The modern manager has to spend a lot of energy and spend precious time on combining the workforce into a single team and motivating them to achieve high results. Teambuilding trainings increase motivation of employees, strengthen their loyalty to the company and management, minimize the number of conflicts. What are the most common ways of teambuilding?
Different ways for different tasks
The forms of conducting trainings on teambuilding are diverse and aimed at achieving different goals. Effective lessons can be focused on the development of the staff’s ability to make the right decision in a difficult situation, awareness of responsibility not only for their own, but also for collective activities, to increase the stress resistance, understanding and acceptance of the values and principles of the company.
Extreme trainings
Ukrainian companies began to use the technique of extreme training more and more often in order to build the team and establish friendly relations between employees. Its purpose is to form team spirit, stress resistance, and to establish interaction between participants outside the workplaces.
The training method involves getting out of its comfort zone and changing the behaviour of workers in extreme conditions. Typically, this type of training is conducted outside the office and even the city. The place for such a method can be a forest, a reservoir, and a hilly area. Various scenarios for action can be offered to participants: quest, extreme downhill, survival in field conditions, participation in team games, solving common tasks, etc.
After a common overcoming of obstacles in the wild - mountain climbing or river boosting - there is the effect of cooperation side by side. When participants find themselves in a situation where difficulties can not be solved on their own, they experience the benefits of teamwork at a subconscious level. The methods of communication between the participants also change. In normal life people communicate under “chief – subordinate” principle, then during the training that distance is reduced in the literal sense of the word. In addition, any tests help to show leadership qualities. If the team sees that the leader is a leader not only in business, but also in an informal situation, trust in him/her grows.
Joint passing of all stages of extreme training by employees ensures teambuilding, elimination of psychological stress in the team, improvement of communication between employees, and also trains employees to negotiate with each other, which can become a guarantee of team work on the result. Also, each participant can challenge himself and test his/her strength and capabilities as a team player.
Corporate picnics
Quite often joint outdoor picnics for company employees or scenic journeys can become elements of internal corporate PR and help improve informal communication between team members. Colleagues can look at each other’s eyes outside the office walls, get closer and improve the friendly atmosphere in the team.
The reason for joint rest can be successfully signed contract, undergone audit, corporate holidays (company’s birthday, professional holidays). Outings can also include collective games for company employees (football, creative master classes, sports competitions, etc.). After such outings, employees may have more confidence in each other, overcoming communication barriers when working in a team, for example, when participating in joint sports events. And the team will be able to share their impressions of the trip for a long time, which will greatly improve the interpersonal interaction between the employees.
Sports competitions
Wrestling, weightlifting, football and other sports competitions can show both informal leaders and reveal the hidden talents of ordinary employees who are not accustomed to show their work. Often, the leadership provides valuable gifts for winners in such competitions, which serve as a stimulus for further achievements and contribute to the self-esteem of the employee in the team. In addition, employees can cheer for each participants of the competition. It can be either colleagues from the department, friends among the employees of the entire company or fans chosen by drawing lots.
Experience gained during training, unites people and can be transferred in labor relations by them. Employees, who showed organizational skills in game situations, strengthen the positions of informal leaders. Mastered various methods of group decision of tasks - brainstorming, techniques of planning and monitoring the implementation of the intended - are actively used in solving working problems. The orientation of people to understand each other without words when performing tasks becomes the basis for establishing special trust relationships in the team.
The main task of modern teambuilding is to train employees to work in a team. In order to create a positive working atmosphere and achieve productive cooperation, both physical and psychological health of workers will be required.
