Team Building Activities In Practice

by Owen Jones⁽¹⁸⁹⁾ Red Star

http://the-real-way.com

Companies are run by teams. Management is a team or a group of teams or even a team of teams and physical manufacture is carried out by teams as well. For instance, a construction firm has a team of office staff and a team of carpenters, plumbers, labourers, electricians and other tradesmen to work on site.

Regrettably, the two teams rarely meet and an 'us and them' attitude may develop leading to a rift in the firm as a whole. Team building and firm activities may help to mend that schism and unite the company in its objective to expand the firm and raise its earnings and that of its employees by satisfying the objectives of its clientele.

Team building events are intended to prevent this division ever taking place and to repair it if management has not been watchful enough to notice it developing or too ignorant to know what to do about it or to know that it would lead to trouble one day. These schisms between office staff and workers used to be widespread in the days whilst white collar workers tended to come from the middle class.

Indeed, numerous individuals even considered them desirable, in order to keep the workers in their place. Attitudes started to change with the arrival of trades unions, but did not really start to gain ground until the mid-Eighties and Nineties, although it may be fairer to say that some larger companies and even some countries were ahead of the trend. Smaller, more traditional companies definitely lagged behind.

Team building events should be tailored to suit the employees that they are meant to unite. First let us distinguish between staff functions and team building. Each firm ought to hold at least one staff party a year for people to mingle, meet and let their hair down.

Traditionally, this was the Staff or Firm's Christmas Party. I do not see any reason to modify a tradition that worked well for decades, merely because not everyone is a Christian now.

Get real, they never were all Christian, it is just that you have just become aware of it. You are not going to hold religious services, merely have a meal, a couple of drinks and a dance. That will not offend non-Christians.

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Team building events are much more structured and every event has an objective or a quest that has to be completed for that event to be brought to a successful close. Decent team building activities give the team an unforgettable, unusual experience which will connect them together. It might also give the company something apart from increased profitability.

A team building event in this genre might be to create a new company logo or TV advert. Or solving a bottleneck difficulty on a production line or in the office.

One of the best team building exercises I ever went to was held by a builders' suppliers. Their firm staff hosted an outdoor clay pigeon shooting event. Over the previous year, some members had been taught to shoot and teach others; some had studied sliver service and others had studied how to cook. They created a fantastic event for their 40 best clients which none of us or them has ever forgotten 25 years later.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now concerned with team building examples. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Small Team Building Activities

Article submitted Wednesday, July 20, 2011 & read 184 times.

Owen Jones writes on many subjects and is currently running several websites. He was born in Wales but now lives in northern, rural Thailand.

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