Team Building

James Coakes

There is more than one version of The Four Cs of Teamwork. Jon R. Katzenbach proposed that they were communication, cooperation, collaboration and compromise whereas Lou Carloni suggested communication, cooperation, contribution and commitment. In either case analysing a team’s position on the four Cs is a useful exercise and these two examples have communication and cooperation in common. Perhaps we should settle on six Cs of Teamwork.

Communication

Katzenbach and Carloni both agreed that good communication was an essential ingredient of teamwork. Arguably communication is at the core of all processes within business. The basics of communication require that roles and responsibilities are discussed and assigned within the team and that information is effectively shared. Beyond this you must ask whether disagreements and conflicts are constructively handled and finally whether team members are open and honest. Trust is the key to effective teamwork.

Cooperation

Good teamwork requires that team members cooperate fully with each other. Cooperation is a result of good communication and it requires clarity and, crucially, trust. Effective cooperation should be a harmonious process and again the quality of communication will determine this. A measure of cooperation is that when a member of a team is under pressure others offer to help out and the key word is offer. Begrudgingly lending a hand having been told to do so is not the same.

Collaboration

It is quite difficult to differentiate between cooperation and collaboration. The definition of both words have much in common. Cooperation is more commonly used to describe an association of people for economic gain. Collaboration is typically an intellectual effort and it can also describe a treasonable association, for example with an enemy. It may suggest a form of very close and committed teamwork, but in this particular case I feel it is the weakest, or the least useful of the Cs.

Compromise

Compromise is very important in any relationship. It is rare for any outcome to be perfect; it is important that team members accept this and do not put colleagues under pressure particularly when a best effort is acceptable. There are conditions when perfectionism is necessary for example in engineering or when a less than perfect outcome presents danger. However, one of the most debilitating behaviours within a group effort is unnecessary nit picking or arguing over detail when it causes the team to lose focus on the objective.

Contribution

In most teams each individual will contribute a different set of skills to the group effort. The team must understand the role of each team member and they must understand how it contributes to the team’s objectives. Ideally everyone will understand and recognise the importance of each colleague’s skills. If one team member is perceived as being less important or not working as hard as others this will be a problem. If this is an issue between two colleagues the problem will need to be addressed by the team leader. If the feeling is a general consensus then serious questions need to be asked of the team member whose contribution is being questioned.

Commitment

Is the team committed to a common objective? Is the team, and particularly the leadership, committed to developing the individuals within the team? Are team members committed to one and other and do they share common values regarding the work they are doing? The first step towards encouraging commitment within a team is to make sure that they understand their objectives and how those objectives fit into the goals of the whole company. Teams need to know that the work that they are doing is important and valued elsewhere in the company.

How can you use this information to the benefit of your team?

Like many such theories this is essentially a discussion piece. You can take each word in turn and throw it out to your team members in an open session for discussion. Your objective is to see what issues come out of the discussion. You may find that other words and ideas come out of the discussion and you may find that there are other words which are more relevant to your team. There are also some useful online surveys based around this; again they are designed to stimulate discussion rather than reach a set conclusion.

James Coakes

One of the problems with the traditional teambuilding event format is that it is essentially divisive. A selection of activities is laid on and the group is divided into teams to have a go at each activity. An example might be a group of 20 divided into four teams of five to try archery, laser clay shooting, quad bikes and dune buggies.

Not only does this isolate people into teams which may be separated over the course of the event but often teams are encouraged to compete against each other so that a winning team can be announced at the end of the event. Some argue that this as the opposite of teambuilding.

Extreme activities such as abseiling and bungee jumping are even more divisive. Rather than building a team they separate a team into those who are afraid and those who are not.

One solution is to change the members of the teams at each rotation, but this can be time consuming and upset the equilibrium. Another solution often employed is to play down the competition in the events and not to have winners announced at the end. However, humans are naturally competitive creatures and even if the organiser is not comparing scores you can be assured that the participants will.

There has been a growth in non-competitive teambuilding programmes. These use one task which the whole team involves itself in together. Thus individuals are not separated from each other and the competition is between the team and the task and not between sub teams.

One of the most popular of these is an event in which teams work on smaller paintings which are put together in the end to make one big picture. Communication between all participants is essential so that the end result achieves some sort of congruence with the individual pictures. The end result can be kept by the participants to remind them of their event.

There are various other options available including Community Teambuilding in which teams take on a community project for example renovating a building or transforming wasteland into a garden. One team built an enclosure at a wildlife park for young tigers. The possibilities for projects of this nature are limitless.

