all employees feel the same way. The vast majority do not.
Staging intense social staff-only events can be upsetting to employees' partners and families.

A modern ethical employer's duty of care and social responsibility extsnds to the families of
its employees.

Divorce, separation and family conflicts and breakdowns are directly linked with many social
ills. Socially responsible ethical employers should be doing all they can to reduce these
causal factors - not to make them worse.

Remind yourself of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs if you are in doubt about the acute stress
which arises when anyone is threatened at the level of family, loving relationships, home, etc.
Consider the stresses and difficulties caused to employees' partners excluded from such
occasions, and the effects which inevitably rebound on the employees, and cascade to
children. These are truly basic needs and an organization which jeopardises these factors is
irresponsible in the extreme.

how to become a great team builder

Becoming an expert in team building is a wonderful career speciality to pursue. The growing
popularity of team building, and the recognition of structured, organized team building as a
significant factor in the performance and well-being of individuals, teams and organizations,
will fuel growth in demand for, and provision of, specialist team building training. (If you can
recommend any particularly good team building design/facilitation training courses do let me
know.)

Team building potentially includes a very wide variety of methodologies, techniques, theories
and tools. And also values and philosophy. At the foundation of good team building
is compassion and humanity - genuine care for others. This is what sustains and fuels people
in organizations.

It follows then that to become a great team builder you should open yourself to philosophical
ideas and values, as well as learn and experience as many methodologies and related
techniques as you can, which together will combine to give you the character, skills and
breadth for becoming an inspirational leader in team building - and in the training of team
building to others, be they trainers, managers, facilitators or team leaders.

Here are some examples of useful methodologies, concepts, etc., that can assist in planning
and facilitating team building activities:

Teambuilding activities, especially with big groups, can become quite chaotic and
difficult to control. Having some structure in place will reduce the risks of events
becoming too loose, and aims/outcomes being undermined or ignored. To help you
develop structure, see Kirkpatrick's learning evaluation model, and Bloom's
Taxonomy of learning domains. Also see Tuckman's 'Forming Storming..' theory to
 appreciate how groups behave when they come together for the first time in new
situations.
Train the trainer courses - many and various, from the inspirational to more
theoretical - include lots of relevant learning about working with groups.
Explore facilitation and empathy concepts.
Understand personal change, and the challenges this can produce for people.
Look at stress and its causes and how to minimise it and reduce it.
Consider and talk about the growing importance of love and spirituality in
organizations.
Explore and use motivational and communications methodologies such as NLP,
and Transactional Analysis.
Psychometrics and personality are useful in understanding teams and group
behaviours.
Outdoor survival, 'outward bound' courses, and personal challenge activities are also
useful to experience and understand, in terms of what they offer people and how the
process develops at a deep level.
And always remember the importance of fun, games and toys - for example juggling,
plate-spinning, board games, tricks, puzzles, etc - use your imagination - school
education suppliers and exhibitions can be a really useful source of ideas, providers
and new products.

Whether you find a dedicated team building trainer/facilitation course or not try to access
many of the above sorts of methodologies and concepts - and anything else that inspires and
stimulates you - whenever the opportunity arises.

team building variables

When planning and running team building activities, exercises, games, etc., certain variables
have a significant influence on the way the activity works. When planning team building - or
any group activity - think about and use these factors to suit the situation, logistics,
team/group numbers, and the aims of the exercises.

team mix (age, job type, department, gender, seniority, etc)

team numbers (one to a hundred or more, pairs and threes, leadership issues)
exercise briefing and instructions - how difficult you make the task, how full the
instructions and clues are
games or exercise duration
competitions and prizes
venue and logistics - room size and availability (for break-out sessions etc)
materials provided or available
stipulation of team member roles - eg., team leader, time-keeper, scribe (note-taker),
reviewer/presenter
scoring, and whether the exercise is part of an ongoing competition or team league
With a full day or more it's very useful to include something on personality types and how this
affects teams, style of management required, learning styles (eg Kolb, VAK, etc). If you
use psychometrics in your organization, if possible expose delegates to the testing and
theory - it's interesting and a great basis for absorbing the issues. It also adds a bit of hard
theory to the inevitable other soft content.

Ongoing competitions are excellent for team building, but If you are training the trainers don't
run a competition through the whole day - mix up the teams from time to time to show how
team dynamics can be changed and the effect of doing so. Also demonstrate how games
take on a different meaning if numbers are changed (eg larger teams require leadership or
there'll be passengers (see the POB team-building acronym); and, you can play the same
game with 3 and 6 people and it completely alters the conduct and outcomes).

Change and demonstrate gender and age mixes also - team mix is a crucial area of
understanding.

Use a mixture of games to cover different logistical and environmental constraints - small
room, large room, syndicate rooms, outdoors.

Include a mixture of games to develop different skills and aspects within team building -
leadership, cooperation, communication, breaking down barriers, planning, time-
management, etc.

Ask the delegates (in syndicates) to design their own games to meet specific scenarios. As
well as the ideas, look at all the variables: clarity of instructions, timings, team numbers and
mix, logistics, venue requirements, etc.

Outdoors, use traditional games like rounders, cricket, touch rugby, relay races, to
demonstrate the big team dynamics, and the physical exercise effect - stress reduction,
endorphins and neuro-transmitters, etc.

Also cover 'workshops' and how to plan and run them - practical sessions dealing with real
business issues, with real content and real action-based outcomes, including the team-
building effect - use a real business issue as an example. This would also require some pre-
session preparation and coached and measurable follow-up, which are also extremely useful
and under-used mechanisms.

team building and happiness

Here's a simple easy tip for team-building, motivation, and creating happy atmosphere:

Buy a big basket. Buy lots of sweets or candy, lollipops too, wrapped preferably (for hygiene
and maintenance reasons) and put them into the big basket. Put the big basket of sweets
and lollipops on the table before people arrive for work, or the meeting, or the training
session.
And then watch people smile. Sweets and lollipops break down barriers. They are a universal
language for feeling good and being happy.

After a week or two of different sweets throw in some bubblegum. Also some bubblegum with
collectible cards.

This gesture is not restricted to the training room; you can put baskets of sweets all over the
place. Even in the reception and the board room; and even in the finance director's office.

You can ask the receptionist if she (or he) would be so kind as to make sure that the sweet
basket is always filled to the brim (at the company's cost of course), and to make sure she
(or he) always invites every single visitor to dip their hand in and take a big handful for their
kids. And you'll see how wonderfully well people react to being treated in this way.

Go spread the word - put a big basket of sweets on your table.

When you've firmly established the practice of having baskets of sweets everywhere, you
can move on to fresh cut flowers.........

A little bunch of fresh cut flowers in a vase, on a table. It's worth a million words.

(Next of course you'll need to appoint a flower monitor, which every right-minded person will
want to be, so you can have one per floor, or one per day of the week, or one per
department, whatever...)