Outdoor Team Building Games

They're serious stuff!

Outdoor team building games are often used to build up a company team. The idea is that when a work team are taken out of the work place, placed in an unfamiliar setting and expected to solve puzzles, play games with a required outcome, or any of the many other team building activities used, they will bind together better and become a better team.

Treasure hunts are common among the outdoor team building games. Perhaps it is because people enjoy a treasure hunt as a simple leisure pursuit, and so it has been transferred to the team building industry. Unfortunately, this kind of game is competitive in nature; there are winners and losers. This type of activity is not always the best to use for building a team.

A team that engages in a certain activity on a company away day and subsequently loses because they were not good enough is surely being given the wrong message. If, furthermore, they are in direct competition with fellow workers they are likely to become very confused indeed. It is difficult to see how such a situation can build a better team.

Studies have shown that cooperation as opposed to competition has a greater positive effect on team building. Team members experience the support and help of other team members. No one feels undervalued or unworthy as there is an atmosphere of being in it together and being swept along in a communal effort.

Even if the team fails to complete its objective, there is a greatly diminished feeling of failure and more a feeling of simply not reaching the required target. The difference may be subtle in actual terms, but it is considerable in psychological terms. Pitting team members or teams against each other in outdoor team building games is not the best way to build a team. Cooperative effort works best every time.

For this reason, the kind of activity that requires all team members to cooperate together, but without competition, has been proven to be the best model for team building. They can work against the clock to help improve quick thinking, but there should never be an element of failure built in to the activity.

Team leaders within the team should always be chosen carefully. It should be someone who has a degree of compassion and not someone who only picks up on the negative points. Encouragement works best to build a team.

Outdoor team building games can be a double edged sword. Chosen carefully they can be a considerable help in fine tuning a working group to produce a team that is committed and happy in what they do. Chosen badly they can have little value at best and a very negative effect at worst.