Team building is the process of turning a group of individual contributing employees into a cohesive team—a group of people organized to work together to meet the needs of their customers by accomplishing their purpose and goals.
Learn more about effective methods for team building and activities you can use.
What Is Team Building?
Team building creates stronger bonds among the members of a group. The individual members respect each other and their differences and share common goals and expectations.
Team building can include the daily interaction that employees engage in when working together to carry out the requirements of their jobs. This form of team building is natural and can be assisted if the group takes the time to come up with a set of team norms. These norms help group members know how to appropriately interact on the team and with the rest of the organization.
Team building can also involve structured activities and exercises led by team members. Or, with the proper budget and goals, managers can contract out for facilitation with an external resource. External facilitation by an experienced person can give your team building a boost.
The bonds formed from team-building will enable employees to accomplish the work and goals of your organization more effectively than a non-bonded group. Keep your focus on team-building opportunities that lend themselves to the accomplishment of the actual work of the team.
How Does Team Building Work?
Often the team leader or manager will facilitate a series of meetings at which employees get to know each other and develop cohesive working relationships.
In a larger organization, organization development staff can lead the team-building sessions. Many human resources practitioners are also comfortable leading team-building sessions. And with a little practice, teams can use another employee to facilitate their group's session.
But team building doesn't always have to have a facilitated meeting to accomplish the goal of a cohesive team. You can build your teams by structuring activities and fun events that team members can do together.
Ideas for Team-building Activities
For example, you could start with a department picnic, using a couple of hours during the workday to visit a nearby park. Grill some food and suggest that employees bring a dish to pass.
The goal is that you gather together to share some quality talking time over the meal. If employees take their lunches to their individual offices to eat alone, it defeats the goal of team building.
You can also sponsor activities where employees get together for fun. Bowling, painting pictures at a painting shop, river cruises on a passenger boat, comedy club outings, and baseball games all fit the bill. Really, any event that your team can do or attend as a group will help bond them.
Events that are physically challenging, such as rock climbing and ropes courses, can cause dread and fear for physically inactive or challenged employees. So, for team building, stay away from the type of event that some employees would be unable to participate in comfortably and without trepidation.
The best team-building activities are inexpensive, fun, and effective—not to mention local and easy to do.
Using External Facilitation
When using an external facilitator for team building, groups can participate in structured activities that are designed to help the employees coalesce into an effective team. Generally, the facilitator works with a group of employees to design team-building activities or sessions.
You will find these team-building activities most effective when they are customized to the needs of your group. Generic team building can have a positive impact, but it is nowhere near as impactful as a customized event.
These sessions can include icebreakers, discussion topics, games, cooperative assignments, and group brainstorming. The role of the external facilitator in these events is to help you reach your goals. Make sure the event is integrated into your everyday work so the results continue following the event.
Team building is a collective term for various types of activities used to enhance social relations and define roles within teams, often involving collaborative tasks. It is distinct from team training, which is designed by a combine of business managers, learning and development/OD (Internal or external) and an HR Business Partner (if the role exists) to improve the efficiency, rather than interpersonal relations.
These teams have built small ocean-going rafts as part of a team building exercise
Many team-building exercises aim to expose and address interpersonal problems within the group.[1]
Over time, these activities are intended to improve performance in a team-based environment.[2] Team building is one of the foundations of organizational development that can be applied to groups such as sports teams, school classes, military units or flight crews. The formal definition[which?] of team-building includes:
- aligning around goals
- building effective working relationships
- reducing team members' role ambiguity
- finding solutions to team problems
Team building is one of the most widely used group-development activities in organizations.[3] A common strategy is to have a "team-building retreat" or "corporate love-in," where team members try to address underlying concerns and build trust by engaging in activities that are not part of what they ordinarily do as a team.[4]
Of all organizational activities, one study found team-development to have the strongest effect (versus financial measures) for improving organizational performance.[5] A 2008 meta-analysis found that team-development activities, including team building and team training, improve both a team's objective performance and that team's subjective supervisory ratings.[1] Team building can also be achieved by targeted personal self-disclosure activities.[6]
Four approaches[edit]
Team building describe four approaches to team building:[7][8]
Setting goals[edit]
This emphasizes the importance of clear objectives and individual and team goals. Team members become involved in action planning to identify ways to define success and failure and achieve goals. This is intended to strengthen motivation and foster a sense of ownership. By identifying specific outcomes and tests of incremental success, teams can measure their progress. Many organizations negotiate a team charter with the team and (union leaders)
This emphasizes improving team members' understanding of their own and others' respective roles and duties. This is intended to reduce ambiguity and foster understanding of the importance of structure by activities aimed at defining and adjusting roles. It emphasizes the members' interdependence and the value of having each member focus on their own role in the team's success.
Problem solving[edit]
This emphasizes identifying major problems
Interpersonal-relations[edit]
This emphasizes increasing teamwork skills such as giving and receiving support, communication and sharing. Teams with fewer interpersonal conflicts generally function more effectively than others. A facilitator guides the conversations to develop mutual trust and open communication between team members.
Effectiveness[edit]
The effectiveness of team building differs substantially from one organization to another.[9] The most effective efforts occur when team members are interdependent, knowledgeable and experienced and when organizational leadership actively establishes and supports the team.
When teams are assembled, team dynamics are huge in terms of creating an effective team. Dr. Frank La Fasto identifies five dynamics that are fundamental to team effectiveness. [[10]] The five dynamics of effectiveness within teams are given below.
1) Team Membership
· Team Membership is the members that make up the team.
2) Team Relationship
· Team Relationship is the relationship team members have with each other and how they interact and coexist.
3) Team Problem Solving
· Team Problem Solving is the members within a team coming to a conclusive yet innovative solution to the problem at hand.
