Some Teamwork activities

Teamwork helps teams break down the barriers of time and distance. Shared-working experiences give team an instant access to any difficult problem.

A challenge for a leader of a group of people, such as in a work department or any sector, is to get everyone to pull together and build as a team instead of going in separate directions. There are many ways to foster a team. One way to foster teamwork is to involve the members in teamwork activities that require them to work together. Activities can be physical in nature or require the use of team brain power to solve any type of problem. Following activities are recommended:

Workplace Activities
Teamwork is important to a productive and healthy work environment, so teamwork activities should be a part of the workplace. Possible activities include starting a team newsletter that provides the latest information on activities and accomplishments of the team members, another one may be job swapping, where workers swap jobs with each other to develop empathy. It also requires workers to help each other to learn the jobs.

Social Activities
To develop teamwork is to get team members to become comfortable with each other. Informal social activities allow the team members to relax and have fun while developing the rapport necessary to function as a unit. Examples of social activities include a group picnic where every member is responsible for any type of task as example managing food or team sports such as volleyball or bowling, a lunch break or a dinner party may be arranged after a long tiring task.

Projects
Projects require that team member work together to achieve a common goal. Projects can involve assigning each team member a specific task that he is responsible for completing, another one is responsible for reviewing. Other activities may be like putting puzzles together or cleaning up or rebuilding a property which helps to develop trust among the team members.

Outdoor Activities
If members of the team are relatively fit, outdoor activities are a way for the team to get away from the "formal" environment. Activities such as camping, hiking, mountain biking etc allow the team members to relax while enjoying the fresh air and the sense of being "away from it all" can lead to bonding within the team.

There is never just one way to look at something – there are always different perspectives, meanings, and perceptions, depending on who is looking-unknown author.

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How to improve your team

Teamwork is often misunderstood as the coming together of a group of people for a common goal and vision working under a particular department or sector. Teamwork is essential because it gives you better results and these are achieved faster due to planned and effective working. The importance of teamwork must be explained to all the employees during the training itself. Teamwork if planned properly, can give the best possible results. The employees must be trained to work as a team and not as an individual. Working as a team has some benefits. For some simple ways to improve teamwork in an organization, followings are recommended:

Enhance Communication
Communication is what bridges gaps between diverse backgrounds of people in different teams and is one of the key factors to improve teamwork in the workplace. For the lack of good communication skills most problems arise at the workplace. It helps build inter-personal relationships among the team members. Good understanding among team members yields better results for the company. No team can be called a team if there isn’t any proper flow of thought and ideas amongst its members.

Arrange team Discussions

Team discussion is very important to improve teamwork in the workplace. You need to fix a time every week when everyone would get together and discuss what happened in the past days. Here people will get a chance to talk about the good and bad that happened and how it can be improved too. Recommendations can be taken to make the team function more effective.  The most effective teams have a clear objective and a shared sense of purpose, communicate openly and honestly, reach decisions by consensus, think creatively and know how to resolve conflict. And for this reason team discussion is very important. Like it is said, there is always room for improvement and this room can be filled little by little every meeting.

Set Combined Goals
The goals need to be set keeping in mind the bigger picture. The goal should be looked at as a combined goal or target and not that of self. Growth of the organization should be given top priority for the sole reason that if the team progresses the employees as well as the organization will be benefited. There should be one goal or target for the entire team every one month (it depends on the purpose) and this should be divided further into the respective teams. If symbiotic processes are needed for output symbiotic living is necessary.

Freedom of Speech
Freedom of speech is very essential if you are looking at promoting the teamwork in your organization. Every employee has the right to say what he/she thinks is right or wrong and why. There should be regular voting for certain decisions where everyone gets a say and thus equality is maintained. The freedom of sharing thoughts and views gives the teams a sort of confidence as well and it results in the unity of your team that you may notice afterwards.


Team Building Activities
One of the best ways to improve teamwork is to hold team building activities. These can be called during office hours to counsel the employees. The employees get a break from the everyday routine and also get to learn something new. Seminars are another option where team building games can help improve teamwork in the workplace.

Now that you know these interesting and unique ways to improve teamwork, you can start applying these in your organization soon. These will not only get you good results; you will get the whole team faster too. Teamwork is achieved with continuous effort and now that you know the easy ways to improving teamwork and witness some positive changes in your organization.

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Motivate the team by exposing them!

Self-motivation is by far the most powerful and sustainable form of motivation. That said we don’t always have all doors open to us. As a manager of an effective team you can help keep individuals highly motivated by opening doors for them. Give high performance team members exposure to your management team or an area of the company that they aspire to be promoted or move to in the future. Keep the following points in mind though to ensure all involved get the most out of the experience:

      1. Determine your team members comfort level in presenting:

• Some will love to be on stage and simply need you to open the door – review in advance their role and guidelines on “airtime”.

