How To Better Educate Your Team Through Team Building Activities

Team building activities are a common practice for companies to attempt to improve their workforce and get better results. However, not every business knows how to utilize their potential in the best way possible. This is where education is a very important word.

When you combine team building with proper educational methods, you will be able to create a team that truly works well together as a whole. You want your team members to really understand the importance of critical thinking, and make them as efficient and productive as you can.

In this article, we are going to discuss some of the methods that you can try out in order to make your team building activities more educational and efficient.

Building trust

Trust is the foundation of a cohesive team. If you really want your team members to work together every day and come up with the best possible results through cooperation, you need them to trust each other, and also to trust you. When people distrust each other, productivity is bound to suffer. However, don’t ever forget that trust needs to be earned.

One of the best activities that can improve trust is obstacle courses. Basically, find an open space, set up the obstacles, and then separate your team into groups of three. One member of each group needs to be blindfolded. Another member must have their head turned away from the obstacle, but will be holding and guiding the former team member. The third person is supposed to see the course and non-verbally explain how it is supposed to be done to the guide.

Basically, learning how to properly give instructions will also build trust between the team members and generate better results.

Getting people to know each other

Still, trust requires people to get to know each other, so that they can truly open up. Fortunately, team building activities can also be the number one motivator for sparking communication.

You can also achieve this through a game. Use a ball and write a whole lot of numbers on it. What your employees need to do is throw the ball to each other. Now, you need a list with questions that are going to correspond to every number that is on the ball. When a person catches the ball, the number that is the nearest to their hand marks the question that they are supposed to answer.If you want a more discrete approach, you can make everyone write three things about themselves on a piece of paper and put it in a bag. This will allow them to share what they are comfortable with, so no one will feel forced and/or embarrassed. This all depends on the kind of work and culture your company is all about.

Dealing with remote teams

However, one must take into account the fact that not all teams work in an office. Sometimes what you have is going to be a team of remote workers that barely ever see each other in person. However, you still need to make them feel included and create an atmosphere where they all feel like they truly are a team, and not just people spread across the city, state, or whatever the case is, who are trying to pull something out while not really feeling and seeing the bigger picture.

This is where technology can be of great help. Thanks to the internet, you can surpass this barrier a lot easier than in the past.

For starters, you need access to training resources which you can properly apply to building your remote team. These will work as a sort of necessary curriculum for your workforce. Then, you need to make sure that they also have access to an open chatroom where they can discuss their results and receive the necessary feedback. By discussing and working out certain issues together, as well as getting your approval, they will feel like they are on the same page, while also learning all that they are supposed to know.

Final words

It is very important that you approach team building activities from a position of someone who intends to teach, but also to empower and bring together a cohesive team. Such activities can be very educational if you set them up properly, and can also be a lot of fun, enough for the team members to bond with one another.

Never make such activities feel forced, because the effect is bound to be just the opposite of what you want to achieve.

Infographic Provided By Axe Throwing Company, BATL Grounds