Reinforcing Relationships With Corporate Team Building Events

In this fast-paced world where it seems impossible to go anywhere without seeing others talking or texting on some high-tech gadget, being so “connected” almost feels like a “disconnect” from building collaborative, authentic, real-world relationships. Here’s how corporate team building events can reinforce your relationships and make them stronger than ever:

Put the Trust Back in Your Working Relationships

Corporate team building events are a good way to shake off the rust after a long winter and help your employees focus on the importance of building relationships with their co-workers. Whether you’re zip lining through the canopies, helping each other through an obstacle course or just spending time talking about your families over a nice meal, corporate team building events help people recognize each other as individuals that are important to the success of a company.

Different Types of Team Building

There is no shortage of corporate team building events. Some, such as charity and food drives, are done in the office to benefit others while promoting a sense of teamwork. Others, such as adventure team building, are accomplished at remote sites that offer two advantages. One, by getting away from the phones you are actually able to focus on the tasks at hand. The second is that an outside event allows co-workers to see each other in a different light. Corporate team building events usually blossom when taken to a location away from the office that has structured activities designed to improve morale and leadership while accomplishing clear goals and objectives. Rather than design a team building event yourself, it’s well worth the investment to utilize a company with years of experience that provides both a safe and fun environment.

Work Together to Solve Problems

Business demands that employees cooperate to identify potentially-problematic areas of concern, conceptualize doable solutions, and consistently provide exceptional, world-class customer service. Unfortunately, the creation of personality conflicts and apathy over time can sabotage everyone’s best efforts. Get your employees out of the office for a day or two and head to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania where the Refreshing Mountain adventure team has organized a number of corporate team building events that will rejuvenate and relax your entire team. Refreshing Mountain staffers have a long list of available exercises that they can tailor to your specific company needs. Your employees will renew their ability to depend on each other while developing communication skills and trust that will pay off back at work.

Make it an Annual Event or Reward

Much like a holiday party or summer picnic, corporate team building events are a fun and exciting experience that rewards employees for a job well done while building even stronger collaboration skills in the future.  Corporate team building events provide a great chance to remind employees of your business culture and affirm the importance of your company values. Scheduling an overnight retreat at Refreshing Mountain gives the benefit of structured events and some down time where workers can get to know each other better and develop friendships that foster outside the office. By committing to annual corporate team building events, you reinforce the belief that your employees are important and that you are willing to invest the finances and time to help them be successful. By showing your appreciation for each individual, you can expect an increase and dedication that will reduce turnover and create a more stable business environment. Corporate team building events can also be a fun reward for reaching a major milestone or securing a large contract. Your generosity will reap benefits in the future as your staff learns the values of communication and leadership.

Top 10 Ideas for Corporate Team Building Events

If you’re a manager looking to improve morale around the office, give everyone a quick break from work and help bring a sense of shared responsibility back to the workplace, then a team building exercise might be a way to achieve those goals and have fun in the process.

Team building exercises come in many guises and can include anything from paintball outings to high-ropes obstacle courses. The underlying idea behind these team building exercises is to foster interpersonal cooperation and help everyone on the team clarify their roles and pool their resources together to reach a shared goal.

Here are some fun ideas that you can incorporate into your corporate team building events to get everyone on the same page and working together.

Cooking Course

Getting your team in the kitchen and cooking meals is a great way to improve communication skills among every present. As a bonus, you get to sample everything that you make. Some team building exercises that incorporate culinary experiences take your corporate team from the farm to the restaurant and walk you through every facet of the farming and cooking process.

Comedy Club

Comedy clubs around the country offer team building activities that usually share a common flavor. Each team member works off the other in creating an improvisational comedy sketch. The idea is for one team member to add details to the basic skit – it’s a lot like the game Telephone that you might have played as a kid. The idea behind this team building exercise is letting everyone really relax for a few hours and learn to rely on each other to create a whole greater than the sum of its constituent parts.

