Signature Teambuilding

Greg Huber

Team Building in Action: CreativeMktGroup

team group spotlight

Team building can develop bonds between new teams, strengthen existing teams, and even smooth issues within volatile teams. While organizations approach us for a variety of reasons, the heart of each reason is the same: they are looking for change and transformation within their team.

CreativeMktGroup is a small marketing firm based in Richmond, VA. The company was started 3 years ago but in the past year, they have experienced a significant growth spurt, bringing on several new full-time employees and significantly expanding their list of clients.  As exciting as new growth can be, it can also be challenging and bring with it a slew of growing pains. CreativeMktGroup approached Signature Teambuilding with the TeamQuest experience in mind. From this experience, they were hoping to bond further as a team and discover individual traits they could use to increase team efficiency.

Signature Teambuilding took this team of 5 through a variety of activities on the ground and then up into the Odyssey Course for a series of team building exercises. Traversing through the ropes course together, a series of challenges presented themselves and each individual’s strengths and weaknesses quickly rose to the surface. Overcoming each obstacle, the team had to utilize trust, critical thinking skills, and communication. When a team member was feeling weak or uncertain, others offered advice, words of encouragement, or even a literal hand to hold. When faced with a complex problem, each member had a different approach to solving it, but watching them have an open discussion about the best approach was clearly indicative of their workplace relationships.

From the time they climbed the rope ladder to the moment they landed back on the ground, 4 hours had passed and the team had gone through moments of struggles, triumph, and even a few stumbles. They had confronted fears, experienced extreme vulnerability, and conquered it all, not on their own but as a complete unit. They left with a new perspective of how to solve their client’s problems and a better understanding of how each team member operated under stress. Back in the office, they still regularly discuss and implement the strategies they discovered out on the ropes course. Just because the experience is over, doesn’t mean the learning stops.

Signature Teambuilding inspires teams to change their internal behavior through our experiential learning experiences. Thank you to CreativeMktGroup for trusting the process and being open to change!

team group

Team Building To Transform Your Internship Program

team building

Today, more people are graduating from college than ever before and employers are much more selective when choosing interns. Gone are the days when employers viewed interns as free labor.  Today they’re seen as potential future employees, already brimming with experience and able to jump right into the company. Students no longer treat internships as a means to fulfill graduation requirements; they expect internships to provide them with a true learning experience and honed skillset.

Capital One, Altria, Royall & Company, and other large companies we work with have very robust internship programs. Starting with the selection process and all the way through their 10-week program, companies are doing everything they can to treat their interns with respect, providing them with opportunities to learn, set high expectations and give them a sense of the real world.  In addition, they usually host extracurricular activities and social events to help people interact.

What do social events provide and how is that cost justified?  In our experience, social outings like going to a ballgame, bowling or to the bar don’t do as much as companies might think. Usually, people interact with the people they already know instead of building new relationships. If you really want people to interact, you need to encourage them to do so by getting them out of their “social comfort zone”. This can be accomplished through team building activities. Left to their own devices, people will naturally gravitate to those they are familiar with.

What kind of message are you sending with your company culture?  Something else to keep in mind is the kind of message you are sending about your company’s culture. We’re not suggesting that happy hours aren’t a good thing and are not trying to suck the fun out of everyone’s good time but it is important to consider what these activities are supporting.  Are you portraying the idea that work is work and play is play? Are you suggesting that everyone at work is just a big family? These team activities should speak to your company’s culture and reputation.

What can you do to set up your interns for success? From the interns perspective, they want to be successful so they need to know what success looks like and how they can be successful at your company. Interns want to feel like you are preparing them for success and you are interested in their well-being and future, even if they don’t come to work for you. There is plenty of time to go to the bars and play outside of work but if you don’t help them build relationships with others, show them what you value and work to equip them for success, you are doing yourself and them a great disservice.

Signature Teambuilding has been thinking about this for many years and we have designed programs that combine purpose, fun and learning all at the same time. We believe that learning can be fun and that fun can be purposeful. For example, our Shifting Gears program is strategically designed to break down barriers between people by conducting a variety of activities that are “smart” not silly, challenging but not impossible, and inclusive not exclusive. There are a variety of activities to ensure everyone will engage in the process and we break the group into various sized teams for each different activity so participants will interface with nearly everyone during the program. Most importantly, the program will connect to the company’s value, mission, culture, and competencies so the participants get a true sense of how to be successful working there. Provide your interns with the best possible experience with true team building.

