This article is written and owned by Douglas Staneart
So the boss comes to you and says, “We need a company team
building event for the annual meeting coming up. Can you
find a few options for us?” Sounds easy right? Until you
look up “team building event” on Google and get 116,000,000
results. You’ll find everything from scavenger hunts to
cooking classes to race car driving to fighter pilots to
classroom programs. And of course, everyone is counting on
you to find a program that doesn’t stink. No pressure.
There are a few basics about team building that you have to
understand to find options that are appropriate to your
group. Keep in mind that most of the people who TEACH
corporate team building programs don’t know aren’t privy to
some of the information that I’ll share with you below.
However, if you keep this information in mind when you
select a company team event, you’ll have a winner every
time.
First, you have to determine what result you are expecting
from the event. There are two main genres of team
building, and it’s real easy to get the two confused, but
understanding this key principle is the main key to
choosing the correct program. The most common type of team
building program is the “Shared Experience” type of
program. The main result from this type of team event is a
fun experience where camaraderie is built between
participants. The second type of program is a “Behavior
Change” type of program. These are what some people call
traditional team building programs and tend to be training
events where information and skill development is the focus.
Very few team building organizations are experts at both
types of programs, but a good rule of thumb to keep in mind
is that companies that specialize in behavior change
programs tend to also be pretty good at shared experience
programs. However, companies that specialize in shared
experience programs tend to not crossover as well to
deliver effective training programs. Again, this is a
general rule of thumb, but can help in determining if the
team building company that you are hiring will do a stellar
job.
Shared Experience Team Building Programs
Shared experience team events are most appropriate as a way
to add entertainment or fun to another type of scheduled
event. For instance, if your group is having a convention
or annual meeting, and you are looking for a way add some
enthusiasm and fun to the event, then a Shared Experience
type of Team Building program will do nicely. These also
work well as a reward to your team for accomplishing a goal
or as an icebreaker for new teams. A lot of companies use
these types of events for interns or to welcome new members
to an established group. In reality, just about any type
of fun activity can provide a shared experience, however,
the bigger you group is the more challenging it can be to
get a consistent result. For instance, if you have eight
people on a team, you can easily create two foursomes and
play golf together or go bowling. However, if you have a
group of 20 people play golf together, it will become more
of a small group shared experience versus a team building
event, so it takes an experienced facilitator to deliver an
event that keeps everyone involved and having fun
throughout the event. If you have 100 people or 1000
people in your group, the complexity of the shared
experience is increased exponentially. In this case,
you’ll want to do your research very thoroughly, because
one misjudgment or moment of inexperience on the part of
the team builders could make your whole event an
embarrassment.
Behavior Change Programs
Behavior change team building programs are quite a bit
different. These events, sometimes referred to as
classroom programs, work best in situations where the goals
are more results oriented such as if specific challenges
have developed within the team or if the group is looking
for ways to improve efficiency or productivity. For
instance, if a group has just gone through a merger and the
two cultures are being melded together, or if a new goal
has been set that is going to require changes to be made
within the organization, or any other situation where we
want our team to do thing differently than they have in the
past. Behavior change team building programs require a
more experienced facilitator, because the ultimate goal of
the event is to actually build teamwork, communicate more
effectively, or work more efficiently together. Those
kinds of behaviors aren’t going to manifest themselves by
getting your group to compete against each other in a
contest or by playing games together. Instead, you’ll want
a team building company that specializes in assessing the
root causes of the challenges within the organization and
who can provide information, training, and exercises to get
the participants want to work better with each other.
One of the big myths about behavior change programs or
classroom style team building programs is that they aren’t
as much fun as the shared experience event. The reality is
that folks who attend a really good classroom program will
usually feel more of a sense of accomplishment and feel
like the time that they spent was well worth it. The key
is making sure that the company that you hire to deliver
your program is interactive and fun in their deliver of the
program and that the content is appropriate for the results
that you are looking for. If both of those things are
true, then you’ll get rave reviews from your team after the
program.
The Big Mistake that will Guarantee that your Event Bombs
Understanding the two different genres of team building,
here is the thing that you want to be the most careful
about… If you have a group who is experiencing team
challenges, and you conduct a Shared Experience event to
try to fix it, you are likely to make it worse. For
instance, if you sects within your group who are
antagonistic about other sects within your group, and you
force them to team up with each other to compete with other
groups, guess what? It’s likely to backfire. However, if
you want to experience the camaraderie of a shared
experience program and still get the team building skills
developed in a classroom program, I have good news. You
can do both. Do a behavior change program in the morning,
and then use a shared experience program in the afternoon
as a laboratory to use the new skills in a controlled
environment. Then you get the best of both worlds!
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Doug Staneart is the President and CEO of The Leader’s
Institute Team Building Organization. He invented
philanthropic team building when he created the
world-famous Build-A-Bike(R) team event and has trained
over 120,000 people in team building programs. His website
is http://www.leadersinstitute.com/teambuilding
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