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1. Team members are tired of the same old teambuilding activities?
2. You are not getting results from the previous team building events?
3. You are trying hard to make your next team building event live up to its true potential?
4. You want to good feelings and the outcomes from the team building activity to last beyond the team building event?
WARNING!
TEAMBUILDING CAN SOMETIMES BE HARMFUL TO YOUR TEAM
The lack of integration with real time work values and goals in team building events can harm trust, motivation, employee morale and productivity. They don’t solve the problems for which they were scheduled and held. You will eventually lose the people you most want to keep – especially if they don’t see your organization getting better as a result of outdoor team building and planning sessions.
At Ashton, we help you integrate the team building event with real-time work goals and values. We work with you to establish a systematic workplace integration and follow-up process - before you go on the team building adventure. We stress the importance of shared values and vision and help align them during the process. Depending on your objectives and needs, we provide the following types of teambuilding sessions:
Personality-Focused Teambuilding-members of the team fill out a personality questionnaire and then learn about their own personalities and the personalities of their fellow team members. The team then uses the results as a basis for discussion, developing action steps, and participating in various development experiences. The underlying rationale for this approach is that if team members better understand each other (such as differences in how team members perceive, make decisions, and react to events), they can then learn how to better communicate and deal with each other, thus enhancing team effectiveness.
Activity-Focused Teambuilding
Teams carry out challenging tasks, usually in outdoor settings (e.g., an experiential “ropes” course, or an outdoor adventure, such as white water rafting, mountain climbing, a survival course, or boot camp). These activities require groups to work together to achieve success. The exercises are built around specific needs of teams and include group problem solving, risk-taking, trust, or paradigm breaking. The underlying philosophy of this approach is that if team members experience success working together in a challenging outdoor experience, they will then be able to transfer these teamwork lessons to the work setting and become a more effective team.
Skills-Focused Teambuilding
Team members participate in workshop sessions that require them to learn and practice specific teamwork skills (e.g., dealing with conflict, reaching group consensus, learning how to give criticism, or running effective team meetings). These workshops include skills that can be applied immediately in the workplace. The teambuilding aspect of this approach is maximized when intact teams participate together and make commitments to use these new tools to improve the way the team functions. The underlying philosophy with the skill-building approach is that the most likely reason groups don’t work together well as a team is because they do not have the necessary skills. Thus, the obvious first step in building better teams is to have teams practice using teamwork skills in facilitated workshop settings, increasing the likelihood they will use these skills in the work setting.
Problem Solving- Focused Teambuilding, team members jointly work together (usually in a retreat setting and led by an outside facilitator) to identify and then solve the barriers to effectiveness that the group is experiencing. The underlying rationale with this approach is that camaraderie and teamwork can occur if the outside facilitator helps the group successfully surface and then address (rather than avoid) the various barriers to team effectiveness.
The four types of teambuilding interventions presented here, when employed in the right way for the right type of team problem, can considerably improve team performance. To help clients make the right choices, options are available where clients can choose to run the following surveys and make their teambuilding event more effective and rewarding. These surveys can be run separately or be built into the teambuilding programmes for a nominal fee.
Organisational Belief and Core Value Profile
This survey assesses employees’ beliefs about what they can control in their surroundings and what they value most at work. While many aspects of work are subject to control, this survey presents thirty basic aspects of organization life that affect job performance. After the completion of this assessment, individual responses can be developed into organizational profiles. This tool is great for aligning personal values to organization values.
Culture-Gap Profile
While culture manifests itself in several ways, it is most subject to measurement and change through work group norms. These norms are the unwritten “rules of the game,” what really counts in order to get ahead or, alternatively, how to stay out of trouble. The Culture-Gap Survey provides a systematic tool for pinpointing cultural norms. Part 1 of this survey assesses the actual norms that are operating in your work group. Part 2 assesses the desired norms that would improve your group's performance, job satisfaction, and morale. Any differences between actual and desired norms are referred to as “Culture-Gaps.”
Organisational Courage Assessment
For organizations to succeed in the short term, members must do what is required: perform their jobs, follow the standard operating procedures and respect the decisions of their managers. But to succeed in the long term, it may be necessary for members to challenge traditional practices, confront their managers and co-workers, and bypass official policies and procedures—even though members may receive negative consequences (such as ridicule, criticism, reprimands, negative performance reviews, or even the loss of their job) for not following the organization’s accepted way of doing things.
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Fearful
People Doing Without Questioning
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Stressed-Out
People Challenging with Stress and Anxiety |
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Bureaucratic
People Doing without Thinking
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Quantum Leap
People Challenging with Ease and Excitement |
This instrument reveals twenty possible acts of courage that go beyond what is safe and customary. Employees are asked to respond to these twenty acts in two different ways. First, they are asked to indicate how often they have observed these acts in the organization—or if any of these acts are not necessary because the members have already been doing what is needed for the long-term survival and success of the organization. Second, for these same possible acts of courage, they are asked to indicate how afraid people would be of receiving negative consequences if they performed these acts in the organization |