Investing in Fun: The Importance of Team Building at Corporate Events
Investing in Fun: The Importance of Team Building at Corporate Events
Are your corporate events stiff and boring, or do you want to challenge your employees to some fun? Learn about the importance of team building here.
Keyword(s): importance of team building
Okay, okay - I know what you're thinking. Not more team building!
For most people, team building brings up bad memories of awkward trust falls. It makes you want to crawl under the covers and die of embarrassment.
But that's not what we're talking about here. What we're talking about is team building done right. And when it's done right, team building is the most important investment you can make for your business.
Read on to discover the importance of team building and how to use team building activities to create a stronger, more tight-knit team.
Building Trust
Shared emotions can bond people. When employees go through team building experiences together, they get to know one another in a different way than they would in the office environment.
People like to feel connected. And team building provides that connection. Especially when you consider that team building takes the process required to build trust and condenses it into a few hours.
This can help team members understand each other's strengths and weaknesses. And when you know the person in the cubicle next to you isn't perfect, it makes it easier to like them. This makes it easier to trust them.
Building trust among your team also means that team members are more likely to look out for one another because they'll feel bonded. This means that employees will be more likely to help one another out - which can help avoid resentment and internal conflict.
Co-workers tend to be the thing people like best about their jobs. So you want to give your employees a chance to find that connection. It gives them a shared experience to talk about.
For example, choosing an event like carnival games gives your employees the chance to bond over bragging rights when they help each other win. This will connect them and make them trust each other for a long time to come!
Mitigating Conflict
Again, team building helps people get to know each other. This is important when it comes to avoiding or resolving conflict. It's harder to hate your coworker or be mad at your boss when you know that they're afraid of heights or that they love country music, right?
Team building makes your employees appear more human to each other.
This is important because many workplace arguments are really just simple misunderstandings or miscommunications. Team building makes it easier for people to get to know each other's personalities and communication styles, which makes it easier to resolve conflict.
Why?
Because when we know how someone else communicates, it makes it easier for us to understand what they're saying. What may originally have been thought of as a snarky comment may actually just be a co-worker who has a sarcastic sense of humour.
Trying new things with your staff creates strong relationships among the employees, which helps prevent conflict in the future.
Encouraging Communication
Quite simply, team building encourages communication.
When people are thrust into an environment that isn't their normal day-to-day and they have to suddenly figure out how to do something new with their fellow team members, they have to learn how to communicate differently or better than normal.
And since much of our communication in the office is routinized, it is sometimes hard to pinpoint the place where communication breaks down. But team building exercises can throw those issues into stark relief, making it easier to find and fix issues.
Team building exercises often require that team members think on their feet or work together (or both!), which can easily be linked back to what they do in the office.
When working together is practised at a team building event it can become much easier to make it the standard in the office. If team members know how to communicate with one another, then they're more likely to work together.
And again, team building increases trust. And when you trust someone, it's much easier to communicate with them and open up about what you need help on or where you think they could do a better job.
Increased trust and less conflict make for stellar communication.
Increasing Collaboration
When team members have to work together to win a football game, they're much more likely to be able to work together to pull off a presentation by next week.
And once team members have shared an experience like a team building exercise, they are bonded together. Teams that are bonded are more likely to collaborate.
No one works well with someone they don't know or trust. And very few people work well together without the chance to practice and establish a rhythm.
Team building offers the chance to do all of these things at once.
By using a team building exercise to practice collaboration among your different teams and employees, you're setting them up for success in the future when they have to collaborate on a project for you or your business.
The Importance of Team Building: Final Thoughts
Team building is great. It does all of the things necessary to strengthen your teams and increase productivity in one go. This is the true importance of team building.
Team building helps your employees learn to trust each other. It helps your employees learn how to navigate and, more importantly, avoid conflicts. It helps your team members learn how to communicate more readily. And it helps increase collaboration in the workplace.
Looking for ideas for your next team-building event or exercise? Check out our great selection of games and activities.
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