I came across an excellent post over at Positive Sharing this morning which really captures the essence of how not to develop a team i.e. by running a competitive team building event. How many times have you gone to one of these events and found that the objective is to beat everyone not in "your team" by completing some contrived exercises? Great, that will you be fixed then you have beaten everyone and and ridiculed the loosers.
So what to do if you really want to improve your teams performance? Here are a few tips:
First of all decide if you want to be a team - no common goals? Then you are a group not a team. Just give them all a day off and they will be happy.
Decide and agree what your goals are - all of you - make sure the Personal Assistants are in the room as let's face it they probably run your company anyway.
Ask the team to actually build something together - if you are a food company go and feed some people in need, a legal or consulting business - go out and provide some pro bono services etc.
Take some time out to reflect on what you did and most importantly how you felt during the process - what could you do to make everyday feel so productive?
All seems a bit obvious but as with many such things it appears to be so obvious that people just do not see it.
2 comments:
Great stuff!! Very thorough and detailed. As an HR Manager here in North Carolina, I want to share something in the motivation category. This website and so many others are filled with great ideas and thoughts, I wanted to be able to share these with the employees at my company.
So when it’s time to recognize someone for their performance, I take one of these quotes from my (long) list, and instead of giving them a standard old plaque, I put the quote on a DYI – Design Your Inspiration from Successories. They are very handsomely framed and the photo choices are very good. It’s made employee recognition much more meaningful AND appreciated. The website is http://www.dyi.successories.com Thanks again. Anne
I've never seen much point in practicing team work outside the work of the team itself. The processes and even our roles are likely to be linked to the work we do.
Like a sports team, we might practice on the practice pitch, but I think we have to do the real thing.
Post a Comment