Team Building Groups

A Good Team Building Company Will Make Team Building Work For All Group Sizes

Team building groups that are fairly small work better than large groups. When team training tries to organise a group that has more than ten or so members it can get very unwieldy and cumbersome, the training suffers and the team fails to achieve the high level of effectiveness that is possible.

With a large team each member will find it more difficult to know where they fit in and what their level of importance is within the team. This has an effect on morale. Members may find it difficult to feel the necessary motivation and the overall team efficiency can suffer.

When the core team is smaller, each team member gains a better chance of getting to know the others more easily. They have a better opportunity to learn all the little quirks and idiosyncrasies of their fellow team mates and this means that they understand better the way the other team players work, and the way they think.

This is perhaps the most valuable single thing that is taken away from a team building away day; the knowledge of how the others think and work. It tends to happen best in small team building groups, but it does happen in larger ones too.

It happens mainly because of the more relaxed atmosphere that exists on away days. The boss becomes more of a real person and less of a boss. Ordinary worker warm to this changed person better and they themselves come out of their shells more too. Everyone starts to understand each other in a way they never realised they could. When this new knowledge is taken back to the work place it is put to use, often subconsciously, and the effects can be quite startling.

Members of a team who hold the lowest and least important positions can feel intimidated and even threatened if they are part of a large and unwieldy team. They can feel undervalued and unsure of their need to be there. They are unlikely to feel much commitment to their own goals, let alone the overall company shared goals. For this reason alone small team building groups can work best.

If a team has to be of a large size because of the nature of what they do, then there are ways to compensate, and each way should be examined and explored to see which ones will work best for any particular team.

A team can only be as strong as its weakest link, so no team member should be allowed to feel apathy towards the team goals. They should be encouraged to feel ownership of the goals, perhaps through relevant incentives. In this way they can become engaged in what they do, knowing that despite the fact they are only one of a large number, their effort is needed and highly valued.

Building up a team in a work place is not really unlike the same process when the team is a sporting one. A football team or cricket team, for example, has to all work tightly together. Each player knows the position they must maintain, and they know what they can do and what their limitations are. They also know each other's strengths and weaknesses and they play accordingly. This is how team building groups should work together too.