In the majority of cases the essential requirement of teambuilding events is that the participants have fun and in such cases the traditional round robin activity format may be appropriate. However, if there is a real need to bond the team together the organiser should consider whether dividing the group into small groups is ultimately the right thing to do.

James Coakes

Joining an established team is very difficult. In most cases, team building happens with little intervention – the new team member is be welcomed and given time to bond, however in some cases the new team member will join a team with issues and where, regardless of the effort they make, they are unwelcome.

Consider the following when joining an established team.

Listen more than you talk – It is particularly important when you join a new team. Entering as a know-it-all, set in your ways will not endear you to existing team members. This holds true no matter where you are – from the US, Australia or the UK.

Team building will not be helped if you think you are better than everyone else.

Listen & learn from other team members – what they do, what sort of characters they are. Remember, people resist change, don’t tell them you know how to do things better than they do. Listen, you may even learn a better way.

Avoid sentimentality – keep references to the team you have just worked with to the factual. Your new team will not want to listen to your recollections of what a great group of people you worked with. Occasionally make positive observations about this team, don’t overdoing it.

Give respect to earn respect – even if you are joining the team at a senior level you cannot expect to automatically be given respect. The importance of earning respect rather than demanding it has been well documented already, but if you take time to listen, learn about other team members and understand why they fill the role they do in the team you will learn to respect them.

Don’t be patronising – under any circumstances. Take time to understand how your new team work. You may be surprised to find their way is better!.

Keep your promises, be reliable. – Don’t take responsibility for anything beyond you in the hope it will endear you to the team. Building rapport with other member is hard enough without overloading them with stress as a result.

Be a team player – if you feel insecure or unsure it can be tempting to work alone. Avoid this at all costs. Make sure you stay in the team by asking for help if necessary.

Keep lines of communication open – It is okay to admit you’re new and need support. Often people feel asking for help is a sign of weakness. Actually it can be one of the best ways of team building. You should avoid always approaching one person because they look friendly. Approach the person you consider most difficult first, the experience is often ground breaking.

Don’t argue – just don’t. Bite your lip; your time will come. Arguing when you are the new team member is a no win proposition. If you lose you undermine yourself and if you win you will have destroyed a relationship, hard to rebuild.

In the majority of cases your new team will welcome you and make every effort to help you. They will want it to work as much as you. Listen, understand what you don’t say will be as important as what you do say, be sincere and be yourself.

Team building takes time, team building takes patience, team building will not happen overnight.

James Coakes

The UK has some of the most stringent Health & Safety standards in the World. Most blue chip companies go even further than the prescribed standards to ensure the wellbeing of their employees. Yet the majority of companies employ team building providers without checking on their own policies and procedures. In effect they are handing over the wellbeing of their employees to companies who do not have the same standards as they do and in some cases companies who have no standards at all.

This is not to say that these companies are purposefully dangerous but some team building providers are small or one man bands and lack the resources to have set up and run an acceptable Health & Safety policy on an ongoing basis. In my experience less than 10% of companies so much as enquire about Health & Safety and the vast majority do not even check whether event providers carry adequate insurance. This is a shocking fact and I believe that it is caused by that dangerous adversary of risk management; assumption.

It is very difficult to assess the size and standard of operation of a company from their website. Companies may look like an International operator with hundreds of employees when in fact they are a one man band trading from a spare bedroom. It is essential that those booking events ask for reassurance in the form of copies of insurance cover documents, a written Health & Safety policy and Risk Assessments of each of the activities being undertaken. This is a simple process; documents need to be seen and dates need to be checked to ensure that they are current.

Every activity provided by an event company should have a unique Risk Assessment. In some cases there is clearly no risk at all, but still the procedure should be undertaken. In such cases the Risk Assessment will read ‘this activity has been assessed and classified as low risk’ with the name of whoever undertook the Risk Assessment. Companies should have a designated Health & Safety Officer who has undergone training and is sufficiently experienced to know how to recognize potential risks.

The key document to consider in this process is the Risk Assessment. This supports the investigation of the activity by the provider. A Risk Assessment ensures that potential dangers have been considered and steps taken to minimize the risk. Activities are then classified as low, medium and high risk. You may decide to avoid high risk activities on your event. Risk Assessments are living documents, in that an activity provider should update it along with lessons learned as they practice.

If you are choosing medium or high risk activities it would be prudent to ask how many times the activity company has provided these activities before. You may wish to avoid undertaking a high risk activity run by a company who was providing it for the first time.

