No matter what kind of team you have, ensuring they work together will determine the difference between failure and success. Every team must-do activities that help build the team’s foundation before requiring them to depend on each other. The foundation to gain clarity and understanding is what Team Building is all about.
That foundational success or failure of a team is built on three principles. The team-building principles are Trust, Time, and Talk. If you don’t have these 3 T’s regularly occurring within your team, you can’t expect them to be successful.
What is Team Building?
Getting your team to work together takes time and requires the leaders to support the efforts required. Team building is the process you need to make team members work towards the same goals. By spending time together and talking to each other, they will learn to trust each other.
How to encourage team building?
There are many ways to encourage team building. Focus on spending time together or getting team members talking; this will build trust. Here we will cover some of my favorite team building tips.
- Define team responsibilities, so they don’t think others on the team are unfair or disruptive to the overall goals. This requires clear communication and a judge free zone where team members can bring up their concerns.
- Set team and individual goals by discussing what is important. Make sure everyone has a voice and gets input on the team goals. Setting goals through Vision Boards, development plans, or just through talking about their intentions will ensure success.
- Teach by example and spend time building a relationship with each person on the team. Get to know what they like, dislike. Chit chat has a purpose; it allows people to build relationships that last and ensures they place value on each other’s opinions.
- Remain positive! The power of positivity and understanding self-worth is not used enough in a team setting. Team members will feed off each other, and you need to spend time reinforcing this behavior. So whether that’s good or bad, they will set the tone for others. Make sure they are positive!
Team Building Activities
Here are a couple of team building activities that will build your successful team!
- Word of Intention: Create a word that has significant meaning behind it. Your word can represent the team goal, a personal goal or some other significance. Write the word down on a piece of paper and draw a picture or drawn colors around the word to highlight it. Then display the words in a place team members will see them each day.
- Silver Lining: Discuss a recent situation that some or all of the team members were involved in. After a brief recap, discuss only the learning and positive experiences out of this situation.
- Purpose Mingle: Have team members walk around telling others what they plan to contribute to the meeting. This gets them thinking about topics and ideas they want to share. This will encourage them to be active participants in the session as well.
Team Building Wrap Up
All in all, your team must recognize each other’s greatest skills. It’s equally important that they understand their weaknesses to pair with others on the team who have their flaws as skills. Encourage your team to trust each other by spending time and talking to each other.
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