Ziplining Excursions

Ziplining is obviously an exhilarating experience, but it can also give you a new perspective on an area in your workplace’s backyard and create a sense of camaraderie among team members and their families as everyone hikes up to the ziplinning jumping off point. Ziplining is extremely safe and uses pulleys and harnesses to send team members across hundreds of feet of wire overlooking beautiful scenery along the way.

Songwriting Challenge

Creating a song as a team is a great way for everyone to feel like they’re working together and contributing to a musical whole. Professional singer-songwriters will walk you through the same creative process that they experience whenever they sit down to write a song. Teams work together and open-mindedly problem solve ways to let the voice of every team member be heard.

Car Building

Some corporate team building exercises have team members working together to create a makeshift racing car out of a kit provided by the team building company. Because this team building exercise taps into planning and management, developing a clear strategy and having team members step up and become leaders is essential to success. Working through problems in turning an appealing design into workable practice is a skill that many managers find transfers over from this team building exercise to the workplace.

Scavenger Hunt

Having team members engage in a scavenger hunt in a large metropolitan area with their families is fun, creative and a great way to relax from work responsibilities. Using a basic map, clues, and a compass or GPS, teams work together to collect clues around the city and score points for their respective teams. This team building activity combines teamwork and planning. A scavenger hunt that’s intelligently designed to take advantage of the sights and sounds of a big city is sure to be a relaxing and memorable time for corporate team members and their families.

Volunteering Exercises

Incorporating volunteering into team building exercises facilities a sense of social responsibility and teamwork at the same time that teams get to spend more time outdoors with their coworkers and families. Although this is a team-based competition, team members are cognizant of the fact that volunteering has less of a competitive edge and is more about giving back.

Hop to It

Team building activities at a gym that features a trampoline, foam pit and various obstacle courses can be navigated to help teams complete tasks in resource-efficient ways. You don’t have to try too hard to realize why this activity is a lot of fun once everyone on the team gets over their initial hesitation to act like a kid again. This team building exercise, though, helps create a sense of equal participation and is obviously a blast for team members and their families.

Create a Documentary

Ever wanted to do the news? Corporate team members can get the chance to put together their own documentary with a team building exercise that has team members delegate roles and carry out the process of creating a documentary from scratch. As an example, a corporate team based in New York might be asked to visit Rockefeller Center, a four-star restaurant in the Bronx and Madison Square Garden to capture all the excitement of the Big Apple. Teams can get points based on how engaging a documentary they create or based on how eclectic their featured hotspots were in the documentary.

Quiz Show

Creating a trivia night for your team building exercise is a great way to have team members work together and pool their knowledge resources. Topics are kept light and entertaining. The team that communicates best usually does well in this kind of team building competition.

We hope you enjoyed our list of team building event ideas.  Have you had a positive corporate team building event experience?  If so, we’d love to hear about it!  Did we miss any of your favorite team building activities on our list?  Please feel free to add your own ideas in our comments.  With any of these ideas, the reward is more time spent working together towards a shared goal in a fun, stimulating environment. Focus on this and you’ll find that your team brings the same camaraderie, shared responsibility and sense of joy in working together from a weekend of team building exercises back into the workplace.

Work and Play Going Together to Build Strong Relationships

At Refreshing Mountain, we carry the strong belief that recreational pleasure plays a vital role in well-being as well as livelihood. There’s a lot more to getting out and about in nature and enjoying a few fun-filled pastimes in the company of others – and corporate team building is one of them. In a day and age which thrives on high-tech, fast-paced productivity and the relationship between coworkers is more important than ever, yet nurturing these relationships becomes virtually impossible in a hectic schedule, setting aside the time to develop a strong and interdependent team is the greatest asset a company can rely on.

A Progressive Approach to Employee Care

Companies have changed their nature considerably from several decades ago, when most operations were run by highly-skilled, small businesses. Now, larger corporations make up the economic landscape and it can be difficult to not only keep track of all employees, but make them feel valued in a way which is conducive to a productive workplace. Organizations have spent billions on research to determine how a company can maximize productivity simply by virtue of increasing workplace quality for employees, such as offering benefits like flexible hours, comprehensive coverage programs, and bonuses and pay rises. Other ways to make employees feel valued is to create a dynamic and pleasant workplace atmosphere which motivates and inspires workers, as well as offering a place to take a break when the going gets too stressful. This can range from the workplace policies which are set in motion to installing game rooms, gyms, showers and gardens etc. But most importantly, employees need the opportunity to integrate outside of work and workplace events are a great way to do this, ranging from pizza nights to karaoke.

