Why Team Building Is The Only Skill You Need For Boosting Business
Why does Forbes say team building is “the most important investment you can make for your business success”?
Effective team building means having more engaged employees who have enhanced communication skills, collaboration, and overall efficiency. Working in a business environment should mean feeling valued, respected, and comfortable. What that might look like for everyone can vary, but the goal of team building is to create a work culture that exemplifies company ideals and makes for a positive, conducive environment to work in.
What is corporate teambuilding and why does Forbes says “It’s the most important investment you can make for your business success”?
What is Team Building?
Team building is the process of creating a cohesive team through various tasks/activities. It usually is organized to include goals that individuals need to work together to achieve. For example, working in a large group to complete a scavenger hunt focusing on teamwork, collaboration, and communication. However, team building can also support the daily interactions between employees and create a dynamic team naturally and slowly.
What is CORPORATE team building?
Corporate team building is when companies reach out to external facilitators in order to maximize their employee’s potential. Compared to internal activities that might be hosted, an experienced facilitator will have the skills to know how to optimize and curate specific activities to accomplish goals.
“Team building is the most important investment you can make for your business’ success.”
Why is Teambuilding important?
Now you might be wondering, how is this information relevant and why should people even engage in team building. Team building can come in many different forms. From a department picnic, or holiday party, to even a corporate retreat. The goal is really that you engage all your employees to create a better work environment.
Effective team building means having more engaged employees who have enhanced communication skills, collaboration, and overall efficiency. Working in a business environment should mean feeling valued, respected, and comfortable. What that might look like for everyone can vary, but the goal of team building is to create a work culture that exemplifies company ideals and makes for a positive, conducive environment to work in.
How can team building make a difference in my company?
Most companies have been shifting to a hybrid working environment in the past few months. Although this change has been welcomed by many, there are also new struggles that come from creating connections virtually and in real life. With effective team building, employees are more likely to be engaged and have higher satisfaction and employee loyalty. All of which contribute to creating an effective and dynamic team that fosters organizational development.
How can I implement team building today?
A simple start to implementing team building in the workplace today is to set clear team goals and allow for open and honest communication. Having a foundation of trust and clear objectives will encourage growth and responsibility for a team. Open dialogue, including feedback and new ideas, motivates employees to share perspectives and insights that might otherwise be withheld. Creating diverse and inclusive teams and assigning direct roles to team members is a great start to increasing productivity.
Two Roads Team Building incorporates all these things through interactive, tailor-made, and easy-to-plan workshops. Our experiential online or in-person workshops will help you and your team learn and implement the skills you need to continue to grow and succeed together while building a high-performance company culture.
Build your company culture and boost your bottom line, contact us for your free proposal today!
5 Steps To Use Storytelling In Meetings To Boost Your Company Culture
Bad meetings can kill your company culture.
Whether you’re running a massive Fortune 500, or a hip new startup, you’ve probably attended meetings that left you thinking “This should have been an email”.
Most meetings are disruptive time wasters, but they don’t have to be.
Including storytelling in meetings can increase employee engagement, build relationships between colleagues, improve communication, increase productivity and support the development of a successful company culture.
Bad meetings can kill your company culture.
Whether you’re running a massive Fortune 500, or a hip new startup, you’ve probably attended meetings that left you thinking “This should have been an email”.
Most meetings are disruptive time wasters, but they don’t have to be.
photo credit: will bryant studio
Including storytelling in meetings can increase employee engagement, build relationships between colleagues, improve communication, increase productivity and support the development of a successful company culture.
Here are a few tips for how your team can use storytelling to make your next meeting an impactful and worthwhile experience:
1. Start Small
When you begin to use storytelling in your meetings, set a time limit of two to five minutes or less per story to minimize participants' feelings of intimidation or fear of public speaking. In your first meetings including storytelling, it’s best to limit the number of stories told to one to two stories max to avoid “storytelling fatigue” from participants and the audience.
2. Be Completely Inclusive
Storytelling can have the most impact on your company culture when everyone has an opportunity to contribute. In fact, the most impactful and influential stories are usually told by staff who work “in the trenches” face to face with clients and products every day. Inviting employees from every division to share stories every week shows them that you value their experience and knowledge, and that you care about their work. Provide them with guidelines for great storytelling (such as this blog post!), a short timeline (max 5 minutes), and ask them to share a story about an experience that they’ve had at work; about working with your clients or products, or about an experience they’ve had with their colleagues.
3. Get To The Point!
This doesn’t mean that you need to rush through your story, or spoil the punchline. The best stories in meetings are told with intention and with a specific goal in mind. Here’s a chart, with content from “Whoever Tells The Best Story Wins: How To Use Your Own Stories to Communicate With Power and Impact”, by Annette Simmons, to help you speak with intention, and choose the best type of story to achieve your desired outcome.
all Information included in this chart is from "Whoever tells the best story wins: how to use your own stories to communicate with power and impact" by annette simmons.
