Reasons Your Teambuilding Activity Could Fall Apart and How to Avoid Them
There are plenty of benefits in doing a team building activity. You should make it a regular program for your employees. It will benefit them and the company. Cooperation is necessary among people within the organization and doing this activity helps a lot. It could last for just two days, but it can transform how everyone in the office works. Unfortunately, things might not go your way. It’s possible that the program wouldn’t happen as expected, and things fall apart. These are the possible reasons for the failure, and what you can do to prevent them.
You forced everyone to join
Make sure you allow your employees to have a voice in planning the activity. It will affect their schedule since it will most likely happen beyond regular office hours. The last thing you want to do is force everyone to join and not give them a chance to have a voice in the process. Instead of feeling excited about it, they will resent you for forcing all employees to join. Let your employees decide when to do the activity, where to do it, and what the goals should be. Offer incentives, financial or otherwise, to those who decided to take part.
You didn’t invite a worthy speaker
The key to a successful team building activity is having an expert managing the activities and providing inspirational messages. If you partnered with someone who doesn’t have a good reputation or will only recycle commonly used exercises, it won’t make sense. No one will be engaged to participate. Although the discussion outputs matter, the facilitator is also integral to the success of the event.
There are unaddressed office issues
If you think a team building activity is enough to address issues in the office, you’re wrong. These underlying problems will still be there. If anything, the activity will only heighten the issues. The employees might use the exercises as an outlet to vent out or express frustration with the management, or with each other. You don’t want them to have a terrible experience during the team building activity. You also don’t want it to turn into an open forum where employees share grievances. It could derail the entire program, and you won’t achieve the goals.
Bosses don’t participate
During a team building activity, everyone has equal roles. No one should act as a leader, except when asked during some activities. Hence, it makes sense to hire someone from outside to serve as a facilitator so that everyone in the company will be participants. It’s also one of the rare chances where employees can treat their bosses like one of them. It can be a fun experience for the management team too. It can teach them the value of humility and being one of the employees they direct all the time.
Hopefully, things will turn out the way you hoped. It’s challenging, but you can do it. Take time to plan the details and learn from the mistakes.
Photo Attribution:
1st and featured image from https://liquidplanner-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/iStock-1019832316-2.jpg
2nd image from https://blog.thehub.io/blog/16-team-building-activities-for-startup-teams-that-dont-suck/