The corporate event industry is divided into companies operating on static sites and companies with a mobile operation who travel to venues. In most cases the event will be held in a field, often close to the hotel at which a client is staying. It is essential that any company providing such events visits the site before hand to assess the land. It is not enough to use a map as there can be trees in dangerous locations, particularly for motorized vehicles such as quad bikes or dune buggies, or holes in the land which make it dangerous for activities. In some cases land can be contaminated with dangerous scrap metal or broken glass.

If an event is water based the water should have recently been tested. In water parks or regularly used locations this is likely to be a regular undertaking, but in some cases a pond or waterhole will be used for bridge building or raft racing. This should be tested for bacteria or other dangerous deposits. It’s a risk to simply use an area of water without considering this.

There are many other areas that a sound Health & Safety procedure will cover. It takes time and effort to set one up and it needs to be maintained and updated on an ongoing basis. All event management companies should have one in place and they will only improve if more clients demand to see them.

Sandy Cosser

Team building is a concept that is rapidly gaining popularity in the corporate world as management realises the importance of happy workers, who all get along well with each other and function within a comfortable work dynamic. Charles Schwab said, “The man who does not work for the love of the work but only for money is not likely to make money nor find much fun in life.” It is therefore important to make the work environment as pleasant and welcoming as possible. Many businesses like to boast of their family feel but very few of them actually practice that approach, preferring the cold formality that has defined the business world so far. Only a lucky few can say that they work in a truly comfortable environment where they feel at home and even look forward to coming to work each morning.

When the dynamic in an office environment is a bit iffy or a team is not working as it should for reasons varying from personality clashes to professional differences of opinion, it may be time to consider a team building time out. Team building events can last from mornings or afternoons only to whole weekends or even an entire week. The duration you opt for and the activities that you choose will depend on the nature of the problems you are experiencing. Perhaps you aren’t experiencing any serious problems at all and only want a fun day out for your staff, or want to do something different for your Christmas party.

There are a variety of reasons why companies might choose team building events, some of these include: to create cross functional efficiency; to ease any changes in management; to increase strategic planning initiatives; assist in culture development and understanding; adds value to a project start up or kick off and many more.

In deciding what activities you think your team should take part in, it is important to understand that team building is an ongoing process and not just a one off event. It is therefore important to have a strategy and to consider the following: 1) with what issues are your team battling? 2) What objectives would you like the team building activities to achieve? 3) Which issues are priorities that need immediate attention? 4) How are you going to plan follow up phases in order to reinforce the messages and make any improvements? 5) Can the principles and objectives be built on in the future, and if so, how?

Team building games or activities are often referred to as interventions, a more grown up term that implies that even though the activities are fun, serious outcomes are intended. If the game requires that the team is split into competing groups it is emphasised that winning or losing is not as important as what is leaned along the way. A selection of some of the games includes:

Toxic Swamp
This game involves the team navigating through some poisonous terrain using limited resources and relying largely on team spirit. To successfully complete this task the team must use ingenuity, creative thinking, problem solving, planning, prioritisation, leadership and, of course, teamwork.

Search and Destroy
In this activity the team must get to a bomb using a terrorist’s booby trapped code, there is the added complication of avoiding competing SWAT teams. Here the team must use dedication and focus on the task at hand, they must also be able to think on their feet and collaborate well together.

Blind Faith
In order to complete this task it is necessary to rescue injured teammates and get them through some difficult obstacles, including a Memory Minefield, which requires the team to learn from their mistakes. The exercise also requires trust and communication.

Crossing the Crocodile River
This exercise involves solving the problem of how to get everyone safely over a raging river without them being eaten by crocodiles or washed away by the strong current. There is the added element of your resources dwindling away if you lose concentration for even a minute. The focus here is on crisis management, team spirit and selflessness. It also highlights the necessity of being flexible in planning in a teamwork project.

The Web
Teams must navigate a 3D web without touching it; members help each other by shouting directions as well as encouragement and offering support when someone touches the web, because then its back to the start for them. This helps improve trust, time management skills, as well as delegation and logical thinking skills.

Reach for the Sky
This is a fun project involving lots of thought, planning and design. Team members must use equipment that is provided and assemble and launch a rocket that will fly on a horizontal plain. The purpose is to fly further than the other teams. The emphasis is on teamwork, collaboration, leadership and goal orientation.

Toxic Waste
This is a small group activity whereby a group is given a bungee cord and a rope and have to figure out how to transport a bucket of “toxic waste” in order to tip it into a neutralisation bucket. This exercise can be used to address just about any aspect of teamwork.

These are only some of the activities that events companies use in their team building days. For something that is more adventurous some companies offer activities such as safaris, bungee jumping, white water rafting, camping, 4×4 drives, rock climbing and so much more. Your options for team building are virtually endless as are the opportunities for fun and learning. And if team building is not what you are after, employees always appreciate a fun day out of the office, whatever the reason.