4) Team Leadership
· Team Leadership is the leader of the team and the qualities and traits they must possess to lead a team effectively.
5) Organizational Environment
· Organizational Environment is the environment from which a team works in and can directly correlate to team effectiveness.
Effective team building incorporates an awareness of team objectives. Teams must work to develop goals, roles and procedures. As a result, team building is usually associated with increasing task accomplishment, goal meeting, and achievement of results within teams.[11]
Effects of team building strategies on all four outcomes, with 10% and 90% credibility intervals [12]
Some research indicates that team building is not as effective as it seems, and despite causing people to feel closer initially, that is often short-lived. This research indicates that starting with individual motivation is a better starting point than team building (focus on relationships and trust) when seeking to improve the level of quality collaboration.[13]
Effect on performance[edit]
Team building has been scientifically shown to positively affect team effectiveness.[14] Goal setting and role clarification were shown to have impact on cognitive, affective, process and performance outcomes. They had the most powerful impact on affective and process outcomes, which implies that team building can help benefit teams experiencing issues with negative affect, such as lack of cohesion or trust. It could also improve teams suffering from process issues, such as lack of clarification in roles.[3]
Goal setting and role clarification have the greatest impact because they enhance motivation, reduce conflict[15] and help to set individual purposes, goals and motivation.
Teams with 10 or more members appear to benefit the most from team building. This is attributed to larger teams having – generally speaking – a greater reservoir of cognitive resources and capabilities than smaller teams.[16]
Challenges to team building[edit]
The term 'team building' is often used as a dodge when organizations are looking for a 'quick fix' to poor communication systems or unclear leadership directives, leading to unproductive teams with no clear of how to be successful. Team work is the best work.
Teams are then assembled to address specific problems, while the underlying causes are not ignored.
Dyer highlighted three challenges for team builders:[17]
- Lack of teamwork skills: One of the challenges facing leaders is to find team-oriented employees. Most organizations rely on educational institutions to have inculcated these skills into students. Dyer believed however, that students are encouraged to work individually and succeed without having to collaborate. This works against the kinds of behavior needed for teamwork. Another study found that team training improved cognitive, affective, process and performance outcomes.[12] Employee resistance and lack of teamwork skills may result where employees are required to work with other employees with whom they are unfamiliar. In this case, the new teams are breaking up established social relationships.[18]
- Virtual workplaces and across organizational boundaries: according to Dyer, organizations individuals who are not in the same physical space increasingly work together. Members are typically unable to build concrete relationships with other team members. Another study found that face-to-face communication is very important in building an effective team environment.[19] Face-to-face contact was key to developing trust. Formal team building sessions with a facilitator led the members to "agree to the relationship" and define how the teams were work. Informal contact was also mentioned.
- Globalization and virtualization: Teams increasingly include members who have dissimilar languages, cultures, values and problem-solving approaches problems. One-to-one meetings has been successful in some organizations.[19]
The International Journal of Management and Entrepreneurship highlights the point of groupthink being another challenge within team building. A group thinking or making decisions in a way that discourages creativity or individual control creates potential for increased conflict over decision making.[20]
Another challenge to team building include three types of conflict that can occur which are task conflict, process conflict and relationship conflict.
- Task Conflict: Conflict over the work or goals of the project, including different approaches, perspectives and interpretations
- Process Conflict: Conflict over how the logistics of the work are completed and assigning responsibilities
- Relationship Conflict: Conflict over interpersonal relationships, including personality clashes, differing personal views and perspectives.[21]
Schools[edit]
Instructors can motivate students to develop teamwork skills and provide a guideline on how professors can help students build effective study/project teams.[22] This approach emphasizes examples of job situations that require teamwork skills.
Organizations[edit]
Team building in organizations is a common approach to improving performance.
Fun is an important component to team building, but the intent is to become productive, focused, and aligned. Purely recreational activities can be helpful, but must be timed and consider the capabilities of team members (e.g., sports are not for everyone). Other activities geared toward creating a learning environment, exceeding results and engaging employees must be present.
Employee engagement exercises allow teams to create solutions that are meaningful to them, with direct impact on the individuals, the team and the organization. Experiential learning and ramification methods are effective ways to engage millennials in the workplace. Employee engagement is effective because:
- employees enjoy problem-solving activities;
- problem-solving creates ownership;
- it can increase capacity;
- competitive activities encourage a results-based outlook.
Outdoor activities can be an effective way to engage the team, but there are many different types of team building activities possible.
Team building was introduced in sports in the 1990s.[when?] A 2010 study that analyzed the effects of team building[23] found that team building activities increase group cohesion.
According to Yukelson, "In sports, teams are made up of a collection of interdependent individuals, coordinated and orchestrated into various task efficient roles for the purpose of achieving goals and objectives that are deemed important for that particular team".[24]
Team building in sports develops behaviors and skills that “result in improvements in team effectiveness.”[25] A basic tenet of team building is when team members foster a sense of unity, or togetherness. This creates a catalyzing function bolstering the individual members’ efforts through increased motivation. This directs them towards their common goals, and improves team performance outcomes.[25]
A study examined whether a team building intervention program that stressed the importance of goal setting increased cohesion:[26] 86 high school basketball players were studied. The hypothesis employed season-long goal setting. Participants were asked to individually assign targets for the team and negotiate with other team members to finalize a goal score for the team.
In the control branch, the coach occasionally encouraged participants to cheer for and support other team members. The research concluded that at the beginning of the study, all the teams had the same level of cohesion, but the team with the season long goal setting intervention program performed better.
The level of team cohesion did not increase as a result of ceiling effect with the intervention program, but the level decreased significantly for the control group. This was attributed to the lack of emphasis on team goals.