Big Red Cloud: How to Team Build
There’s an age old debate between leadership versus management. Building a team that collaborates well and performs at their peak is the mission of most leaders. That’s because leadership requires the trust of your subordinates whom you influence, where management requires control over them. Team building is an excellent way of generating empathy among your team members, of showing them the value of working together, giving them something to celebrate together, and even share a non-work related experience together which deepens bonds and trust between all team members.
Building a great team isn’t done in a day. It is a process that pervades everyday interactions, it is an attitude that staff emulate from senior management. If there is respect at the top of the management chain to the team then there will be respect both across the team and back to the management. It is a two-way street. That said, team building days out can have a fantastic impact on the team and give them a much-needed motivational boost.
Here are Big Red Cloud’s top tips on how to build a great team:
- Ditch the cliches.
If there’s one way to get team members sighing and rolling their eyes, it’s managers using outdated cliches like ‘think outside the box’ and the classic ‘there’s no I in team!’. When interacting with the team try to encourage them by showing them the value of their work and recognizing when they have gone over and above their role to complete something. Any form of acknowledgement for a job well done is an emotional and social need. Being genuine and sincere is a form of motivation – even the most cynical of staff can see and respect when their manager truly means what they are saying.
- Encourage transparency across the team.
Teams can get demotivated when some members feel they are picking up the slack of other team members. A daily team huddle for a progress review ensures that everyone gets a fair and equal opportunity to present their work and their obstacles, and provides team leaders with a great chance to acknowledge the hard work of the team while building trust and transparency.
- Get socialising
Whether it’s a team lunch or a team night out to celebrate the hard work on the latest project deployment, encourage your team to socialise together. It is better if the team themselves organise the location and the event and they are far more likely to show up if they have had an input into the details.
- Organise a Team Building event
There are plenty of companies out there who specialise in organising engaging and fun team building events, but it can be just as easy to organise them yourself if you have a high energy person keeping the momentum going. Whether it’s building a raft, a day go-karting or a murder mystery day out on a country estate, gathering your team together for a day of action-packed fun is likely to get your team laughing, relaxing and problem solving together, building bonds and breaking down barriers. While technical challenges encourage project management and creative ingenuity while working (through fun) towards a shared goal. Other fun events such as competitive events and games encourage trust, reliance on one another and ability to respect each other while getting to know each other beyond the ‘office’ personality.
- Select a Charitable team event
If you notice that your team is not particularly empathetic toward each other, a charitable team event is the perfect way to get their philanthropic, empathetic sides to shine. Working on a project that benefits someone completely unknown is the perfect way to boost team spirit and unite your team as they join forces to complete a fulfilling charitable task. There’s nothing better than the pleasure of giving, and while your team get stuck into some strenuous but rewarding work for others, their understanding for each other may just improve.
- Arrange an Adventure Hunt team event
If your team is feeling a little lacklustre and everyone is quietly working in silos without much interaction, there is nothing like an adventure hunt to get everyone’s energy levels soaring. Against the clock, in teams, and with equal opportunity to succeed, an adventure hunt is a great way to fire up communication, competitive spirit and conviviality. As the teams race across the town or countryside to track down clues, often with the help of technology such as tablets, apps, GPS and QR codes, everyone contributes to the problem solving and gets to have a blast along the way. With Adventure Hunts it’s often the case that multimedia ‘evidences’ are required to release a clue – whether photos, videos or sound files, all of which lead to hilarious reviews at the end of the day.
- Cook up a Culinary team event
For high performing teams who work well together, culinary team events can seem like both a company reward and a way to express creativity while having fun, through a blend of delicious food, healthy competition and individual innovation. Cooking and eating together are some of the best social ways for staff to get to know each other beyond the day job, and a culinary event provides the perfect backdrop for communication, having fun, exploring cuisines and tastes together.
Conclusion
Productivity is often measured in statistics like team targets, and assisted with great technology such as Big Red Cloud’s accounting software. At Big Red Cloud Team we care about team building too because we know that a happy team is a productive team. Building a great team is about addressing their emotional needs and giving influence and personal motivation rather than rigid control and implied penalties. Get your team’s productivity soaring, with good quality interaction, effortless engagement, great communication and their improve their ability to rely upon one another with some leadership skills and team building events.