Recommended site:

http://www.moversandshakers.co.za/teambuilding_other_exercises.html

Greg Birbeck

Wine looks the same when poured in a glass, but it tastes different to your taste buds. It all depends on your taste. Do you often find it difficult to select the brand of wine you like best? Well, this time you get to participate in some simple fun filled ways of judging your taste profile through some exciting corporate events.

Knowing your Taste through Wine Tasting Corporate Activity

Taste Trail in Northamptonshire is one of Chillisauce’s innovative ideas of helping you self judge the type of wine that you like best. This thrilling corporate activity starts with a fun animated wine tutorial providing a crash course in the art of tasting the accurate wine blend. Some connoisseur’s then judge the wine preferences of the guests by individually questioning all of them.

You will be asked to taste different wine blends and write down the scores with the help of the wine adventure colour charts and the Nez du Vin aroma kits that will be provided to you. At the end of the evening, everyone will be given their taste profile, a guide to your own taste that will help you in the future while selecting wine from the stores.

The whole process takes around two hours, however the work timing can be adjusted according to individual requirements. Even the corporate event venue is arranged according to your preference, thus it includes no venue fees. You can even take this corporate wine tasting courses in Northamptonshire to a competitive level by placing your request at Chillisauce.

Benefits of Wine Tasting

Wine tasting corporate event arranged by Chillisauce gives you the perfect opportunity to be your own judge, and self-judge is unquestionably the best judge. It trains you to concentrate as you make the fine distinguishing between different flavours of blended wine. This corporate event is filled with fun. It is relaxing and interactive and fills you with a sense of self-satisfaction as you judge your own taste successfully. When you take this corporate event to a competitive level by a request made to Chillisauce, it strengthens the team unity and helps in building the perfect team.

Greg Birbeck

Derbyshire, with its scenic beauty and perfect backdrop for exciting outdoor activities looks like the best place for planning your corporate events. With more and more emphasis being laid on relaxation and team spirit amid work environment, Chillisauce takes you to the ideal place to rediscover the importance of teamwork through outdoor corporate team building activities across the green plains of Derbyshire.

GSP Treasure Hunt Expedition in Derbyshire

Get ready for the hunt of the season. If you have an energetic and adventurous corporate team with a limited budget, then GSP treasure hunt in Derbyshire is just the right thing for you. The corporate teams are given a briefing session and the instructions are handed over to them. The whole game if filled with mysterious twists and turns. The corporate teams have to select their own treasure hunt route by using the global positioning systems. All the corporate team members put their brains together in finding and analyzing the clues from different places to locate the treasure. The more clues they gather, the more points they score. Don’t worry, you won’t get lost. There is an instructor who constantly follows the corporate teams for security without showing himself. Moreover, the corporate teams carry with them a radio to pass on information between the team members. It’s exciting, fun and filled with surprising evidence at every turn you take.

Influence of Treasure Hunt on Team Building

It’s only when all the brains of the corporate team works together that you find the treasure. Treasure hunt in Derbyshire, which can last for half a day or one full day according to the nature of the hunt, teaches you to be patient, analytical, zealous and most importantly it reveals the values of team spirit. It is one of those corporate activities that cannot be performed alone. You need to work as a team where all the corporate team members share equal importance. Corporate events organized by Chillisauce wins you not only the treasure you are hunting for, but also the biggest treasure of all – a perfect understanding and unity in work amongst the members of the corporate team.

Greg Birbeck

When it comes to selecting the corporate event venue, Greater Manchester is definitely the best place of all. With its natural scenic beauty, peak districts and green countryside, Greater Manchester is easily the best place to indulge in fun filled corporate events and team building activities. You will never fall short of ideas for team building activities, as you will find a wide range of corporate events to cheer up the team, thus lifting the morale of the corporate team members.

Wondering where to begin from? Well, you can try the 4*4 GPS treasure hunt, which tests your driving skill and the teamwork. If you want something more adventurous, take a ride on the squad safari. You can also do some detective work yourself by participating in the spy mission treasure hunt and other spy-themed team building games. Finally, after a hectic day of exciting activities, you get to engage yourself in relaxing team building activities like cocktail making and wine tasting corporate events.

Catapult Building in Greater Manchester – a Team Work

You must have enjoyed playing with catapults when you were a child. Now that you have grown up does not mean you cannot indulge yourself in catapult building. Chillisauce brings for you the catapult building corporate event in Greater Manchester. You have to create a huge catapult, the size of a man, with the materials provided to you within the allotted time. It requires attentiveness, team effort and a perfect understanding within the corporate team members. All the catapults that are prepared are personally checked for safety purposes.