The Risk of Putting Team Building Up For a Vote

We live in a democratic society so it’s general practice to put group decisions to a vote. When choosing a movie to see, a new restaurant to try, or an-after dinner treat, voting can be a perfectly acceptable way to come to a consensus. However there is an activity we don’t advise voting on: teambuilding.

First of all, not everyone shares the same mental model of an experience. One of our activities is called WaterWorx- it is a complex, problem-solving activity conducted at tables. Occasionally we have participants walk into the room in which the tables are all set up and they say, “Oh, I thought we were going to a waterpark.”  Clearly the same mental model is not shared by all!

Secondly, people can have vastly different experiences with the exact same activity. Take paintball, for instance. Someone who has tried paintball may have had a terrific experience while another may have been injured and had a terrible time. Even though they tried the same thing, they had completely different experiences and now have conflicting opinions on the activity.  

Some activities are less clear than others, but no less valuable.  Everyone understands what wine-tasting entails and there is little room for interpretation as to what one would experience.  But what about an activity that’s a little more ambiguous? It may be less clear as to the final experience, but it doesn’t mean the activity itself will be any less enjoyable.

So often we vote not based on what we know, but on what we think or perceive. We opt for the easiest to reach apple, without considering the incentives that the harder-to-reach apple may reveal. When we put something up for a vote, the only thing we are coming to a consensus of is the popularity of one over the other, not necessarily the effectiveness or enjoyability factor of the team-building event.  

We advocate for the leader of the group to make that call based on the outcome you’re hoping for your group.  More often than not, the leader of the group can see the big picture. The leader can see which areas of the team’s cohesiveness could use a little work and which are excelling. Based on that big picture and understanding of how the team operates, a team-building activity with the specific outcome in mind can be chosen. By making this decision for your team, you’re centering the backbone of your team through deeper relationships and new ways of thinking.

Team Building and the Element of Surprise

Greeting people at the door and receiving a warm, friendly reception is my typical experience upon starting a program. One particular time stands out as the majority shuffled in without acknowledging me at the door. Some stopped with reluctance to take their playing card before finding a seat. Within five minutes of beginning, one person asked where the bathroom was located and left the room. I waited to start, but he never came back. Shortly later, a handful of people hovered together, creating quite the disruption, to deal with a so-called crisis.

I realize that it’s nearly impossible to satisfy everyone in a group of 50 people, but rarely do I get such a negative vibe as I did this time. Despite the initial lack of interest, and countless distractions during the program, the feedback from my client’s group was good. Much to my surprise, 85% was extremely positive, 10% was in the middle and 5% was extremely negative. I was pleased with the feedback and looked carefully at the comments, especially to the few that were very negative…

“I do not believe 2+ hours essentially playing games is going to make us work together better.”

“I left at the beginning of this. This was an absolute waste of time. Playing games with the toys doesn’t develop personal relationships in the way that was trying to be accomplished. If you want certain people to have conversations let them describe their job, so I can ask questions and communicate effectively.”

With nearly 30 years of experience conducting these programs, I’ll be the first to admit that not every program is perfect, effective or a home run. I realize I’m not going to make believers out of everyone. Naturally, I want to understand what I could do differently to engage the folks that had a less than stellar experience. After every program, I strive to determine where I was lost in translation between the people who I was successful at engaging and those who I was not. Fortunately, there is always plenty of positive feedback…

“I don’t normally like these kinds of events but Mr. Huber keeps it interesting and gives an understanding as to why we did it.”

To get to the bottom of the brutally honest, negative feedback, I wanted to find out from my client how they positioned the program to their group. What did they tell these folks prior to the program? One of the first questions I asked was “what did you tell them about the team building session?”. Much to my dismay, but not my surprise, the group coordinator said, “I didn’t say anything, I like to keep it a surprise”.

The element of surprise is something I encounter in nearly 25% of all the programs I conduct. And that, my friends, is the problem. NEVER keep your team building or team development a surprise from your people.

Why?

