What Is Team Building?

It may be a term that is commonly used by companies, and it may be something that a company makes use of every so often in an attempt to increase their efficiency, but all too often workers and management alike are left wondering, "What is team building?"

On the face of it there should be no difficulty understanding the principle. After all, the explanation is in the title; it's team building. However, this much used method of building up a group of people to become a cohesive and tightly structured team is not always understood.

Team building is the art of taking a bunch of workers from a company and instilling in them a sense of direction and commitment. It goes further than that even. It shows the lowly worker what his or her place is in the team, and how they fit into it. It shows them why they are needed, and it shows them why they are important to the ultimate success of the team.

A team is not merely a group of people who work together. It is a group who work together who all have a common shared goal or goals. For that reason, a wages clerk and a canteen worker who may both work for the same company do not really belong in the same team.

Most companies of any size will therefore have several teams, all different and with different needs, but all striving towards a similar goal on a parallel route. This is why company away days need to be structured properly with careful planning beforehand. Placing the wages clerks and the canteen staff together and making them perform in a team building exercise has little value. They may learn company loyalty, but not much more.

It is the people who actually work together and who need to become more efficient at what they do in order to increase the company profits who make up a team. They can be fine honed into a team that better serves the company, while also making their own working lives better at the same time.

When a team member feels a high degree of commitment to the work in hand they will perform their duties more efficiently and with more attention to detail. This can come about through an awareness of their place within the company and within the team. They can be made aware of their importance to the overall outcome and feel a certain pride in what they do.

When this feeling of belonging and being committed is nurtured, workers may start to become fully engaged in what they do. An engaged worker is a happy worker. It is someone who feels valued. They know their job and they tend to do it well. They also, on average, generate more profits for the company than a disengaged worker will.

We come back to the question: what is team building? It is the process of priming a team of workers to become committed and enthusiastic about the work they do. It is a process that produces a happier worker who cares about the outcome of their efforts. They are engaged in their work and as a result they, and other team members like them, contribute significantly to the company's continued prosperity.