What Are The Benefits Of Good Team-building Exercises?
Team building exercises are a great way to get to know your teammates better, improve communication and collaboration, and build trust within a team. Team Building is more important now than ever before in the workplace due to the recent pandemic and hybrid offices.
Team building exercises are a great way to get to know your co-workers better, improve communication and collaboration, and build trust within a team. It’s important now more than ever before in the workplace, due to the recent pandemic and hybrid offices.
Team Building Is Beneficial Now More Than Ever
Team building is becoming more recognizable as the best contribution made to the overall function of a business. Dealing with a global pandemic, many employees spent less time in the office, surrounded by friends and coworkers which led to a disconnect in the workplace. Implementing team building is beneficial now more than ever due to these circumstances.
Team building exercises can be done with or without the use of technology. Whether you choose to do them in person or virtually, they can be just as effective. Some team-building advantages include happier employees, better relationships, and connected company culture.
The Top 3 benefits of team building
The benefits of team building are many, so we have put together a list of the top 3 benefits.
Team Building helps develop relationships
In some work environments, some departments may not interact with others as often leading to relationships that are less familiar. Team building creates a space where coworkers have the opportunity to build existing friendships and explore new ones. A study by Gallup states that “When employees possess a deep sense of affiliation with their team members, they are driven to take positive actions that benefit the business -- actions they may not otherwise even consider if they did not have strong relationships with their coworkers”.
Team Building creates a connected Company Culture
When employees recognize the efforts of managers and owners investing in them it shows that they truly value the team. It proves that employers are dedicated to their staff and want to help create a good work environment. Good company culture is essential to the overall operation of the business.
Team Building Builds Communication and Cooperation
Two very important components of a well-functioning team are communication and cooperation. Team building outlines an activity where participants work together to achieve an end goal. During these activities, coworkers have the time to communicate with team members which allow others to learn different styles of communication. Cooperation can take some time and practice between participants and the opportunity to cooperate on activities can boost cooperation in the workplace and efficiency.
team building builds trust
“Besides engagement, research shows that highly-trusted workplaces enjoy a 50% higher employee productivity, 106% more energy at work and 13% fewer sick days”
- The Neuroscience of Trust, Harvard Business Review.
When a team can implement the steps listed above, trust can be much more easily developed. Open communication, feeling welcome and connected, and having healthy work relationships all contribute to building trust. Harvard Business Review outlined in The Neuroscience of Trust, that “besides engagement, research shows that highly-trusted workplaces enjoy a 50% higher employee productivity, 106% more energy at work and 13% fewer sick days”.
Team building activities can help in attaining trust in the work environment and co-worker relationships by creating a space for people to feel comfortable communicating and understanding one another better.
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.