These occasions give workers the chance to let loose and get to know one another, but even more structured settings can produce better results, and here is where corporate team building comes into play.

Individual Talent, Team Solidarity

Team building skills enable individuals to showcase what particular talents and experience they have. They can then help pass these skills onto other team members. The fact that each individual will have their own unique skill set allows for one teammate to compensate where another colleague may need improvement, creating a balanced skill level throughout the group. Engaging in team building activities provides a relaxed yet challenging environment in which to do this, where people must cooperate as a team in order to achieve set goals.

It’s a great way to build on problem-solving, foster creativity and utilize between one another who is best equipped to deal with a particular part of the challenge. It isn’t just about finding natural leaders, followers, and those who work best alone – in fact, much team-building work throws these roles out entirely, or at least gives people the opportunity to use them interchangeably. It’s about letting people show their strengths, but also give them support for trying out new tasks which are unfamiliar and potentially difficult. Showing support throughout this process is vital, and will enforce solidarity in this context which can be carried over to the workplace.

Building Friendships by Creating Memories

Many professionals may reason that workplace and personal life should be kept distinctly apart, and in some ways this is very true. But at the same time, being able to rely on a colleague the way one would rely on a friend can be a huge asset in improving relationships within the workplace. Teambuilding provides that essential opportunity for people to get to know one another not only for their skills, but for their personalities as well, and develop the chemistry which exists between them. Sometimes, it takes a fun setting where people relax a little in order to allow these aspects of a workplace relationship to develop. It is trust and communication which enables a team to not only understand how best to execute their task, but motivate them to succeed knowing that their colleagues are counting on them. Many businesses invest heavily in this aspect of team building for a variety of reasons, such as adopting a more open-minded attitude and averting stereotypes, and accepting people for who they are.

Best of all, team building ventures can be a great way to release stress. It can be the perfect way to recoup before a big project or wind down after and savor the achievement, and is an essential part of cultivating that happy workplace environment. And it’s also a great way to get back at a coworker by dunking them headfirst into the mud – just for fun, of course.

This is a freelance article contributed by site reader Sally Richards

Building a Team for Success

Corporate team building activities are a great way to get the team out of the office for a day to let them regroup and come back feeling stronger as a team. The morale of a team is one of the most important aspects of productivity and quality of work. If your team already works together well, enjoys the projects they are working on, and produces quality results, maybe it’s time to take them on a team building activity to further strengthen their bond – and blow off some steam.

There are tons of facilities that offer both outdoor and indoor activities to bring your team together and show them what they can accomplish as a group. Most facilities even offer you the flexibility of choosing your own agenda for the day, so you can cater specifically to your group’s needs.

 The Power of Team Building Infographic

 

Qualities Team Building Focuses On:

• Conflict Resolution

Team building activities work out conflict resolution in a healthy, intuitive way. When a disagreement occurs within an activity, the group is forced to resolve personal conflicts to successfully complete the activity. The team building exercise is a fun activity that doesn’t have added stress to it, so your team can learn effective ways to deal with these problems. Then, the team will be able to apply those skills to the work environment – should they arise.

• Communication
  

  Communication is key in the workplace. Corporate team building facilitates a strong sense of communication because the activities require clear messages to achieve the end goal. This skill lends itself to a work environment because clear communication will ensure projects are completed correctly, nothing gets lost in the shuffle, and all concerns are aired in an appropriate way.

• Leadership

Corporate team building activities are a chance for leaders to shine. You will see who your strong leaders are because they will rise to the occasion and take control of a situation. Also, how they handle a giving activity will show you their strengths and weaknesses as a leader. Those activities may show you – as the employer – a few new leaders who were not standing out before.