Once your catapult is ready, all you need to do is check the engineering skill of your corporate team by firing canon balls from the catapults. Don’t worry; the canon balls are not real. They are small bean balls that are provided in equal numbers to the individual teams. The more distance the canon balls travel, the more points you score. The corporate team that covers the maximum total distance traveled by the canon balls emerges as the winner.

Corporate Team Building through Catapult Building

Building a catapult is easy, but when it comes to building a “Man” size catapult, you need the help of your team. One of the main intentions of Chillisauce arranging for catapult building in Greater Manchester is to strengthen the corporate team unity and thus reviving the corporate team spirit. Catapult building, organized by Chillisauce, is certainly one of the best ways to escape the monotony of work environment and perk up the corporate team spirit.

Greg Birbeck

Oxfordshire is a hub of corporate events that truly encourage the corporate people to spend some time out of their hectic schedule. The corporate event ideas truly create the spark of excitement among people and offer them to test the event management skills, time management factors and event organizing talent of corporate people. The activity ensures them to work as a group so they come to discover one another even better.

Chillisauce is a corporate event organizer who decides for various activities for corporate people so that they can feel relaxed out of their tight and monotonous work schedule. Apart from the fishing activities, Oxfordshire also deals with other spectacular daytime activities and evening-time activities. The daytime activities include dragon boat racing, horse riding, paintball, quad bike treks, clay pigeon shooting, blind fold driving, archery wonders and so on. The nighttime activities include murder mystery evenings; quiz nights, nightclubs, cabaret shows, riverboat party cruises etc.

Fly fishing game in Oxfordshire

Set in a serene background, the country of Oxfordshire welcomes you to enjoy one of its famous activities, fly-fishing. You can forget all tensions of the corporate world and indulge luxuriously in this entertainment to get relaxed in mind and body. While you go for fishing you can simply set sail on the tranquil setting of the crystal clear blue lakes and streams.

As you cruise luxuriously or simply sit on the shore dipping your feet in the transparent waters you can take the help of experienced ghillies. They will teach you the fascinating art of catching fishes and also locate you to the best spots where you can catch a handful of fishes like brown and rainbow trout. As you set sail you are allowed to take photographs of the setting sun against the backdrop of crimson sea or of fishes playing on the waters.

Corporate event management is simply excellent when one goes to enjoy fly-fishing in Oxfordshire.

The activities also induce

To know each other better

To test the efficiency level of people

To judge the team building attitude amidst a group

To enhance the feeling of good will amidst all colleagues

To make all feel relaxed and leisured after hectic days

The fly-fishing activities in Oxfordshire is a great experience that leaves you completely relaxed and encouraged to deal with hectic days ahead again.

Peter Mason

If someone just studies a few recent corporate recruitment advertisements, there will be at least one thing he or she will find common in almost all of them. The recruiters are putting much emphasis on hiring a one-team man rather than a one-man team, in the management category at least.

In accordance to this shift, the office atmosphere is changing too. CEOs of the companies at present are accessible to general employees more than ever before. The visual distance is cut short. Office decorations are changing with more and more interlinked and free sitting arrangements. At this age, one can never ignore the psychological affect on human beings created by the respective surroundings.

The corporate houses these days are spending huge amounts to unite the workforce into an active team. Active and spontaneous participation of employees in both internal and external affairs of the company and even in the decision making process are regarded as the path of progress.

The main problem in the corporate team building process namely ‘distancing’ is predominantly inherent in employees’ as well as in the employer’s psyche. It is one of the basic instincts of human beings.

The primary team building process is constantly fighting to throw away ‘distancing’ to a great distance. The ideal corporate team building events concentrate on bringing together employees who do not always get the chance to come in close, if not in personal contact with each other.

The prime ideological stand is that, if an employee does not know his or her co-workers then he or she cannot actively participate to boost up the company profile and morale as a whole. It is all about fixing the SELF, not into the category called OTHER, but under the umbrella named WE.

The corporate event management companies divide the employees into various groups. Apparently, it seems that the process is breaking the basic notion of team building activities, but in fact, it just adds to the notion.

The participants here never feel rivalry among themselves. They are conscious that it is merely a game though they need to win. Thus, they fail to concentrate on the issue that it is a part of the team building exercise tailored by the company. This lack of concentration on the subtle issue ultimately does the trick. The idea of the team is built in the consciousness of the participant that excludes the visual divisions.

The job is done.

However, a Corporate Hospitality Company must be cautious of the standard and socio-cultural background of the participants. Otherwise, the whole process may go in vain.