4 Reasons Your Team Is Not Collaborating Effectively And How Team Building Can Help
There are many reasons why teams might not be collaborating effectively however, the most common one is a lack of communication. Team Building is designed to increase communication and socialization which in turn increases collaboration.
There are many reasons why coworkers and teams might not be collaborating effectively however, the most common is a lack of communication. Team Building is designed to increase communication and socialization which in turn increases collaboration.
What Is Collaboration In The Workplace And The Benefits Of Collaboration?
According to Indeed, the definition of collaboration in the workplace states “Collaboration means working well with someone to complete a task or develop ideas together”. When a team works together to collaborate on tasks or ideas it can allow coworkers to feel heard and encourage them to share ideas and perspectives. The most important part of collaboration is having consistent communication. Communication is key in all departments so coworkers collaborate successfully.
Top 4 reasons your team is not collaborating effectively
Miscommunication - Communication is key to working together, and it is important to have an efficient way to communicate with your team members. When looking to collaborate on tasks or ideas, communication is the primary component of success. Open dialogue allows team members to feel connected and included while completing a task. It can also make the task and responsibilities of those collaborating much more clear and effective.
Unclear priorities - Along with good communication skills come directing roles and priorities. When each team member has a specific role to play in the execution of a task, it welcomes all participants to feel included and crucial for overall success and completion. Having clear priorities and assigning roles also improves the efficiency of the task. Improving in these areas will help with the collaboration of a team.
Directing various personalities - In any workplace environment there will always be different types of personalities and these people can be motivated in different ways. When a team is collaborating, it may be more difficult to manage with different motivations working for different people, but it is not a bad thing. Directing various personalities can be challenging, but knowing the employee and communicating a direction that matches their work style is important. Embracing everyone’s style of work is key when collaborating.
Doubtfulness and uncertainty - A work environment that has a foundation of trust creates a positive work culture and security for employees. When collaborating with a team, trust is essential when there are multiple people and moving parts. An article by Forbes talking on the issue of trust in the workplace states “high levels of trust are necessary for team members to feel safe to speak up, ask questions, or make suggestions without fear of retribution or concern that their comments might damage their relationships or reputation”. Trust is the foundation of a team working together and collaborating well.
““High levels of trust are necessary for team members to feel safe to speak up, ask questions, or make suggestions without fear of retribution or concern that their comments might damage their relationships or reputation”. ”
How Team Building can help increase collaboration
Team building is designed to bring people together and work closely to achieve a goal. Through this work, coworkers have the opportunity to talk openly and express their thoughts during these activities. When socializing to complete a task there is a greater chance that all parties will feel welcome to share their ideas and work productively together. Team Building activities also give coworkers the opportunity to create new friends or acquaintances which allows trusting conversations and more collaboration to be cultivated.
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!
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!
Why You Should Care About Corporate Team Building?
The unity that is attained between employees and coworkers through team-building activities has proven to increase productivity and morale in the work environment. “It builds trust, mitigates conflict, encourages communication, and increases collaboration. Effective team building means more engaged employees, which is good for company culture and boosting the bottom line.”
What is Corporate Team Building and how you can increase productivity in the workplace?
Corporate team building is the idea of getting individuals and employees together to work on tasks that are designed to encourage coworkers to collaborate together and create a sense of unity. The unity that is attained between employees and coworkers through team-building activities has proven to increase productivity and morale in the work environment. Corporate Team Building is effective in bringing people together to achieve a shared goal, which increases communication and relationships. Socializing in a new setting can encourage co-workers to get to know one another in a different light.
What Is The Focus Of Corporate Team Building?
The focus of team building is to bring coworkers together to minimize feelings of loneliness and independent work and increase productivity and flow in the workplace. Through team-building activities, coworkers have the chance to grow closer in their work relationships with one another by solving tasks, communicating, and learning more about those they work with.
How impactful is Team Building on employees?
Team building can be extremely impactful in many areas of the company. A Forbes article discussing team building effectiveness states, “It builds trust, mitigates conflict, encourages communication, and increases collaboration. Effective team building means more engaged employees, which is good for company culture and boosting the bottom line.” Team building is simple to implement and has shown business owners that it is effective in creating a better workplace overall. Team building can also encourage employee retention benefiting the business and the people.
““It builds trust, mitigates conflict, encourages communication, and increases collaboration...effective team building means more engaged employees, which is good for company culture and boosting the bottom line.” ”
What is the benefit of corporate team building?
The benefits of team building are simple; a better environment, better employee retention, and better production. When employees are ready to take on the day and feel welcomed and supported they are going to work harder and take more pride in what they do. When employees feel they can bring new ideas, or challenge old ones without being condemned, it creates a pattern of trust and passion which can allow that employee to produce better work. The business can rise when the foundation of relationships is cared for and progressive.
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!
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!
How to Select the Right Team-Building Activities That Will Work for Your Organization
Team building activities can be beneficial for all work environments, but selecting the right activities for your team will help to make the tasks more effective and impressionable. Here are our top 3 suggestions to select the right activities to reach your goals.
Team building activities can be beneficial for all work environments, but selecting the right activities for your team will help to make the tasks more effective and impressionable. Here are our top 3 suggestions to select the right activities to reach your goals.
Creating A Goal To Motivate That Motivates The Whole Team
The first step in choosing or creating the right team-building activities is to outline a specific goal to be attained from the exercises. Goals for the team can pertain to many different areas such as better communication, the overall morale of the employees or simply providing space for people to get to know each other better. Once a goal has been set it can make the process of choosing the right activities much easier.
Knowing your team members and participants personalities
Team building activities are important for an organization as they help in creating a cohesive and collaborative work environment. There are many different types of activities that can be used for team building. The first step is to understand what type of activity will work best for your organization. By having an overall goal in mind, it is then best to think about the people that will be involved. Knowing the employees or people participating, like what they enjoy, their passions as well as learning styles can narrow down where and what activities to include.
Time and level of activity
There are three main categories that team building activities can fall into physical, mental, and creative. Physical activities usually involve some sort of exercise and typically last between 30 minutes to an hour while mental activities focus on things like solving puzzles or completing word games which last around 15 minutes to an hour. Creative activities are more diverse as they include things like brainstorming or idea generation which can take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour. With many options to choose from it can be difficult to narrow the decision-making down. Team building can include only one or all three of these types of activities depending on the goal to be achieved.
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