4. Structure Your Story
Don’t feel pressured to speak “off the cuff”, even the most successful professional speakers take time to craft and rehearse their stories. In “Lead With A Story”, Paul Smith outlines the three elements of a good story: Context, Action, and Result.
Context: Context is the background information that your audience needs to make sense of your story:
a. Where and when does it take place?
b. Who’s the main character?
c. What does he or she want?
d. Who, or what is in the way?
Action: Action includes the ups, downs, setbacks, failures, etc.
Result/ Outcome: At the end of the story reveal the main characters outcomes. This is also when you’ll want to subtly explain what the audience should have learned from this event.
5. Be aggressively authentic!
Don’t be afraid to be YOU! Share stories about past joys, failures, mistakes, and aspects of your personal life (But keep it PG! No need to talk about your last visit to the nudist colony, your most recent trip to the cafe’s in Amsterdam, or anything else that’s going to leave your staff unable to look you in the eye for the rest of their career!). The more “real” you are, the more your audience will connect with you, and your message, and the more you and your team can build the KLT factor within your organization. (Know, Like, Trust Factor)
Whether you’re meeting in person, or online via video conferencing, a well-crafted and well-told story can elevate your meetings to highly impactful experiences that align your team and build your company culture.
Build your company culture, boost your bottom line.
Why You Need To "Show & Tell" Your Company Core Values Now, More Than Ever
The strongest and most successful companies in the world also have the strongest and most successful organizational culture, built on solid values and a team that is completely aligned to “showing and telling” those values.
As leaders, founders, managers, and investors we are role models in the world. We have the power and responsibility to spread tolerance, increase workplace diversity, embrace immigrants, eradicate misogyny, and so much more.
This morning I had a Skype call with my four year old niece and she was bouncing around the room, wiggling and jiggling, doing her little happy dance because today is the best day ever, it’s Show And Tell Day at her kindergarten!
four little girls showing and telling the world what matters most: equal human rights for all. image credit: nicole adams.
For kindergarteners, Show and Tell Day is the most exciting day of the month, when students get to bring their favourite “thing” of the moment to class, including anything from a stuffed bear, to a baby sister, or even a giant dill pickle (my niece really loves her sister, and dill pickles). The point is, they bring something that makes them feel good.
As adults, we no longer have the pleasure of participating in “show and tell” day, instead we “show and tell” what makes us feel good in our own grown-up way. We show and we tell our values and beliefs in myriad of ways, and they impact everything we do.
The strongest and most successful companies in the world also have the strongest and most successful organizational culture, built on solid values and a team that is completely aligned to “showing and telling” those values.
In the current political climate, it appears that many companies are avoiding publicizing authentic company values or “personal” beliefs for fear of engaging in political discourse, alienating potential clients, stifling free speech, or breaking employment laws. The common theme seems to be, as one founder recently told me, “just keep your opinions and values to yourself, and you’ll be fine”.
This is anything but “fine”.
It’s not enough to stay silent and let hatred, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, and intolerance be the loudest voices in the room, for the sake of your desire to sell a product or service, or your fear of retribution. Hiding behind the idea of “not wanting to stifle ‘free speech’” is a weak excuse to avoid standing up for your so-called company values. There is a clear distinction between genuinely embracing diversity and inclusion, and alienating immigrants, women, members of the LGBQT community, and more.
You don't need to attend a protest to take a stand. there are so many ways to demonstrate your core values, support your employees, and build your company culture. Check out this great example of a simple action taken by the kiwiana restaurant in brooklyn.
If you claim that your company values include diversity and inclusion, but you directly or indirectly support, fund, or promote white supremacist business or organizations, you are part of the problem.
"There is no more neutrality in the world. You either have to be part of the solution, or you're going to be part of the problem."
- Elridge Cleaver, American writer and political activist.
As leaders, founders, managers, and investors we are role models in the world. We have the power and responsibility to spread tolerance, increase workplace diversity, embrace immigrants, eradicate misogyny, and so much more.
Creating and publicizing company core values that reflect tolerance, diversity, equality, and global citizenship isn’t just good for our society, it’s a winning business strategy that will enable you to:
Build mutual respect and trust among employees, increasing collaboration and productivity.
Develop an emotionally and physically safe workplace and increase employee retention
Attract top international candidates.
Build the foundation of a strong company culture, and scale a workforce that is completely aligned to well defined, guiding core values.
This isn’t isn’t just about building your business, or making a political statement, it’s about standing up for human rights.
Company core values aren’t just ambiguous “fluff” to stick up on a wall decal in the office foyer. They shape employees’ and clients’ experiences, they’re a core part of branding, and they are powerful enough influence the world around us.
Take a stand for your company values. Post them publicly, define them well, use them in your branding, marketing and internal and external communication, talk about what they mean to you and your team, and how they positively influence the world beyond your office walls.
Build your company culture, boost your bottom line, and do something good for the world.
If you agree, take a stand. Please share this post with a comment about how your company values make a positive difference in your workplace and in the world, and hashtag it: #CULTUREWINS
- Alexis