What is Team Building?

The interaction of the employees on a routine basis and their positive engagement to achieve a common goal can be easily termed as team building. Team building brings people together by encouraging collaboration and teamwork. In fact, a major part of the success of a team is due to team building and cohesive working relationships. The rest obviously depends upon communicating to the group members about project goals and training them to devise strategies to optimise their individual strengths and talents. 

How to do effective team building?

1) Establishing Strong leadership

A strong and well engaged team that has the potential to make its way through the challenges of the corporate world largely depends upon an effective leadership. In order to excel at team building leaders should learn to develop a close understanding and loyalty between themselves and the team members. Just bossing around and dictating a list of orders isn't going to get the job done. A leader should act as the backbone of a team, supporting the group members and helping them at every stage.

2) Valuing individual opinion

Every member in the group has something to add or contribute when it comes to working together in a team. Silencing the opinions of the team members and not allowing them to have a voice can be fatalistic to a team building effort. An openness for self expression won't only make the make the employees feel valued but it would bring in a great deal of innovative ideas which could be used to help ace team projects.

3) Preparing to achieve a common goal

The primary reason for team building is to prepare a group of people towards achieving a common goal. But many a times team members are left ambiguous clues and pointers that accounts for a confused team and unfruitful results. Being clear when communicating the brief and clarifying directives at every step is extremely important. When the team members have a good idea as to what is required of them, they could easily accomplish goals and achieve periodic milestones. Lastly, encouraging trust and cooperation among employees on your team is the key towards success. Give them a chance to interact with each other and the team lead to discuss possible issues and constrains to eliminate last minute problems and glitches. 

Using External facilitation for team bonding and team building ideas

Learning about the steps to build a strong and functional team might be beneficial but to achieve excellent results you would need to go the extra mile. And using external facilitation to improve your team’s interaction and cohesiveness isn't a bad idea after all. That's where Jambar team building Singapore can help you out. We can assist your company in organizing corporate team building events and engaging your workers in team building games. Visit our website today to scour through a wide array of team building ideas and activities that encourage team bonding within the employees and the leaders. These are specifically designed to overcome deep set insecurities and break personal and professional barriers in a fun and stress-free environment. Thus, giving the team members the ultimate opportunity to positively engage with their co workers and polish their team work capabilities through making a joint effort. To explore more options and organise corporate team building events that are fine tuned according to the requirements of your company, visit our website now. Our team building experts will help your team to reach the summit. Give us a chance!

Innovation and Team Building

There's more to innovation than discovering new ideas, methods, and making known some new ways by which things can be done. Innovation also entails approach to changes so as to achieve better products and services and the modification of business models. Being innovative is simply putting one's creative ability to work.

Innovation has been proven to give every company an edge over others, gives them opportunities to penetrate faster into markets and open them up to bigger opportunities. Innovation also increases the growth rate of a company making the company more aware of the originality of some concepts.

Innovation involving teamwork is mostly on the part of leaders. Their job is to assemble teams and lead them in getting optimal outcomes. Listed below are ways by which a leader can foster innovation with their teams.

1. Trust yourself so well, so you can trust others: Transparency is needed for every member of the team more than they have ever been because innovation requires bringing new ideas and schools of thought instead of the old ones, every member must trust themselves so they can trust each other, this fosters bonding & brings understanding and makes one patient enough to listen to others and understand their point of view.

2. Work together and discover: To collaborate doesn't necessarily have to do with working together alone but also taking steps together to discover and then get possible outcomes of new ideas and inventions. No one knows which innovation would bring influence and impact on the company in the marketplace.

3. Always communicate to learn: A team needs enough communication to always achieve their aim because, without it, a team would not get each other and would not bond. It is through communication that a team gets to collaborate, work together and discover innovations needed for the company.

4. Be a courageous change agent: Every leader should inculcate the habit of critical thinking into each member of the team and make them see improvements in whatever they do. Only a courageous person would see through the lens of improvement.

Exciting fun innovative activities that bring out innovative ideas in people

The Drone Challenge: it's about putting a team's collaboration skills into test in a flight. As a group, you will discuss, plan and build obstacles for drones to pass through. These obstacles will need to meet the given requirements by the Flight School so as to ensure safety for the drones and 100% fulfillment for your team because your obstacles will be challenged by other teams. 

Team building activities in Singapore

So it is now time for your team to work together to design and construct obstacles within the requirements but tough for others. This activity always ends with the highlight: your team (yes, every one of you) can fly the drone and put your skills to test. Your team will have to display precise and stable flight control while maneuvering through other teams’ obstacle courses. Of course, you can also earn some bonus if you display cool stunts along the way. Many people had complained that it's too difficult, so most of them end up running from it and some said it is easier once the transversal had been mastered.

