How Team-Building Exercises Contribute to a Successful Business

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Team Management Models (128-slide PowerPoint presentation). This presentation is a collection of PowerPoint diagrams and templates used to convey 26 different Team Management models and frameworks. INCLUDED MODELS/FRAMEWORKS: 1. Mintzberg's Management Roles Model 2. Butler & Waldroop's Four Dimensions of Relational Work Model 3. [read more]

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Do you ever take a moment to assess your team’s performance? You can analyze the numbers and determine how productive and successful each employee is. However, there are other ways to evaluate your team’s performance, including how they interact with one another, how passionate they are about their work, and what their motivation levels are like.

A team’s performance is more than just numbers on a page. You have multiple factors that contribute to the success of every employee. Keeping the energy, motivation, and positivity high in the office is a crucial element for a successful team. The hard part, though, is determining the best path to take.

Team-building exercises have long been part of a motivated, healthy, and productive workplace. These activities allow employees to let off some much-needed stress, all while learning new ways to work alongside their coworkers.

If you haven’t incorporated team-building exercises into your office, it’s time to start considering them. Take a look at the following five benefits of team-building exercises and how they contribute to a successful business.

Encourage a Sense of Belonging

Utilizing team-building activities gives each employee an opportunity to get to know one another. We may think we know someone because we sit next to them at work for 40 hours a week. However, what you see at work compared to what you see in a casual setting is likely two completely different people.

Team-building activities encourage staff members to communicate and work together in a different setting. Even taking your employees out for happy hour one day is a team-building activity that develops friendships, connections, and a sense of belonging. Positive, cooperative employee working relationships foster a healthy environment for success.

Showcase New Skills

Another benefit to team-building exercises is that it gives everyone a chance to showcase their skills. You may be surprised by what you learn when you let an individual take the spotlight. You may find that one employee excels in something you never realized, but it could be quite beneficial to another aspect of your company.

Improve Communication and Collaboration

Everyone knows how crucial adequate communication is in the workplace. However, knowing how to encourage that communication is entirely different.

When there is little to no communication between employees and management, tension and stress rise within the office setting. Lack of communication can also lead to productivity issues and mistakes occurring due to misunderstandings and incorrect information being utilized.

By implementing team-building exercises, employees must communicate and work together to achieve their goal. Without this communication, the exercises tend to fall apart. However, it does give you a chance to see what went wrong and what needs to be addressed.

Build Trust and Competency

Trust is another vital component of any business. Without trust between management and employees, there is little to no chance that you can create a strong team that collaborates together, stays productive, and works with each other rather than against one another.

Competency is just as important at work and is closely tied with trust. You need to know that your employees are competent enough to perform their job when you’re not in the office. However, your employees also need to know that you trust them to perform their job adequately.

When a group of people get together to work on the same project, they must trust one another to uphold their end of the task. If one person falls behind, it affects the entire group. Using team-building exercises as a way to build trust and competency will trickle over into the office and contribute to the overall success of the company.

Keep the Office Fun and Engaging

You can’t expect your employees to work every minute day in and day out and still find their job fun and enjoyable. There will come a point when employees need a break to let loose. Team-building activities strategically facilitate that need.

Having fun in the workplace doesn’t mean people goof off and fall behind in their job. Instead, it allows employees to relax and enjoy themselves. Happier employees will likely be healthier and ready to work when needed. It also helps foster an environment for creativity and collaboration as employees will enjoy coming into work every day.

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