  • The group needs to know that you value the team building process.
  • The group needs to know “what’s in it for me?”
  • The group needs to know that you care about their development.
  • The group needs to know you trust the team building vendor enough to deliver the program that you have chosen.
  • The group needs to know the time spent is a development opportunity for them (collectively as a group and individually).
  • The group needs to understand how this session fits into the other parts of the program content.
  • The group needs to understand in clear terms what experiential learning is all about and how it is different than the “classroom” learning environment, or death by PowerPoint.

This is not to absolve the team building provider of any of his/her responsibility as the vendor and provider of services. A reputable team building provider still needs to create an engaging environment and one in which people can make the choice to learn. Also, the provider needs to match the activities to the audience and the outcomes.

In the example above, I believe if the client had framed the experiential learning process, the value of the experience and how it relates to the specific outcomes of the overall session, people would have come in more open-minded. Critical for these programs, an open mind allows folks to see beyond the activities and games to realize the program is designed to…

  1. Be fun and engaging but with the purpose of creating conversations to accelerate the process of building relationships.
  2. Create a level of challenge that can lead to success or failure but most important what can be learned from either outcome.
  3. Help people and teams learn to think differently about how they work together and solve problems.

Surprise doesn’t add excitement to the team building experience

The majority of people today have participated in some pretty lame team building experiences that truly were a waste of their time and did not add any value to the overall experience and/or felt disconnected from the overall event in some way.

Moral of the story — If you are doing a team building event to accomplish certain outcomes and spending time and money on the event, do your part in framing the experience properly so the participants understand there is purpose and value in the time you are asking them to spend. Then of course, make sure you select the right vendor that can keep YOUR promise.

To learn more about our teambuilding programs, contact Signature Teambuilding today.

How Companies Waste Money on Team Building

Every company has different measures for gauging camaraderie, performance and any other characteristics that defines their team. When we think about activities, events and outings to build these values, each of us probably has something different in mind. Rightfully so, team building isn’t a one-size-fits-all deal.

What companies don’t know is that they may be considering the wrong programs and activities to achieve their unique goals. Here, we’ll discuss three primary ways many companies end up wasting money on team building.

1) Decision makers fail to distinguish between team building processes and outcomes, and team bonding events.

The latter produce very little real ROI except to provide some pleasant distraction for your staff for a day, and a temporary heightened sense of well-being. Their decision to buy into such a program is largely focused on the games and activities and at what price they’re provided. Actual team building programs are geared towards producing a certain outcome, like enhanced intra-team communication. These programs use experiential activities as a platform from which group learning and “ah-ha’s“ of the day can be transferred back to the workplace via experienced facilitators who are trained in experiential learning methodology.

2) Buyers of team building programs talk about custom programs, but don’t ask substantive questions to really understand the goals and objectives for the program.

Unless the vendor asks detailed questions before a program to understand specific team behaviors and what their team is like in terms of contextual strengths and weaknesses, how can any team building program be meaningfully designed for outcomes? It continues to amaze me how few potential clients actually care about how their dollars are being translated into future positive team behaviors that help the bottom-line.

3) Decision-makers only view the team event as a one-off experience, never integrating it into a greater plan of leadership or team development.

In short, these folks are committed to a great day out, and less inclined to achieve sustainable results. Ever heard of a great team that was created in a day? Look at your spending on “team building” compared to sales, communication and such skills-based training costs. Without an ongoing plan for team development moving forward, very few of these “activity focused” team building measures create a sustainable platform for development. It’s likely poor team behaviors will continue to hobble them in the short and medium term.

Team bonding or team building?

You’ll hear me talk time and time again about what I feel are the obvious differences between team building and team bonding. It doesn’t mean that one of these processes is pointless or wrong. It’s all about the goal in which you’re trying to achieve for your team. Improving performance, deepening connections, developing trust and building skills in problem solving and change management is what Signature Teambuilding strives to fulfill. If you want to give your team a shared experience where they can loosen up and let off some steam, try a one-off team bonding event. All I ask is that you not mistake one for the other — they aren’t interchangeable. Check out this chart to understand the difference…

Team building is a process, not an event.

Unless your staff needs a team bonding experience like going bowling, or singing karaoke, what they might really benefit from is attending a fun, team building program designed to help them back in the workplace. Contact Signature Teambuilding today to learn more about what types of team building programs exist to achieve the unique goals of your team.