Team Building - Collaborative vs. Competitive

Suppose back over all the team building sessions that you have attended over the years. There is a very good probability that at every and each one among them the facilitators organised your group into teams. Any that weren't were most likely small groups. Sound acquainted? Why do they do that?

Well, one answer is to encourage most involvement from the participants. Little team sizes help guarantee that everyone joins in. Quieter folks will be less likely to fade into the background the smaller the team they are in. But that's not the only - or maybe main - reason.

Most team building events are run as competitions. Groups are sometimes given identical goals and are awarded points as they move towards them. Points mean prizes and the winning team members get to require them away. Why?

There are a few answers to that one:

* Competitive events are relatively easy to run.

* Place a cluster of folks into groups and it is easier to justify using the coaching budget.

* Competition generates a buzz.

* Many conferences are for sales folks, who are naturally competitive.

If all of these factors are relevant to your conference, then a competitive event is most likely a good decision for you. But, 2 factors may build it a less good decision. Organisations are increasingly trying to arrange events for non-sales functions and many of these see competition as a unhealthy thing. Secondly, senior managers usually prefer to stress the "one huge team" approach as important to a large department or the organisation as a whole. If either or each of those are relevant to your group, then a competitive event isn't the most effective choice.

The alternative of a competitive event could be a collaborative one. The entire cluster is given a standard goal to figure on along rather than multiple, identical ones to work on in isolation. They will still be organised into teams or not, however the key characteristic is that everyone is collaborating with everybody else to realize something as a whole group.

Options designed to be collaborative not solely exist - they are among the most enjoyable conference or away day events for the participants themselves. They'll deliver a very good combine of camaraderie, company message, learning and fun.

Is not that combination a great outcome from a team building event? Indeed, isn't that an outcome that you want from your teams at work - day in, day out? Positive, you would like your individual teams to aim to be the most effective - however not at the expense of the company goal or goals. You would like the natural motivation that the simplest teams feel to be productive for the organisation - not detrimental to other groups and, thereby, detrimental to the organisation.

Thus what will a collaborative team building activity appear as if? I have written a range of other articles that describe the characteristics that you'll expect to find in sensible choices generally. Rather than duplicate them here, I shall think about those components that can focus on the collaborative aspect specifically. They are:

* There's a single, common goal that each one individuals and / or teams have to figure towards.

* There's a genuine possibility - indeed probability - of the cluster achieving it.

* Not all individuals and groups do the identical issue - multiple, totally different functions is a feature of the workplace and needs to be a feature of a team activity if the learning is to be relevant.

* As at work, the participants would like to exert some kind of overall co-ordination to maintain the main focus on the common goal.

So at your next team building event, do not send your people away bragging concerning how they managed to outdo their colleagues - send them away thinking at least in part how well they worked with them. Then perhaps back at work one thing may just rub off.

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