These days everybody wants to “do teambuilding” to derive the benefits for their business. But it’s very easy to get it wrong, resulting in a waste of time and money. Even worse, getting teambuilding wrong can actually result in damaging your team performance and result in key individuals leaving the business.

There are a few things you can do to ensure the exercise works for you, and a few key mistakes you want to avoid.

The most common mistakes made in teambuilding are these:

1. Not including the whole team
2. Not employing a qualified facilitator
3. Not following up when you get “home”

1 If you want to improve the performance of your team as a whole, you should include all the people whose performance you want to improve. If you leave a certain member of your team back at the office, they won’t get the benefits of the exercise which could form divides in the workforce as some members feel left out. If you are a small team and need to keep the office staffed by someone, look at running 2 events a week apart. Sure, it costs more money, but what is the cost of recruiting someone new to replace a dissatisfied person who has just left the team?

2 Spending time together as a group is helpful for team bonding, but is not enough to be called “teambuilding”. Teambuilding is a structured and facilitated process, involving a task, or tasks, that are designed to uncover people’s true skills and abilities, regardless of their workplace roles, and force the individuals to work together as a real team. To ensure that this happens you need a facilitator with the appropriate qualifications and experience.

3 Don’t treat your teambuilding event as an isolated event. The money and time your company has spent on the teambuilding exercise will be wasted if the learning gathered about your people is not put into action as you return. Did you find out that the office junior, has a flair pulling the important points out of a complex situation? Put him in charge of meeting minutes and train him on your corporate reporting protocols. Were the book-keeper and the facilities manager the pair that found the fastest route through the maze on the last day? Set them to cost planning for your intended office move now, they will probably save you time and money.

You have invested in your team by arranging your teambuilding event because you believe that your people are worth it and it will bring you results. You can make those results more likely to happen by not making these mistakes.

About the Author:

Tamsin spoke with Doug Henderson, the UK Teambuilding Expert who has developed a fun and successful London-based teambuilding programme with London RIB Voyages, the luxury fast boat tour providers. Programmes take place over 1 or 2 days on and around the Thames, with clients benefiting from easy access and minimum time for their teams to be away from work. For more info, email bookings@londonribvoyages.com or use the form at http://www.dha-management.co.uk

Many managers have worked their way up in an organization and feel a close relationship with being in the thick of the work.

When they try to take a step upwards into a full management role, it makes them feel uncomfortable – as if they are not working ‘hard enough’.

So they find it hard to not  do the whole job, despite having people around them who would willingly do a bit more.

To manage well is to focus on ongoing activities.

Since the aim of management is to maximize profits using available resources, any good manager should be able to motivate and encourage his or her people.

They should have the ability to initiate the workers, any company’s main assets, into an inspired state of working, to get them pulling together in order to achieve a common goal.

It is only when managers are accomplishing results, through the co-operation of their workers that a company will be able to flourish. This is why a manager has to have the keen ability to gauge his workforce’s needs and act accordingly.

If his workers are capable and have adequate skill then the manager merely has to motivate and encourage them towards progress.

If, on the other hand, the workforce is not that accomplished, the manager’s task is to personally guide and instruct them in order for them to benefit.

If one of your employees gives you a suggestion in a meeting or otherwise, encourage them.

If you don’t like their idea don’t dismiss it off-handedly. Explore with them where there may be flaws.

Your personal experience should feed into the success of the team as a whole.

Always listen encouragingly to their ideas and make sure that you compliment them on their enthusiasm and positive participation.

Successful organizations recognize the importance of high performance teams in avoiding wasted time, wasted effort and wasted money.

This does not mean, though, that the people in these organizations are aware of the many team building myths that have gained acceptance over the years.

Doug Petch specializes in helping organizations and individuals create the synergies in team building, leadership and communication skills that lead to sustained profitability and long-term success. He is also the host of the popular Sixty Second Success Seminar, an audio program focused on the tools, tips and techniques that anyone can use to navigate their path to success. Website: www.dougpetch.com

There is no shortage of articles in the popular press about how to survive in the new era of a damaged financial world.

Jobs seem to be disintegrating by every newscast and matters are made much worse, I believe, by a scurrilous press having political reasons for making things seem much worse than they are.

The recession we are heading for, has as much to do with perception caused by a malicious press out there as anything else.

That said, what are you going to do to make the best out of a sorry state of affairs?

Practically, and having been through a number of recessions and crises over my career, it pays to remain flexible and prepared for when the downturn appears if and when it does.

Not every situation can be protected, but as managers we can plan to be as lean as possible with the permanency of employees, using short-term contracts where possible and thus protecting the key people who have been most loyal and especially the most productive.

Trying to second guess what is likely to come, is difficult in large organizations, as middle managers don’t always have the inside knowledge to know or influence what is going on.

