Team building is often a vital part of moving a business forward and is especially helpful where there has been a change of management structure or some periods of unrest within an organization.

Traditional away day options are really team bonding exercises and shouldn’t be confused with team building.

Team Bonding

Taking a group quad-biking, paint-balling etc and will help bond the participants through a shared experience and you might even justify being able to use some of the training budget if you can demonstrate it has helped your staff develop as a team BUT just don’t believe it yourself or you’ll be disappointed to discover that while the group may be closer it is no more effective.

Team Building

If you want to build a team rather than just bond the individuals closer, you need a structured process and Ginare Consultants can help your organization decide what you want to achieve from team building and help set a realistic timeframe to achieve those results.

The key characteristics of a genuine team building session include

1.     Have definite session and longer-term goals and know how the session goals lead to the longer term ones of the organisation.

2.     Use an engaging and varied base activity that involves each participant in something that he or she enjoys doing.

3.     Use an activity that achieves that engagement while having genuine parallels to the workplace and has relevance with the session goals.

4.     Select an activity that requires the same kind of skill sets and team approaches that are needed at work – albeit one that is removed from the work itself.

5.     Consider using an independent (internal or external) facilitator – to allow all levels to join in as equals and to avoid it feeling like a “sermon from above”.

6.     Debrief using a predefined process that highlights the workplace parallels and allows the participants to extract their own learning rather than be preached to.

7.     Use a proven mechanism to transfer the learning back to the workplace, ideally integrated within the debriefing process itself.

So what do you want building or bonding?

If none of the 7 key points seem important, you are probably looking at a pure fun bonding session. Whether that is a trip to the nearest (or furthest!) bar or something that offers the group an experience that all of its members will enjoy doesn’t matter too much  - we can arrange a team bonding session that your staff will love.

But if any of the above do seem important, then they probably all are and you are looking for a team building session. GINARE CONSULTING can work with you to develop your own set of teambuilding exercises OR can build and facilitate them for you.

So if you would like more information on building or bonding just email clare@ginare.co.uk