• Problem Solving
  

  Problem solving is the most common thing to get out of corporate team building activities. All of the activities are designed to make your team think and work together towards a common goal. This shared goal lets people’s strengths shine and lend their own expertise to the situation. This translates into the workplace when your team is better equipped to resolve difficult situations on the fly.

• Trust
  

  Your team needs to trust one another in order to collectively accomplish end goals. If your team cannot trust each other, they are doomed to fall short. Team building activities reinforce and allow trust to develop. When your team has a foundation of trust, each of them knows they can count on the others to do their part – or be there when they need it.

• Patience
  

  Finally, patience through team building activities is a valuable skill. Things don’t always work the first time and having the patience to try again with a level head is pertinent to each and every work environment. Team building activities are challenging and make you think outside of the box. If you aren’t willing to be patient, you will never complete the task. This is the same in the workplace. With a little patience, great work can be accomplished on an everyday basis.

Team Building Events at Refreshing Mountain

At Refreshing Mountain Retreat and Adventure Center, we assist you in developing an excellent, productive team building event. Our activities are designed to help strengthen your team and provide a relaxing, fun environment to do so. We know the importance of a strong team and we are here to help. Our indoor and outdoor activities are all designed to be a blast all while working towards a common goal.

If you’re looking for a fun day out of the office to boost morale and have a great time doing it, visit our corporate team building page for more information.

What are the Teambuilding Challenges at Refreshing Mountain?

Ok, so you’re thinking about doing a team building event and you’ve heard about Refreshing Mountain, but you’re not sure exactly what our team building activities are all about.  What will your group be doing while they are on-site?  Will it be fun for everyone?  How long do the activities and are they safe?   What will my group get out of participating?  In this article we give you an in-depth look at our team building challenges, what they are, how they work and the benefits they provide.

 Team Building through Problem Solving

Our team building challenges are designed to encourage your group ways to work better together.  We do this presenting your group with fun, interactive problem solving challenges that can only be solved through teamwork.  Our challenges are typically scheduled for 1-2 hour time blocks and are designed to work best for 8 – 20 participants.  We also work with larger groups by breaking down into smaller teams and running them though the challenges in rotations.  Each team will work through 3 – 4 challenges in an hour, where each of challenge is designed to emphasize the application of various positive character traits such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  We have 22 different outdoor challenges over 50 indoor challenges to select from.  We will work with your prior to your event to select the right mix of activities based on your objectives for the event, past team building experiences, age and physical abilities.  On the day of your event, our experienced guides will facilitate your group through each challenge, ensuring safety and drawing out the learning through the on-the-spot observations and questions.

 

Examples of Teambuilding Challenges

Our teambuilding activities are typically scheduled is 1 to 2 hours increments and involve a selection of 3 – 4 activities each hour.  We have over 50 indoor activities and 22 outdoor elements that are part of our program.  Each challenge combines a balance of physical and mental activity, with options for all skill and age levels.  We focus on the physical interaction because it’s fun, motivating and gets the mind thinking differently.  Our experienced facilitators work with the group leader to learn about the group and select the right activities based on your objectives, past team building experience, age and physical condition.   Examples of specific team building challenges:

Toxic Waste

In this team building activity, the group must work together to move “toxic waste” from one location to another using only the equipment provided.  This problem solving exercise requires the group to learn to communicate effectively and utilize the “give and take” principle.

 

Swamp Crossing

In this team building activity, the group must cross a “swamp” without getting “wet” using two parallel rows of logs by supporting each other.  If one person falls, all must start again.  The problem solving challenge teaches participants to rely on each other and that the whole team succeeds only if they all work together and look out for each other.

 

Straight & Right

In this team building activity, the group must find their way through a maze by making only right turns and moving forward.  The problem solving exercise teaches participants to listen to each other, follow direction and also encourages team members to provide ideas in a constructive manner.

 

Raging River

In this team building activity, the entire group must cross a “raging river” using only the “stepping stones” provided while staying “well grounded” to keep from being washed away. This problem solving challenge teaches participants to consider the needs of those that they are working with in addition to their own as they cannot make it across the river on their own.

