Teambuilding: the most important business investment you will make?
In the Forbes article titled ‘Why Team Building Is The Most Important Investment You’ll
Make’, it notes that teambuilding ‘builds trust, mitigates conflict, encourages
communication, and increases collaboration’. It further states that ‘effective team building
means more engaged employees, which is good for company culture and boosting the
bottom line’.
The differentiator here is the effectiveness of the teambuilding.
The largest Reducible Cost in Business is in Working Relationship
The largest reducible cost in business is to be found in working relationships (McConnon,
Better Place to Work) such as poor communication, misunderstanding, personality clashes
and the like. Therefore attending to this, through effective team building and team
development, will directly develop and improve the greatest resource a business has which
is its people.
Consequently if you want to build or improve a business it is necessary to develop the team
and invest in team development.
Teambuilding versus Team Bonding
There are a spread of levels of team building from fun games and away days, to more
focused facilitated activities, team coaching sessions and a series of teambuilding to create
team development. The challenge is understanding what’s available, what are your needs
and commitment to team building, and therefore what’s the best value and fit for you.
There's a plethora of fun team bonding and teambuilding activities you can buy which will
have little or no business value, and sadly there’s plenty of very poor team building options
available that might lead to more conflict, damaged relationships and misunderstanding.
Low quality or badly delivered team events and activities can and do exclude people, negate
people’s values and cause unhelpful disruption which will likely lead to negative impact at
work and increased costs and losses.
What is Business Improvement
The essence of business improvement is described in the ‘What is business improvement’ (PJ Stevens) article as the ‘’process of a ‘thing moving from one state to a state that is
considered to be better’, usually through some action or intervention intended to bring
about that change and improvement.’’
Given this, it’s people who will come up the ideas and creativity, and will action the
intervention. Teams who work well together, who trust each other, listen and collaborate
are far more likely to share ideas and problem solve at a higher level. All of which can
translate into business improvements and useful benefits.
Teambuilding can Reduce Waste and increase the Flow of Ideas
Gallup suggests it is important to encourage teambuilding and teamwork because their
research found that poorly managed workgroups are 50% less productive and 44% less
profitable.
Similarly whilst studying at MIT Sloan School of Management, it was suggested that team
work improves the ‘flow of ideas, productivity and dollars!’ If we break that journey down
into the three parts: we start by tapping into the creativity, knowledge and ideas that exists
in business in our people; from there we can work out what to do, make decisions, create a
plan and take focused action which is the productivity part. As a result of the first two, which
are almost entirely people centric, the third element ‘flow of dollars’ will come.
The Importance of Trust
One of the key resources that we need in order to collaborate, but don’t always have, is
trust. For a group of people or team to share ideas honestly and effectively, work well
together, get creative and problem solve, is trust.
Think of a couple of people, teams or situation where you have experienced low levels of
trust. What did it feel like and look like in the team? What did you notice about people’s
behaviours and relationships.
Shelley Smith wrote ‘a lack of trust in the workplace is the virus that can create a diseased
workplace culture. It often begins with leadership and spreads throughout the team, leading
to a cycle of unhealthy responses that affect engagement and productivity.’
In a work place with low trust, we typically hear people say that we: just do our job, have low
energy, experience higher level of errors, are told what to do, can feel isolated and looking
for other jobs. None of which is conducive to high performance, productivity or
improvement.
Conversely, if you think of situations where you have experienced high levels of trust, what
did that look and feel like? How were people behaving and what was the atmosphere like?
More importantly, if I was a new member of the business or a client, what would I notice
coming into that situation?
Trust is the cornerstone for creating a workplace where employees are engaged, productive,
and continually innovating. However, there are studies and surveys that report many
business are suffering low levels of trust. According to one Harvard Business Review ‘58
percent of respondents admitted to trusting strangers more than their own boss’.
There are of course many ways to test the level of trust in business through the use of
surveys and polls. Perhaps the best way is simply to ask people and have a useful
conversation together. The act of asking the other person about trust, what it means to
them, what they need to be in place in order to trust will almost always develop trust.
Assuming of course you do this in a trustworthy way.
How can a Facilitator help?
It is better to develop these skills and experiences, and have these conversations initially,
with a qualified facilitator at a teambuilding or team development event or workshop.
The facilitator can set the scene, provide a safe environment and offer various activities or
experiments, feedback and conversations which enable participants to build the trust
‘muscles’ through positive and practical experience together – not just theory or role play –
so that they can continue to use and develop these skills in the work place.
To support this development put a plan of ‘continuous improvement’, including coaching
and team development sessions at work. This will lead to an improvement in the overall
culture of trust, collaboration, understanding and leadership, and offer quantifiable ROI.
Indeed rather than just Business Improvement, the notion of team building might sit more
usefully in relation to Continuous Improvement. When does stopping improvement make
any (business) sense anyway, surely we should be continuously improving, learning and
developing selves, teams and businesses?
Teambuilding events versus Continuous Improvement
If you shift your thinking from team building being a one off team event, to the notion of
continuous improvement, then team building and team development, and the associated
reality of that, such as improving communication, people skills, collaboration, alignment and
problem solving becomes a lot more exciting and perhaps easier to see it as an investment.
People are our greatest asset, yet they don’t sit on the balance sheet, leastways not usually,
unless perhaps you own a Sports Team, such as professional football club where players are
bought and sold.
Winning Sports Teams play together
The Sporting world is a great place to get stories, analogies and lessons from which we can
translate into business benefits. For example in the Compliance & Ethics article ‘Why team building is important for your business’, they note that when ‘a sports team wins a
championship, the players and coaches often cite playing together as a cohesive team as
the key to their win’.
The same could or should be true in the business and businesses. Businesses with high
performing teams are, on the whole, better places to work, are more successful and most
usually see an increase in productivity and their bottom line.
Managers would sooner Service their Car than Invest in Teams
Sadly, there are managers and leaders in businesses who fail to understand the real value
of team building and the significant impact and improvement it can offer the business.
Therefore they don’t take the time to invest in teambuilding activities and facilitated team
development programmes.
Funnily enough, over the years, I see these same leaders make sure their cars are regularly
serviced. They see this as necessary investment as its ‘important to follow the dealer service
plan’ and ‘a car is a reflection of you’. Surely it is more important to have a service or
development plan for your people and how you are as a leader speaks way more about you
than a car?
It’s people who drive a business forwards or slow it down
If you are still wondering if you should invest in a programme of team building – virtually,
face to face, or both – remember these words from my mentor, Shay McConnon, ‘its people
who drive a business forwards, slow it down or put it in reverse’.
Teambuilding is most certainly an important investment in business and business
improvement, and if you are serious about business improvement, consider team
development and the relationship with continuous improvement.
Team development is about continuously improving people, relationships, trust and
teamwork, which will go hand in hand with the culture and behaviours necessary to support
continuous improvement in business.
Summary
In summary:
Part 1
People = your greatest asset
Teambuilding = investment (not cost)
Part 2
Team building as an event = business improvement
Team development as a programme = continuous improvement