• Some will love to be “in the room” but need multiple visits to feel comfortable presenting – bring the team member along and introduce them as a significant contributor and with you to hear feedback, give the credit and acknowledgement but don’t push for too much too fast.

      2. Be respectful of the audience – gain their buy in, in advance to ensure you aren’t bringing a team member to a meeting that was planned to review confidential information.

      3. Plan out your opportunities in advance but don’t “fill the slot” if the fit between the person, role and meeting is not the right match.

This form of recognition will both motivate individuals and demonstrate your commitment to the development of your team members.

Employee motivation is of great significance in enhancing an organizational performance. The level of employee efficiency and output will be tremendously increased due to employee motivation that will lead to higher profitability of the organization. More precisely, it is a vital factor in enhancing customer satisfaction since the employees are more overwhelmed and efficient in executing their duties.

In the recent past there has been increased concern regarding the role of employees' motivation in organizational performance. The business sector has received tremendous changes based on the increased competition for the last three to four decades. This has largely been influenced by the aspects of globalization. Due to globalization, business organizations have been forced to ensure the adoption of the best business practices that ensure efficiency and effectiveness. Corporate organizations ensure adoption of the most efficient human resources management strategies that will help in ensuring satisfaction and motivation of the employees.

With regard to the increasing competitors, every single business organization has switched out into investment considerably throughout staff motivation. There is certainly fantastic value throughout assuring complete worker motivation. This is essentially in the aspects of output along with customer pleasure. Research shows that there is a positive correlation between the actual degree of worker motivation and their particular performance and also output. Additionally, specific care can be paid on the role of employee motivation throughout boosting customer or client pleasure. Employees who are highly motivated have been determined to attempt their particular duties and responsibilities patiently. So employee motivation is important.

• Make time to motivate the team

Motivating each of our team members is something worth making time for. However, false praise is worse than no praise at all, it re-enforces bad behavior and most importantly demotivates the team members who do deserve accolades for their efforts and achievements. By motivating team members individually will be a superb way to motivate the whole team. So make a plan:

• Create a weekly plan – put together a chart of all the team members.

• Note for each team member how they would like to be praised/recognized – publicly or privately.

• Each week challenge yourself to recognize at least one team member- in the team members preferred way.

Rotate through each of the team members, key rule – do not praise/recognize unless fully deserved you don’t have to go through the list in a linear manner, just be cognizant of how often you have recognized or not recognized each individual. If you find there is someone that you are never in a position to praise/recognize, take steps to rectify by digging deeper into why that is and manage through to end up with a team of self motivated individuals that make your motivating job an easy one.

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The importance of Teamwork

Teamwork is essential for competing in today's global arena, where individual perfection is not as desirable as a high level of collective performance. It is an excellent way of boosting corporate staff morale and improves group dynamics and communication. It also strengthens relationships and builds unity. Relationship among team member is very important because it helps people communicate better with one another that contributes to job satisfaction and above all success comes through the ways.

When a team is newly formed with diverse backgrounds of people and its members don't know each other well, then, as a leader of that team, you should find the right ways to develop team working skills. This is the reason why so many companies consider team building activities as really helpful; moreover, one special way to do these activities is to use outdoor activities. It is a great way to develop collaboration skills, to enhance communication between team members, to build unity, to help them focused on one goal etc.

These team bonding activities helps to keep the entire group in a positive frame of mind resulting in better productivity. Every talented individual will learn to unite with the other to accomplish a common goal, resulting in successful team building.

In professional organizations in particular, team bonding activities even enhance performance levels when employees feel motivated about their work.

For a team to perform as a whole, it needs a common vision and thought. A team that consists of people from diverse backgrounds will also have conflicting ideas and opinions. This is when, strengthening the bond between team members is very important to achieve a common goal. Team bonding activities are essential to bring this feeling of oneness. Such activities not only inculcate a feeling of togetherness; it also adds more excitement and peps up the energy levels of people. Members of a team learn to handle things together and are able to develop their skills.

Effective teamwork activities are needed to focus and achieve a common goal successfully. For this, every team member should be able to relate well with each other. Hence the importance of teamwork activities is important to know.

For teams to work together successful they often need to overcome a number of barriers to communication. The basic benefit of team is many minds and bodies working together to accomplish a common goal. Truly successful teams take advantage of the unique strengths and perspectives of the individuals that make up the group.

Go through more on these texts!