 

Noah’s Walk

In this teambuilding activity, the group works in pairs to traverse V-shaped cables get that further apart.  The activity teaches participants to learn to trust and rely on each other.

 

Gossip Table

In this team building activity, the group works together to keep a large see-saw like platform balanced as they each get on.  This challenge teaches individuals to think and work as a group and let go of their need for individual control.

 

Data Processing

In this team building challenge, carpet squares are used to represent a computer circuit.  The group must find the path through the circuit in a certain amount of time.  Groups learn how to work together better, particularly in the area of organization.

 

Alaskan Pipeline

In this team building challenge, the group must build a pipeline from pieces of PVC pipe which allows “water” to travel a certain distance and the water cannot become contaminated.  Groups learn how to plan together and communicate better.

Benefits of Team Building Activities

The Small Group Research journal paper “Does Team Building Work?” analyzed data from 103 studies conducted between 1950 and 2007 and provides strong evidence that team building can have measurable, positive effects on team performance.  Specific benefits of teambuilding activities include improved goal setting, interpersonal relations, problem solving, and role clarification.  Another study showed that certain teambuilding activities, including field trips, physical and personal development activities, contribute to employees feeling valued which is a key need for any high performing team.  

Interesting in Booking a Teambuilding Event?

You can get a quote based on of our pre-defined packages or build your own using our day events pa

 

ckage tool on our website.  You can give us a call at 1-888-353-1490 or email us at information@refreshingmountain.com

 

 

 

 

 

The Benefits of a Corporate Teambuilding Event

Every employer knows the importance of having a team that is innovative, creative, and united in their goals. To achieve the ambitions and dreams of the company, everyone in the business must have a clear understanding of the company’s vision, as well as the values that the company is built upon. It is necessary from time to time to re-focus and re-evaluate with your team and employees to ensure that all are united in their vision.

It can be difficult during the busyness of the workweek to find the time to have these essential re-evaluations. It’s easy to become distracted with the actual work of running a business and not have time to really step back and re-focus. It’s also important for your employees to once in a while be removed from their normal office surroundings to re-ignite their innovation and creativity.

This is where a corporate teambuilding event can be very beneficial for your business. A change of pace and a change of scenery can be just what is needed to keep your business moving in the right direction. Let’s explore some of the many benefits of taking a corporate retreat.

Building Relationships

While working in an office, employees rarely show their personalities in the same way they do outside the office. This can be due to the pressures of the workplace, or just their natural disposition around other people. At a corporate retreat, the atmosphere is more relaxed, allowing employees to interact more freely without the work pressure that is usually present. This can allow for building closer relationships between employees, as well as relationships between management and employees. At an offsite event, there is less of a hierarchical structure, allowing everyone to feel important and valued, as well as making them feel more free to express their opinions.

Increasing Creativity

Being in the same location day after day can sometimes lend itself to a stagnation in creativity. Just as thinking outside of the box is necessary for creativity, so too being physically outside of your normal “box” is necessary to get the creative juices flowing. The fresh air of the outdoors, the beauty of nature all around you, and the meeting spaces outside of your usual conference areas all lend themselves to a creative environment that is necessary in today’s business world.

Learning to Work Together

Teambuilding Challenge – Gossip Table

Obviously, working together is one of the most essential aspects of a successful team. Learning how to work with different personalities while overcoming obstacles is essential for a team to run smoothly and efficiently. There are many team-building exercises that you can do on your corporate event that will help the various teams in your business to function more cohesively.

Teambuilding Challenge – Great Wall

At Refreshing Mountain, we have a variety of teambuilding activities that you can incorporate into your corporate retreat, including team-building challenges that require your team to work together to solve specific challenges; a physical challenge course that combines physical activity with a scavenger hunt; and customized team building events that allow you to specifically design exercises for your teams. Working together to solve problems in a fun, relaxed environment will lead to a more cohesive, focused team at the workplace.

