Team Building: Fun or Useful?
I learned something this week. I should say I "re-learned" something. Team building without homework is entertainment. It is the time of year for "offsites". People are doing business planning. With business planning, comes the one or two day offsite (I'll come back to that in a future blog -- these are expensive -- are they necessary?). I get lots of calls from clients. "I have my team in for two days, can you do some team building with them?" My next question should always be, "do you want to have fun or do you want to improve how your team functions?" On at least one occasion this week, I neglected to ask that question.
Had I asked it and gotten the answer "I just want fun for the team." I would have said, "Don't hire me, spend the money on a martini bar, beer and wings or a fancy restaurant meal (whatever suits your team)."
Spending money on fun team building exercises is really a waste of money. These experiences have no lasting impact. Personally, as a team member myself, I'd rather have a nice social event than climb ropes or do games. What's the alternative?
Do some homework. -Find out how well you are leading the team. -Find out if they are clear on your vision. -Find out if they know what the team's role is in the vision and what their individual roles are. -Find out what is truly helpful to them about meetings and offsites. -Finally, find out what they really need and want to talk about at an offsite. Offsite opportunities are gold. Don't waste them. Once you have the answers to those questions, present them to the team. Facilitate a discussion. Come to some conclusions that will help the team perform better. If you are the leader of a team, you will also learn something about how you are leading that team. You should be entering any offsite with that valuable information in hand so you can act on it while you have your team in front of you. One of my colleagues always says, "work on the leader first, then the team." That is useful team building and money well spent.
