Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Team Building - Your Free Team Building Activities

By Ferdinand Mekinsy

Free team building activities can be used to help form a primary foundation for cooperation in a newly constituted team, as well as assist build the skills of an existing team. Nevertheless, there are a few things that you should recollect when choosing which team building challenges you use for your teams.

Free team building activities are varied, ranging from basic exercises targeted at youth to advanced programs for high end professionals. Due to this variety, you will wish to take care in selecting games, challenges and puzzles for your group. You want to choose free team building activities that challenge but do not overwhelm. This means that you need to get a rudimentary idea of the skill level of all of the members of the team you are seeking to train.

There are some generic free team building activities that can aid you appraise the skills of your team members. These are moderately simple tasks that are accomplished quickly by a whole group. By ascertaining how well the team works together, as well as how cursorily they reach the demanded solution, you will get a feel for how well they work together. The better a team initially works together, the speedier they can advanced to more hard challenges.

If you are planning free team building activities for use in team based competitions, selecting which games, challenges or puzzles that should be used can be hard. Finding something that evens the playing field for everyone can be difficult. Finding puzzles that prevent one person from dominating can be even more difficult. Activities that involve cooperation, regardless of the skill level, are far better than challenging puzzles that one person can solve on their own without help.

There are things that free team building activities cannot do. First and foremost, they can not remedy damaged teams, or change personalities to smoothly fit with one another. If you are having troubles with a group, management should take steps to settle the problem or brusquely tell the employees that it is fundamental that they work together, like it or not. It is very simple to fall into the trap that these challenges and puzzles are cure-alls for teams.

Additionally, free team building activities cannot teach the basic skills of teamwork. If you have a team that is not understanding what needs done, they will need to be instructed through powerpoint presentations or lectures.

If you take the time to blend free team building activities with training on the basic skills of teamwork, you can expect your team to work in a more unified fashion, which can help productivity increase and advance workplace concord.

About the Author:

No comments: