team building in the workplace
Team Building in the Workplace
Team building is very important if you wish to extract the best out of your workforce. Read on to find out more about the importance of team building in the workplace and how to go about it.
- Conduct Employee Feedback Activities: Employee surveys and feedback activities are a great way of breaking the ice and encouraging employees to speak freely. It makes the employees feel wanted and gives them an assurance of the fact that their opinions are valued. Useful inputs for the success of a project can be obtained during feedback sessions.
- Promote Informal Addressing: Step out of the traditional and formal way of employee-boss interaction and speak freely. This gives the employees a reassurance that you are one of them (just like a team member) and not a corporate Hitler. This will work to your advantage as it encourages open workplace communication, sharing of ideas, and helps maintain healthy work relations. One cannot keep an open mind while listening or speaking when under pressure. An informal session can thereby, ease the pressure.
- Organize a Day Trip: Reward your employees for the good work they have done in the past by organizing a day trip. Encourage employees to bring along their spouses and children. It can be a welcome break from the daily work-related pressures and help the fellow employees and their bosses to interact, bond, and get to know each other in a better manner. This can, in many ways, translate into better returns at the workplace.
- Celebrate Each Other's Success: Learn to appreciate and acknowledge each other's efforts. Also, celebrate the success of a job well done or a project delivered well ahead of the deadline. There is no better way than appreciating each others' success to instill a sense of team spirit. This helps in wiping out any kind of negativity and keeps the team united. Also, the team begins their work with a renewed vigor and greater focus.
- Initiate Group Discussion Sessions: If you have a major project-related decision to make, which you are not very sure about, try asking your employees for their views on the subject. Have a group discussion on the matter and seek their suggestions and opinions. In any case, it will be you yourself who has the last word, but this particular gesture will promote teamwork, boost employee confidence and, once again, make them feel valued and wanted.
- "There is no 'I' in TEAM" ~ Anonymous
- "A single arrow is easily broken, but not ten in a bundle" ~ Japanese proverb
- "A boat doesn't go forward if each one is rowing their own way" ~ Swahili proverb
- "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success" ~ Henry Ford
- "One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team" ~ Kareem Abdul Jabbar
- "A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough of himself and his contribution to praise the skill of the others" ~ Norman Shidle
- "You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note" ~ Doug Floyd