Team building is a big deal. A quick search on Google throws up all sorts of results for “fun corporate team events”, all involving outdoor activities, competition and a bit of dressing up in something different. These sorts of away-days look like fun, and certainly have a place in rewarding hard work and strong performance, but are they really focussed on team-building and will organisations taking part really develop in a way that justifies the expense?
At Evocatus, we have decades of experience leading and coaching our own high-performing teams which we now apply to the design and delivery of games and exercises to help other organisations’ teams to grow and develop.
decision-making and management challenges
Teamwork starts with leaders. They set the tone and the culture which their team will follow and they are a crucial part of any team-building activity. We work hard to provide leaders with decision-making and management challenges within our exercises which force them to rely on their team, usually to the point of discomfort. Having to rely on others to carry out your plan or to provide you with the right information means that you have to trust them; members of a team who feel trusted by their boss will take confidence from that trust and will start to feel the beginnings of loyalty. It’s too easy for leaders to micro-manage and to make plans and decisions without the advice and ideas of their team; we force situations where they have to ask for help and support, so that they learn to lead and manage more efficiently.
Designing a bespoke game to build trust and confidence
In order to start the design process, we need to understand the challenges faced (or the opportunities being missed) by our client; based on the outcomes they need, we then develop a strategy which will usually look to improve attitudes and relationships within the team. By building trust and confidence, teams can become not only more efficient and more inclusive, but also more invested and motivated. By empowering every part of the team, organisations can simply become more effective – through delegated decision making, better communication and through a wider understanding of what the team is driving towards. Businesses who have achieved this empowerment are better able to achieve successful risk management, as engaged employees identify and highlight problems early.
Decision making exercises are also an excellent way to allow inexperienced or specialist members of the team to demonstrate their talent and to get them better integrated into a team. Carefully designed and managed games are a great way to start the process of making teams more inclusive; more high-octane team building scenarios are often more fun for those who are already more confident and outgoing and so can reinforce an unhelpful dynamic within the team.
When it comes to designing games and exercises, we prefer to stay as close to the organisation’s real challenges and problems as we can, getting everybody working together on a task which feels relevant, although we will often “turn up the volume” to create the conditions in which we can really stretch and build the team! In some cases, though, we can slow a process down, take it apart and use the expertise of the whole team to work out how to do it better; we might even manage to spark a little innovation!
At Evocatus we offer training games across the South West, Oxfordshire, and London from our base near Bath. If your company is interested in decision making exercises for adults to build trust and confidence and you think we can help then please contact us.