Team Building: Why It’s Important to Have an Exceptional Team and How to Get There

Collaboration and synergy are big buzzwords in business today. Whatever type of organization you run, you’ve likely heard that having an incredible team will make your business more successful. However you feel about working on teams, you probably know that the hype is true. Incredible teams do matter. We can all point out successful organization that have them. Unfortunately, team building can be tougher said than done. To succeed, you’ll need innovative strategies and a solid understanding of why teams are so important in the first place.

Teams 101: Why Do They Matter?

There are a handful of entrepreneurs out there who believe that they can find business success all on their own. While this might be true one time in a million, most business success is the direct result of a team effort. There’s simply no big organization out there that could run without the help of many, many employees. Even very small and mid-sized organizations rely on teams to get things done. After all, not everyone has the same talents. What one team member is lacking another team member may very well have.

All professional team sports revolve around this logic. After all, you don’t see quarterbacks filling in for defensive linemen or fullbacks filling in for goalies. That’s because most players specialize in a certain position. The same is true at successful organizations. Giving employees the opportunity to work on teams where they can focus on what they do best is a great way to keep them motivated while increasing the quality of work that teams produce.

How to Build a Great Team

There’s no doubt that your organization needs great teams, but there might be doubt about how you can go about getting them. Is it just a matter of hiring the right people? Is it about creating rigid job descriptions to ensure that employees can focus on one task at a time? At Cristaux, we don’t think it’s about waiting on luck or dictating every little task. We think it’s about taking the time to coach and build a team.

Choosing Effective Activities

Activities are at the center of team building and coaching. Team building activities are pretty ubiquitous in the workplace, and you’ve probably participated in them at some point in time in the form of icebreakers. Like many employees, you may have hated them. Ineffective activities have earned team building activities on the whole a bad reputation in the business world, but that doesn’t mean that you should shy away from them.

Instead, you should focus on choosing activities that speak to your industry. After all, what will work to build a team in a beauty parlor might not work on the floor of a manufacturing facility. Take stock of your team, and then choose activities that speak to their talents and preferences. The goal is to help employees get to know one another and work towards a common aim while using their unique skills. Any activity that allows them to do this is a successful team building activity whether it be a light-hearted building competition or intense puzzle-solving session.

Avoiding the Biggest Team building Trap

In addition to choosing the right team building activities, it’s also essential to avoid team building traps. The biggest of all is simply irregularity. Many organization only “do” team building once or twice a year. If you think about it, that really makes no sense. You wouldn’t expect a football team to win the Super Bowl without regular practice, so why would you expect your team to succeed if you don’t provide plenty of coaching opportunities? Team building is best when it happens on a weekly or even monthly basis.

Here at Cristaux International, we celebrate our teams because we couldn’t do what we do without them. We love helping our clients define strong team building. After all, recognition isn’t just about individuals. It’s about what your organization as a whole is accomplishing.