Education

In addition to all of the team building activities, a corporate retreat can also be a great place for providing your employees with additional job training. After all, you want as much as possible to take advantage of the opportunity of having your employees all together in a fun, relaxed environment. In the same way that a change of scenery can help to increase creativity, so too can a change in scenery help to present useful information without your employees becoming bored or feel as if their time is being wasted. Refreshing Mountain offers ample meeting facilities with audio/visual equipment to help meet your meeting needs.  We also have a full commercial kitchen and provide catering service to larger groups.

Corporate Team Building

Employee Rewards

A corporate teambuilding event is also a great way of rewarding your employees for the great work they’ve done throughout the year. You may consider inviting your employees’ families to the retreat, to break up the work routine even more and to give the retreat more of a “vacation” feel, rather than just another work-related activity.

Here at Refreshing Mountain, we are dedicated to making your next corporate event as rewarding as possible. Our helpful staff will work with you in planning the logistics so that you can focus on making your event as beneficial as possible to your employees and company as a whole.

Formula for a Winning Team

The team at teambonding.com.au came up with this great infographic.  Need help developing your team?  Team building events provide a great forum for learning and practicing team work in a safe and fun environment. Check out the Refreshing Mountain website for our team building event options.  We work with you to create an event that is fun and engaging and can tie it in with your business meeting.  In addition to our many team building activity options, we offer outdoor adventures, conference space and catered meals.  Looking for a longer event?  Check out our all-inclusive corporate retreat packages.

formula-for-a-winning-team-infographic1 by teambonding.com.au

 

How to Deflate Your Team’s Morale with a Bad Team Building Activity

Is your team working together just a little too well lately?  Looking for a way to take things down a notch? Consider these horror stories of office team building activities gone wrong:

A slam book for grown-ups: “During a previous job, I worked in a team that was having trouble getting along, so they brought in someone to help us work together as a team. First activity? We had to go around the room and tell each other what we didn’t like about each other. We might have also had to add what we did like about each other but I honestly only remember the criticisms and the people bursting into tears. We went from simply not being able to work together to actively disliking each other in about 30 minutes. Then we ate a boxed lunch and ended the day by filling out personality tests.”

Lions and monkeys: “We had an exercise run by a consultant who determined what kind of workplace animal each of us was. The boss turned out to be a ‘lion’ (surprise!). I turned out to be a ‘monkey,’ which was great. My coworkers were told that they weren’t allowed to tell me to tidy my workspace because it would stifle my natural simian creativity.”

The temple of the dolphin: “I once had to sit through two hours of a team-building exercise that first involved us all sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding hands with our eyes closed, while the leader described us flying over the ocean into the “temple of the dolphin.” She got very vivid in her description of this imaginary place. It was incredibly difficult not to laugh. After we opened our eyes, we had to watch videos of dolphins and point out the leadership skills they were demonstrating. I am not joking. We did that for well over an hour.”

Read more from the article “The 10 Most Horrifying Team Building Exercise” by Alison Green

Or consider this team building fail:

Of course the point of this article isn’t to encourage a rash of new team building disasters, that was just to get your laughing a bit before we get down to the serious stuff.  If you lead or work on a team, you know the importance of working better together and team building activities can be a great tool for improving team effectiveness.  You also know it can be counterproductive to hold a poorly organized event.  So how do you avoid these mistakes and create the perfect environment for team building?  There is no magic bullet, but here are some top tips that should help you identify good activities:

• Make it interesting: Just because it worked last year doesn’t mean it will this year, try something different
• Keep it relevant: The activity needs to be interesting, but it also has to have some application to what they do, otherwise it will feel like a wast of time
• Involve everyone: Try to find activities that will keep each person engaged
• Maintain dignity: One of the biggest fears people have about team building activities is the fear of being embarrassed, don’t let it happen on your watch!
• Check out our blog post: “Do Corporate Team Building Events Work?” for even more tips

Excited about holding a team building event but worried you might not be ready to organize one on your own?  Let the experts at Refreshing Mountain build your next event.  We’ve been hosting groups on our 80-acre property for over 30 years and offer a wide variety of team building and outdoor adventure activities.  We also offer meeting rooms, catered meals and overnight accommodations.  Learn more at refreshingmountain.com

Build Your Team, Build Your Business

The team at Bolt Insurance put together this great infographic on the importance of building your team as a strategy for building your business.  Interested in kick-starting your own team building efforts? Check out the Refreshing Mountain website for our team building event options.  We work with you to create an event that is fun and engaging and can tie it in with your business meeting.  In addition to our many team building activity options, we offer outdoor adventures, conference space and catered meals.  Looking for a longer event?  Check out our all-inclusive corporate retreat packages.

