It’s an undeniable fact that the team building activities immensely contribute towards creating the much needed bondage among team members. Case in point is the huge success of the TV series FRIENDS. It is revealed that the show’s director James Burrows had brought the lead casts to Vegas before kick-starting the shooting, and allowed them to be themselves and get to know each other better. Post the initial success of the series, the team inculcated the habit of getting together every week as a preparation for the shoot. This can be cited as a good example of team building and its contribution towards the team’s overall success.

The team building and compatibility is quite essential for every team to be progressive and successful. The bonding activities bring in the much needed comfort zone within the team, which enables the team mates to feel secured and comfortable with one another. Today, every organization looks for new and innovative ideas from its employees. But it takes a lot for the employees to open up and share their ideas across to the management, let alone brainstorming. Creating a comfort level among the team mates and with the team leader plays a pivotal role in team building. The strategic activities like team lunches, get together, team outings, and potluck will provide a quality time among the team mates to get to know each other better and engender a special rapport with one another. This could create an elite comfortable environment within the cubicle and thus in turn result in marathon idea sharing and often mind blowing concepts and execution strategies.

Additionally, the team leaders could infuse certain creative activities such as mind mapping, brain netting, forced connection, reverse brainstorming, group sketching, brain writing and more. These activities will instigate problem solving skill, creative thinking and improved compatibility among the team mates. Apart from invoking the above skills these activities will also induce new ideas.
Nevertheless, it is also obvious that every person in the team has a different thought process. At times, these differences could turn into ugly spat and cause a rift within the team. But as mentioned above, when each team member has a good understanding of the other, they would naturally get the ways the other member thinks and act appropriately.

Taking a Bull by its Horns

Implying contemporary ideas and executing through novel strategies also invite unconventional challenges and unfamiliar crisis. This can be pertaining to anything including financial, technological, personal, organization, natural and more. These unexpected scenarios could easily put the team’s stability under scanner and the reputation of the company at a stake. In such critical situations, the team could sit together without panicking and discuss over the issue to analyze where the things went wrong, and plan accordingly to find the a mutually approved solution. Team leader plays an important role in deciding on the counter-measures and finding equilibrium of agreement among team mates.

Developing Trust among Teammates

While combating spontaneous challenges, trust-factor among team mates plays a decisive role. Generally, people have the thought that hard work and efficiency is good enough to excel in one’s career. But this is not completely true when the individual works in a team. It is trust that binds every person in the team together with a belief that peers have got his/her back. Organizations usually tend to have persons who complain or backbite about the manager or other team mate on a daily basis. This would eventually lead to poor performance as the team would lack compatibility. All these problems could be overcome with ‘Mutual Trust’. Trust cannot be achieved overnight, but it has to be gained gradually over a period of time. The manager could take the initiative to build the trust among the team mates by making them feel all are equal, holding the patience to listen to the issues any employee come up with and provide an appropriate solution, valuing every team member and holding the mutual respect. Most of all, appreciation plays a vital role in building the trust, it also motivates the employee to push his limits further, resulting in improved efficiency.