Team Building essay
The existence of a healthy team is always associated with questions that sooner or later face any human resources manager: how to ensure a comfortable coexistence in the working team, how to encourage employees to maintain and develop contacts with their colleagues, how to quickly and efficiently perform the tasks, which require joint work. All these and many other issues can be addressed with a help of special training called teambuilding.
Team building is aimed at building effective relationships within the team. This concept includes corporate events, psychological training which models the life of the collective, various playing activities, team games. At the heart of team building is the notion that the team is a single body that brings together independent personalities, which alone can do a lot, but together can achieve much more. Corporate training can increase staff productivity by increasing employees’ motivation, improve the quality of their decisions and improve their interaction in the work. The process of creating and supporting the team is the very essence of teambuilding training.
Team building is carried out for the team members based on common organizational goals: one or more departments, the project team members from different regions, management team, board of managers, etc.
Team building is aimed at:
• creating an atmosphere of informal communication;
• building closer relationships between team members;
• improving team spirit and teamwork;
• identification of leaders;
• development team qualities, such as mutual support, ability to compromise.
The first purpose of team building is to create an effective team. In the first place, such training help to form skills of analyzing the situation and behavior, as well as monitoring emotional state. This is important because it is lack of understanding between employees is a key cause of destructive processes in the company, which leads to loss of valuable employees, emergence of resistance, loss of information. Also team building teaches participants to interact more effectively with each other, to trust and understand each other. Due to this, it is possible to significantly reduce the level of conflict, because it allows to develop different solutions to problems.
Team building can change the roles in the team structure. An effective team means that each member is able to take on multiple roles, which are functional at the same time (generator of ideas, critic, analyst, etc.). In addition, it is worth noting that team building does not imply the presence of destructive roles (an outcast). The team must solve the problems by offsetting weakness, rather than looking for culprits. In an effective team the general and personal potential of all participants must be used.
The degree of success of training depends on the coach and its members. The coach has the right to establish a process, to be an expert and hold certain knowledge. His task is the process of achieving results, and team task is a result itself. Team building can be of various kinds: in the game form, sports activities (pinball, bowling tournament, etc.) and business strategy. The range of team building activities is quite wide and varied. But the essence of any of them is to rally a team through joint activities to overcome the difficulties, to resolve situations that require a collective unity and support, members’ transition from “I” to “we”, that is, to the team.
Also, team building can help in the presence of conflicts in the team, as informal dialogue and joint activities help to improve relations between employees, to remove misunderstandings. As a result of team-building, team members will know each other better and find a common language. If there are conflicts in the team it is possible to recommend organizing outdoor sporting team games. When team members appear in unusual conditions (out of the office), they more quickly build informal communication, find mutual language and identify opinion leaders, likes and dislikes in the team. At the same time, informal communication leads to a psychological relaxation. Knowing this feature, the coach will pick up the necessary exercises for team building.
Participants must follow instructions of the coach at each stage of the training, which include:
- Teams are formed of 5-10 people, depending on the size of the group. It is better if the team will be formed randomly, it will strengthen the psychological relaxation.
- Each team must choose a captain, come up with the team name and motto, which will be used throughout the training.
- Teams throughout the training will participate in different sport competitions that require team actions, play paintball, volleyball, soccer, etc.
- At the end of the training teams are invited to discuss their activities at various stages of training, evaluate them, summarize. The winners receive awards and other participants – prizes for memory.
The result of such a corporate training is psychological relaxation and team building, resolution of conflicts and reduction of tension in the team. If managers and leaders participate in team building, it will help to increase trust to them of other employees.
In conclusion we can say that team building is the most effective way to improve relationships between team members, improve the climate in the team, improve mutual understanding and trust of its members, as well as resolve conflicts.