It’s a time to focus on doing core activities really well, delighting the customers we have and, above all, not getting too despondent or down.

Keeping the spirits up and concentrating on delivering the best is likely to be the best we can do.

Oh, and if you live in the UK, don’t watch any more episodes of ‘Survivors’ or that could really get you down!

“When you have a choice to make and you don’t make it, that is, in itself, a choice.”
William James, American Psychologist

You can’t get away from making difficult choices in your business by avoiding them. The challenges that those choices represent are going to need fixing some way or other.

Because making no choice, is indeed a choice in itself. You are just as responsible for the consequences as if you had made a significant choice anyway.

So, by preferring the lazy and ineffective way out, the choice you make is just that, ineffective and weak, leading to the outcomes you achieve and, bluntly, deserve.

And it’s worse as well. When you fail to make the constructive choice to actively lead your team, your people start to get twitchy, because indecisive leadership gives no confidence at all.

By avoiding difficult decisions, you build only mistrust from your people, something you will find very challenging to recover from. Trust can take months and years to build, but only a few seconds to destroy.

A business that is managed by an individual who really cannot make decisions (especially the tough ones where everyone is watching!) and make choices that are dynamic – even when they turn out to be wrong – will lead to confusion and concern for team members.

Of course, you can take defensive positions a little when you have the most challenging of choices to make. There is nothing wrong if you need to take a time out before committing yourself.

If you consistently have a personal style that your people get to understand clearly, even if it means a break before a choice is made, they will learn to appreciate that and have an understanding about how you tick. They will know that you like to think and consider the options you have carefully before you choose – and then you do act and make that choice.

By the way, this works in real life as well!

You might be surprised how many manager feel concerned when they need to leave their business – you see they have fallen short in being able to empower their employees to cope without them.

And that’s a problem…

Empowerment means a degree of freedom for a manager and, perhaps even more important, fulfilled and developed employees.

“There are two great motivators in life. One is fear. The other is love. You can manage an organization by fear, but if you do, you will ensure that people don’t perform to their real capabilities. People are not willing to take risks when they feel afraid or threatened. But if you manage people by love – that is, if you show them respect and trust – they start to perform up to their real capabilities. Because, in that kind of atmosphere, they dare to take risks.”
Jan Carlzon, Former CEO, Scandinavian Airlines System

Want fast results? Manage with fear. Scaring the hell out of your people works really well in the short-term.

The trouble is, where fear exists, your people will keep their heads down and do exactly what is expected of them – and no more. And if they are scared enough, just hang around until they have found somewhere safer.

Why would they try new ideas, just in case they get beaten-up when they do? Many decades of ‘command and control’ take some time to shake off in organizations across the globe.

Pain hurts – and no-one inflicts pain on themselves if there is another way out. So, damaged employees keep their heads down to avoid more of the pain that fearful managers heap on them.

Truth is, such behavior is so much more about the manager’s ego, than a desire to manage effectively. So much more is about their own inadequacies to evolve and change.

It’s so much easier to keep beating with a stick, rather than learn new ways. In many ways this is an indicator of the manager’s own frailties, showing up as a bully.

As Carlzon says, there is another way. A way which encourages and develops. A way that sees the future as one where sustainable growth and a workforce with a curiosity for a way of working that is inclusive, rather than exclusive.

Creating a sustainable growing organizational workforce, prepared to risk and challenge, because they feel that they can. Great managers take the time to grow their people through support and encouragement – and lose the stick!

“An idea is a fragile thing. Turning it off is much easier than keeping it lit. Ideas shine because somebody had them and somebody helped them and nobody turned them off.”
Tom Peters – ‘A Passion For Excellence’

Your people bring with them, into your business, a wealth of creativity. In fact we are all creative beings until some experience somewhere back in our lives snuffs it out with a thoughtless word or two from someone.

If you want unique, creative solutions from your employees, you have a wonderful opportunity to develop that side of their skills.

You, as their manager have the ability to nurture and caress their ideas, by giving them some airtime and freedom to share, explore out loud their thoughts and ‘possibilities’, however crazy they might seem.

It’s time to show them the generosity they need to expand and grow, helping them develop, as well as benefiting the business that you all are in together.

Your people really do have the innate capacity to generate wonderful, imaginative and above all different solutions for you – if you listen carefully and let them.

Managers that show this level of support and encouragement are pretty rare, so the opportunity for you to make the most of those wonderful assets is almost limitless – if you take the time to recognize it.

How you personally handle their brilliant ideas can make the difference as to whether someone’s flame is nourished or snuffed out forever. It takes but a small word to close someone down, never to try again. People avoid painful experiences, so, sometimes it’s easier not to try.

It is an onerous responsibility you carry, yet one for which there is an enormous opportunity to make a difference to that person now and into their futures.

And the value their contribution makes to your business, of course.