• Some effective ways to motivate your team
• Some unfamiliar Secrets to Booming Team Development
• Organization
• The way to define the Target Market
• Ideal leadership Management Team
• High Performance Teams: some Important Components regarding team building
• Some Secrets to Booming Team Development
• Team working skills
• Some Teamwork activities
• How to improve your team
• Motivate the team by exposing them!
• The importance of Teamwork
• Classification of Team
• Teamwork activities
• Teamwork
• Stages of Team Growth
• Teamwork activities

Read More

Classification of Team

There are three common types of teams, such as departmental or functional team, cross-functional team and self-managing team.

Departmental or functional teams: Groups of people from the same work area or department, who meet on a regular basis to analyze customer needs, solve problems, provide members with support, promote continuous improvement, and share information.

Cross-functional teams: Groups of people who are pulled together from across departments or job functions to deal with a specific product, issue, customer, problem, or to improve a particular process.

Self-managing teams: Groups of people who gradually assume responsibility for self-direction in all aspects of work.

Team may also be in two types, such as formal team for example committee, informal team for example task forces and problem-solving teams.

Committee is formal team that usually has a long life span and can become a permanent part of the organization structure. It deals mainly with regularly recurring tasks, such as an executive committee that meets monthly to plan strategy and review results.

Problem-solving teams and task forces are informal teams that assemble to resolve specific issues and then disband once their goal has been accomplished. Such teams are often cross-functional, pulling together people from a variety of departments with different area of expertise and responsibility.

Whatever the purpose and function of the team, you and you fellows team member must be able to communicate effectively with each other and with people outside your team.

In team, even though one may have a specific job function and he may belong to a specific department but be unified with other organization members to perform and accomplish the overall objectives. Individuals are involved in a team in the consensus decision to proceed, analyze particular types of problems, and resolve them to promote the organization in the continuous level, to share information and team has unlimited possibilities to succeed if it is well-organized and proceeded to the end. The overall success of the organization depends on successful team building and accomplishing and acquiring the goals. This is why many team building seminars, team meetings, teamwork activities are arranged and considered and focused.

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Teamwork activities

Team-working helps teams break down the barriers of time and distance. Shared-working experiences give team an instant access to any difficult problem.

A challenge for a leader of a group of people, such as in a work department or any sector, is to get everyone to pull together and build as a team instead of going in separate directions. There are many ways to foster a team. One way to foster teamwork is to involve the members in teamwork activities that require them to work together. Activities can be physical in nature or require the use of team brain power to solve any type of problem. Following activities are recommended:

Workplace Activities 
Teamwork is important to a productive and healthy work environment, so teamwork activities should be a part of the workplace. Possible activities include starting a team newsletter that provides the latest information on activities and accomplishments of the team members, another one may be job swapping, where workers swap jobs with each other to develop empathy. It also requires workers to help each other to learn the jobs.

Social Activities
To get team members comfortable with each other you need to take some steps to improve your team. Informal social activities allow the team members to relax and have fun while developing the rapport necessary to function as a unit. Examples of social activities include a group picnic where every member is responsible for any type of task as example managing food or team sports such as volleyball or bowling, a lunch break or a dinner party may be arranged after a long tiring task.

Projects
Projects require that team member work together to achieve a common goal. Projects can involve assigning each team member a specific task that he is responsible for completing, another one is responsible for reviewing. Other activities may be like putting puzzles together or cleaning up or rebuilding a property which helps to develop trust among the team members.

Outdoor Activities
If members of the team are relatively fit, outdoor activities are a way for the team to get away from the "formal" environment. Activities such as camping, hiking, mountain biking etc allow the team members to relax while enjoying the fresh air and the sense of being "away from it all" can lead to bonding within the team.

There is never just one way to look at something – there are always different perspectives, meanings, and perceptions, depending on who is looking-unknown author.

Go through more on these texts!

• Some effective ways to motivate your team
• Some unfamiliar Secrets to Booming Team Development
• Organization
• The way to define the Target Market
• Ideal leadership Management Team
• High Performance Teams: some Important Components regarding team building
• Some Secrets to Booming Team Development
• Team working skills
• Some Teamwork activities
• How to improve your team
• Motivate the team by exposing them!
• The importance of Teamwork
• Classification of Team
• Teamwork activities
• Teamwork
• Stages of Team Growth
• Teamwork activities

Read More

Teamwork

Teamwork is considered as a dynamic process involving two or more people with complementary or diverse backgrounds, personalities and skills, sharing common goals and exercising concerted effort in assessing, planning or evaluating objectives or purposes. These are accomplished through interdependent collaboration, open communication and shared decision-making and generate value-added customer, organizational and staff outcomes. In a team collaborative environment and mutual understanding is important. Better understanding of team work can make a person a more effective employee and give him or her extra edge in his or her own world.

