TEAM BUILDING – MAKING IT REALLY WORK?

Effective teams can be really powerful.  A really good team building session can certainly help a team work more effectively together.  The questions are does it translate into the workplace and is it sustainable?

A major challenge is often translating the team’s “building the raft” or “finding your way out of the forest” into everyday work situations.  There is also the question of sustainability – people leave the team and new members of course didn’t participate in the team building exercises.  The team is now back to Forming/Norming/Storming and Performing.

One solution is building a team development around tools and techniques which are immediately transferable into the work place.   Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats is a classic example of this.  It can transform a team by building bridges between the very different personalities and types in a team to enable them to work together effectively.

It is also directly applicable immediately in the work place.  Long term sustainability is also achieved because as team members leave and new ones join the new  members can easily learn by osmosis, because this is the way the team functions, and/or by online or classroom learning.

For me this transforms what is often not actually much more than a team bonding session into a long term sustainable improvement in team effectiveness. 

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