10 essentials of team building

I have been to, organised, facilitated and spoken at hundreds of team-building events over the last 40 years. Here are the 10 essentials required to ensure that they are successful:

1. Leadership commitment - The leaders of the team not only have to be the catalysts for the event, but they also have to be the most engaged; before, during and after. Any apathy at leadership level will be reflected further down
2. Have a clear goal - Why are you doing this? Why now? What do you want to get out of it - stronger relationships, better collaboration, more creativity? Whatever it is, ensure it’s clear and that the agenda is tailored to achieving it
3. Involve the team - Not all of the team (unless it’s <10), but have an organising committee to help plan it. You’ll get much greater buy-in if the team have a say on some - not all - of the activities required to achieve the goal
4. Set clear expectations - Don’t want people to be on their phones? Make sure they know that. Want timings to be adhered to? Then be disciplined with facilitation (see 7). Don’t want the same voices dominating? Ensure that you value small group activity as much as large groups. People will only know how to behave on the day if you set clear expectations
5. Minimum presentations - Unless the goal is ‘overwhelm people with PowerPoint’, then presentations should be kept to a minimum. Speakers should instead practice what they are talking about thus reducing the need for visual aids
6. Mix the room - Naturally people will want to sit with who they know already. However, if a secondary goal is for people to get to know each other, then giving some thought to how you mix people will give you a better chance of success
7. Strong facilitation - You need to ensure that you make the most of every minute that you have together, even if you want time for ‘unstructured conversation’. Utilising a skilled facilitator (👋) will not only ensure that you stay on track, but also that everyone on the team can be involved, all of the time
8. Humour - Yes, it’s OK to laugh, in fact, it’s beneficial to every event that you ever run, ever. It can be spontaneous, or else you can ensure that activities (see 9) provide the opportunity for laughter. Not only does it break the ice, it also brings people closer together
9. Do something different - There are so many fantastic activities that you could utilise that aren’t anything like the things you (or other organisations like yours) always do. A little research can help you to find something that the team will talk about for years
10. Follow-up - Taking time away from your work is expensive, but even more so if you don’t put into practice everything that you agreed to do. Ensure that you have at least 1-3 follow-up sessions to maintain the momentum that you’ve created