Cardboard boat building: Cardboard boats are a fun modeling project. You can make boats that are small enough for one person to fit in and sail. To make a cardboard boat, you will need a cardboard, waterproof tape (duct tape is best), box cutter/scissors, newspaper, something to draw with, an idea and necessary decorations, paint which is optional. 

Fun team building activities Singapore

Then next to do is to get a basic shape you'd love to make use of, draw it and then cut it out. Next is to create the walls, strengthen it, decorate it, make the head, and set a sail for it.

Virus challenge: the virus challenge is a challenge where teams compete to save humanity from outbreaks of deadly disease. This board-game-based team building exercise is an excellent way to get your team talking, bonding, and forging new relationships. 

Team building games Singapore

Jambar team building offers innovative team building activities in Singapore for companies, gatherings (corporate or others) and organizations and we’re proud to work with clients in adding custom content to all of our activities.

How to Decide Which is the Best Team Building Event Experience For Your Corporate Company?

At Jambar Team Building we have discovered one important thing after delivering over 1000 events: there is a difference and it’s important.

Well, both bonding and building are designed to be fun, but that is where the similarity ends. Bonding can be anything where there is limited learning or facilitation.  For example, paint balling, art jamming, archery tag, terrarium making or escape the room.  As a company you turn up, split into teams, have the rules explained and off you go. 1 hour later there is likely to be a winning team and you are done.   The hope here is that the activity alone will encourage bonding, fun, getting to know colleagues better, which it does to a certain extent, but that is where the benefit ends.  Team bonding doesn’t address communication skills, interpersonal issues, learning from the activity or specific outcomes like corporate values that your company may have.

Not long ago at one of Jambar team building events we were told that 2 specific people couldn’t be put in a team together because they had had problems at the office and weren’t talking to each other.  As a facilitator at the time, I had a chat with both of them for 5 minutes before the start of the event and then, before the main activity began, Jambar’s Chain Reaction Challenge, the whole group discussed the benefits of working together.  While I don’t expect they became best friends, by the time we got to the debriefing they were talking and cooperating. A huge improvement according to the management.  If the group had gone paint balling instead, it’s likely they would have just aimed at each other and nothing would have improved in their relationship.

Hence, what’s the key difference.  Well there are two things, one is the activity type and the other is the quality of facilitation.

The team building activity: In general, the activity needs to encourage real team interaction, where people have dependences on each other for a good outcome.  Art Jamming and other bonding activities don’t usually provide that. In Jambar’s ‘Change it Up’ negotiation activity, teams can’t do well unless they there is good communication and collaboration with both themselves and other teams.  A big difference.

The facilitation:  hand in hand with the activity is the facilitator.  It is the facilitators’ job to weave learnings into the experience from the moment (and arguably before) the event starts to the final debriefing.  Encouraging the teams to think for themselves, inviting each individual to be curious about themselves and others, and considering what it is they learn from this experience, while at the same time keeping the fun!

If all you want is fun, look at team bonding, if you want fun, real learning outcomes and improved relationships look to Jambar's big team building activities.

 

Common Misconceptions about Team Building (And Why They're Wrong)

You’ve probably heard it all when it comes to team building by now- that it’s lame, it’s useless, a pointless use of time. Maybe you’ve talked to a few friends from another company and have heard that the team building experience creates more problems than it solves. However, if done right, team building is not what some people might take it to be. Don’t know what this means? Take a look at these three misconceptions about team building and the reasons that they are wrong.

Team Building is Lame

Whoever said team building is lame sure didn’t participate in the right team building activities. The first thing that we think of when we hear that we are going to a workplace retreat to bond might be trust falls among other exercises. The truth is, team building exercises don't have to be about such exercises. If employees are into adventure, a trip down the longest zip lines might be a team building exercise that interests them. If they're the more indoor types who prefer to debate over something than run around for morale, brainstorming exercises to solve issues in the office could be just the thing for them.

It’s Pointless, a Waste of Time

Just like meditating is good for mental health, taking employees out and letting them bond through various activities is good for their morale. When you have objectives and tailor your team building towards them, then the exercise will not only have a purpose, but an impact as well. For instance, team building exercises can be tailored towards integrating a new member into the team, or allowing merging department employees to mingle and get to know each other. Employees who get along or trust each other are more likely to collaborate and communicate with each other, which is good news for any organization.

 
Additionally, employees can learn a lot during team building exercises. One who didn’t know how to kayak could gain experience during the exercise. Another who didn’t know a problem-solving technique familiar to his colleague could be exposed to it. 

When done right, there is no way that team building could not have a positive impact on a company.