Corporate Team Building
These days a phrase has been growing within business circles. That phrase is “team-building”. What exactly is team building though? Team building refers to the activities undertaken by groups of people in order to increase their motivation and boost cooperation. This distinction is different from teamwork, here the idea is an established group is working together to overcome a problem. Team building, though it may look the same on the surface, is more about using situations to strengthen the familiarity of other team members and their work style, thus creating new teams. Usually, team building has little to do with the typical workspace and instead occurs in more entertainment-style venues where work personas can be softened and people can learn more about their coworkers.
Why should you care about this I hear you ask. The answers here are many and varied, but we hope to cover a few. Many studies have researched what qualities best effect teamwork, and many different team-building activities tend to test these aspects. Among them is the ability to define and set goals that are currently needed, making sure that communication continues to flow among members, the ability to take a goal when recognized and then take responsibility and direction, and finally the ability to shift group structure based on needs.
So now that we know what team building is and why it's useful, the big question would become why team building is something worth investing in. Team building activities often are performed with the idea of the rules governing the team being made clear to the members at the beginning. This means that everyone starts on a similar playing field which generally requires no outside knowledge and which may be equally unfamiliar to all participants. Thus, this allows the qualities mentioned previously to dynamically develop within your team’s structure. This means not only a chance to strengthen those traits under pressure, but also allows those traits to resurface in a useful way once you return to your own work environment. These face-to-face interactions also help to allow parties that normally do not work together to meet and interact. In addition, if you so desire your team-building activities can be designed in a way to foster friendly competition among your groups, allowing for a healthier form of competition in the workplace.
Now that team building has been fully explained, where should you do it? At UEG we are obviously a bit biased, our favorite team-building activities are escape rooms! Each team-building activity is going to hit on different notes from the point above, some will hit all of them, others just a few. Escape rooms are the team building activity that usually covers all of the points of team building mentioned above. In escape rooms players will have to work as a team, dynamically develop their group structure, change these structures as puzzles require, and of course in escape rooms communication is key. So if you are looking for a team-building activity, escape rooms are the best place to start. Now you will just need to convince your boss of this fact! Stay tuned for our next blog post, where you will find out how to gather the information you need to take to your administrators and can learn how to set up the path to your next team-building adventure.