“Build Your Team, Build Your Business” Infographic by Bolt Insurance

 

Do Corporate Team Building Events Work?

What is a Team Building Event?

According to Wikipedia (the ultimate source of information about anything these days) “Team building refers to a wide range of activities, presented to businesses, schools, sports teams, religious or nonprofit organizations designed for improving team performance. Team building is pursued via a variety of practices, and can range from simple bonding exercises to complex simulations and multi-day team building retreats designed to develop a team (including group assessment and group-dynamic games), usually falling somewhere in between. It generally sits within the theory and practice of organizational development, but can also be applied to sports teams, school groups, and other contexts.”

More simply put, team building is a tool for helping a team of individuals work better together.  For instance, team building activities can help individuals learn different ways of communicating and help develop more positive perspectives on change.  Or, if you prefer a “glass half empty” perspective, it’s a way to work on team issues such as poor communication, lack of trust or unrealistic expectations.  The reality is that many people talk about working together as a team, but few people really know how to develop an effective team.

Using Team Building Events to Improve Your Team

Working as a team is a journey and certainly isn’t achieved through one meeting, but a corporate team building event could be just the thing your team needs to kick start their development.  We all have examples of “bad” team work, but sometimes it’s difficult to pin point exactly what good team work looks like.  A well-organized team building activity can provide a fun context for developing practical experiences that your team will remember forever.  The Small Group Research journal paper “Does Team Building Work?” analyzed data from 103 studies conducted between 1950 and 2007 and provides strong evidence that team building can have measurable, positive effects on team performance.

Of course, not all team building activities are created equal.  Many have attended poorly organized team building events and as a result have formed less than positive feelings towards participating in future events.  One study from Citrix found that 31% of respondents said they can’t stand team-building activities!  That being said, research from the American Psychological Association (APA) found that team building activities helped employees feel valued.  In fact, “almost all employees (93 percent) who reported feeling valued said that they are motivated to do their best at work.”  Now that’s a result any employer or team leader would like to achieve!

Organizing an Effective Corporate Team Building Event

To summarize what we’ve learned so far, team building events can be a key tool towards achieving harmonious bliss in your team…but only if they are done well and make people feel valued.  So what kinds of events have proven effective?  In an U.S. News & World Report interview, David W. Ballard, head APA’s Psychologically Healthy Workplace Program, shares the following top 5 team building activities: volunteering, physical activities, field trips, professional development activities & shared meals.  In other words, get your team out of their work environment and give them something constructive and active to work on together.  Even better, find a way to tie in back to honing their work skills and feed them when you’re done!

Many organizations find that great leaders don’t necessarily make great team building event planners.  In fact, it’s better for the leader to be an active participant in the activity versus being stuck running the event. The key is to find a company that has the resources to create the right environment and activities to give you’re the space to do something fun and meaningful together.  For instance, here at Refreshing Mountain, we’ve provided a wide variety of outdoor adventure activities that are fun, interactive and foster teamwork.  We have trained facilitators who will lead your group through a series of problem solving challenges, all designed to promote more effective communication, conflict resolution and other positive team behaviors.  We also offer conference meeting space and catered meals.

In summary, teams need fun activities outside of work to help foster good team work and it doesn’t have to be hard or expensive.  Refreshing Mountain offers corporate team building event packages starting as low as $14 per person.  If you don’t have the time or budget to organize a full event, consider at least getting the group outside of work to share a meal together!

The Wall

Gossip Table

Giant Ladder

Challenge Adventure Zipline Tour