Redefining Team Building through the '5 Superpowers of a United Team'

“A company is only as good as the people it keeps.”

Mary Kay Ash

Traditional Team Building

Traditionally team building is synonymous with team bonding. Most events are great fun and the group leaves the session energised and refreshed. But what else do they deliver? Usually, little else. Certainly, the group feels more connected with their colleagues, but what of lasting change?

This is where traditional team building falls down. Perhaps I’m being unfair as it is usually only meant to be a fun escape from work, but what if it could have a more lasting impact on the team. What if it could serve as a catalyst for real team transformation and personal growth.

Facts & Stats about Team Building

Here are some facts about the importance of team building to company performance taken from Team Stage’s blog ‘Team Building Statistics: Effectiveness and Engagement’*:

·?????A fully engaged workforce can deliver twice the revenue and this comes through improved communications and engagement between colleagues.

·?????Employee satisfaction levels increase by 50% when individuals are surrounded by people with whom they are friendly.

·?????Nearly 75% of employees see teamwork and collaboration as essential ingredients of success.

·?????86% of executives feel that a lack of collaboration is at the core of company failures in general

·?????Organisations that promote and foster collaboration and communication are 4.5 times less likely to lose their employees. This tallies with the fact that a third of employees believe that a culture of collaboration increases staff loyalty. This further supported by the statistic that over 50% of employees stayed with their company because they felt part of a team.

·?????Team building can improve work ethic by up to ten times by harmonising the team, boosting morale, promoting wellness and building trust levels.

A new kind of Team Building

When we first launched Team Building with Purpose, we had lofty ambitions of redefining what team building meant and ensuring that the initial impact and experience served as the beginning of a transformational journey for the participants both on an individual and group level, whilst also creating a ripple of change in the community.

This is why we aligned each session with a charity and drew parallels between their work and how they helped people in need with the similar ‘human’ needs their clients have and those of the teams in the workforce, be that around vulnerability & trust, communication and collaboration, mental health, respect, environmental sustainability, community….

We realised that the difference between the clients our charity partners helped and the employees was merely that the former had fallen on bad times.

By doing this we have found that the groups we host form an immediate connection to the area, issue or value that most closely mirrors theirs. We have also found that by focusing on the disadvantaged world of others makes it easier for teams to open up and explore important issues that may be at play in their own workplace as they are examining them indirectly at first. Should the group feel safe, they then can discuss how it plays out in their own world.

And so, we found that by looking through the eyes of a charity and the issues their clients face, opens up the conversation to examine how this plays out in the team. Furthermore, by getting the group to focus on and collaborate to help a charity, this served to give them all a shared purpose and open their hearts to give and at the same time receive.

So besides learning some fascinating things about a charity and the people they help, the group also learns about themselves and gets that special feeling of warmth having done something nice and good to help the lives of someone less fortunate than themselves.

This Win/Win not only leans the group enjoys the session, but the feeling of higher purpose and shared connection to your colleagues and the charity, delivers a platform to enable both personal and group growth and transformation as the team takes their learning’s back to work and home after the session. They also share in the knowledge that together they have helped that charity both financially and in kind as each session delivers an output of value to the charity (e.g., hampers) and a financial contribution to them also as 50% of the net profit goes to each charity partner which we guarantee will be at least $500 + GST (for the smallest group!).

"The 5 Superpowers of a United Team"

When we reviewed the core design of our team building sessions and referred to Patrick Lencioni’s well respected ‘Five Dysfunctions of a Team’…

1.????Absence of trust

2.????Fear of Conflict

3.????Lack of Commitment

4.????Avoidance of Accountability

5.????Inattention to Results

…and we realised that we had effectively met and addressed each one of the team dysfunctions he had identified, as follows:

1.????By building connection and vulnerability in our sessions we established greater levels of trust in the team.

2.????By promoting open debate, we created a space for healthy conflict and showed the group that this could be done safely.

3.????Through the theme of a charity and the insights and inspirational stories we shared we enabled the group to step out of the work environment and ‘mode’ and created emotional engagement (to the charity cause and the people they helped as well as to colleagues who they may discover in the session have also been affected somehow by the topic/cause at hand – illness in the family, mental health, homelessness…) that delivered greater levels of commitment.

4.????Through the shared activities and commitments, we saw greater shared responsibility, which fostered higher levels of accountability.

5.????By mobilising the group to follow through on their intents this fostered collective action which in turn delivered results.

Our sessions are designed to deliver fun, open the group‘s hearts to the plight of others (including their own colleagues) and open their minds to new ways of thinking and behaving. As such, this is a training ground for transformational change.

Empowering your Teams to Reach their Full Potential

In effect, what our sessions provide team leaders is the forum in which to unlock the blocks & dysfunctions that may be present in their team and overcome the obstacles through the focus on the world of our charity partner.

And our professional team building facilitators are adept at helping tease out the parallels, make the space safe to encourage high levels of group participation and sharing. This in turn breaks down the barriers to foster vulnerability and in turn enable group connection and bonding so that new levels of understanding, respect and trust can be established.

And all this within one team building session!

The responsibility thereafter resides with the team leader and their people. It will be up to them to keep the momentum and follow through on intentions and commitments. If they do this, then the dysfunctions the team may have had before will be replaced by a mobilisation of the team, greater team dynamics and a sense of team pride and unity that will translate directly to the bottom line.

“Remember, team work begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”

Patrick Lencioni

If this is something that you think would be of value to your team, check out our website www.teambuildingwithpurpose.com.au and see for yourself what our many corporate clients are saying about our sessions and what they have delivered for their people.

*Thanks to Team Stage and their blog – ‘Team Building Statistics: Effectiveness and Engagement’ and their sources: Gallup, Kenexa research Institute, TeamBuilding.com, Queens University of Charlotte, Salesforce, BIT.A1, RoomToEscape.com, The Economist, Museum Hack, Gusto, GitLab and SHRM: https://teamstage.io/team-building-statistics/#:~:text=83%25%20of%20companies%20report%20an,them%20to%20build%20relationships%20remotely .