Team work means a joint activity by a group of people, in which each person subordinates his or her individual interests and opinions to the unity and efficiency of the group. It does not mean that the individual is no longer important; however, it means that effective and efficient teamwork goes beyond individual accomplishments. Where group members work independently and often do not work towards the same goal, the most effective teamwork does work towards personal and team goals and all the individuals involved harmonize their contributions and work towards a common goal.

So teamwork is actually a  means to-

• Creating enthusiasms and initiatives to make things happen
• Making sure everyone understands their roles and tasks
• Supportive group atmosphere
• Having people who can coordinate and accept responsibility
• Taking a positive attitude to and learning from setbacks.
• Being comfortable with disagreement and see it as useful
• Delegating tasks to people with the right skills
• using people with different skills, as example organizer,creative
• Having clear and logical objectives

The ability of all members of the team to get along, day in and day out is vital to every team's success. Etiquette plays an important part in this process.If team members get on each others' nerves through inconsiderate behavior, communication gradually breaks down and vital energy gets diverted away from the team's real mission.

Go through more on these texts!

• Some effective ways to motivate your team
• Some unfamiliar Secrets to Booming Team Development
• Organization
• The way to define the Target Market
• Ideal leadership Management Team
• High Performance Teams: some Important Components regarding team building
• Some Secrets to Booming Team Development
• Team working skills
• Some Teamwork activities
• How to improve your team
• Motivate the team by exposing them!
• The importance of Teamwork
• Classification of Team
• Teamwork activities
• Teamwork
• Stages of Team Growth
• Teamwork activities

Read More

Stages of Team Growth.

It is important for teacher and students (the team members) to know that teams don't just form and immediately start working together to accomplish great things. There are actually stages of team growth and teams must be given time to work through the stages and become effective. Team growth can be separated into four stages.


Stage 1:  
When a team is forming, members cautiously explore the boundaries of acceptable group behavior. They search for their position within the group and test the leader's guidance. It is normal for little team progress to occur during this stage.


Stage 2:  
Storming is probably the most difficult stage for the group. Members often become impatient about the lack of progress, but are still inexperienced with working as a team. Members may argue about the actions they should take because they faced with ideas that are unfamiliar to them and put them outside their comfort zones. Much of their energy is focused on each other instead of achieving the goal.


Stage 3:
During this stage team members accept the team and begin to reconcile differences. Emotional conflict is reduced as relationships become more cooperative. The team is able to concentrate more on their work and start to make significant progress.


Stage 4:
By this stage the team members have discovered and accepted each others strengths and weaknesses and learned what their roles are. Members are open and trusting and many good ideas are produced because they are not afraid to offer ideas and suggestions. They are comfortable using decision making tools to evaluate the ideas, prioritize tasks and solve problems. Much is accomplished and team satisfaction and loyalty is high.




There are some teamwork activities through which you can understand whether your team is improving or not. If not, you can motivate them to spark their talents on their job.


Since working as part of a team can improve learning and is a much needed skill in today's workplace, some team exercises should be included in the classroom. With well planned out tasks, careful guidance, and close observation, instructors can make team exercises extremely valuable learning experiences.

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Teamwork activities

Teamwork activities are one of the best ways to ensure a team as a healthy team and it helps in fostering understanding, patience and mutual respect among the members, bonds them as a team.

Effective team working activities help team breaks down the barriers of time and distance and other obstacles. Shared-working experiences give team an instant access to any difficult problem. Teamwork is often misunderstood as the coming together of a group of people working under a particular department. But it is not like that in real situation. Teamwork is essential because it gives individual better results and these are achieved faster due to planned and effective working.

Every organization has some goals and effective teamwork activities are needed to achieve and accomplish those common goals successfully. For this reason, every team member should be able to relate well with each other and it has some great benefits that meets both the needs of organization and individual. Every talented individual will learn how to unite with the others to accomplish a common goal from these team activities, resulting in successful team building.

Teamwork is a very important factor, if you want to get a job done collectively and efficiently. It relates to the wise saying 'United we stand and divided we fall'. For a group to execute any task in an appropriate manner, it has to become a team and coordinate work among the members. If there is no unity and coordination in the members, the team will in no way achieve the desired goal. There are some times, when a single individual would need some helpers to assist him in doing a particular task. In such a case, teamwork should be given utmost importance and priority for getting the job done.

We developed the following set of questions from our experiences of past teamwork activities, consulting and team development works. This team assessment and planning framework helps newly formed teams come together and get productive quickly or it assists existing teams to refocus and renew themselves.

• Why do we exist (our purpose)?
• What are our goals?
• What is expected of us?
• Where are we going (our vision)?
• What are our priorities?
• What is our improvement plan?
• What skills do we need to develop?
• How will we work together (our values and ethics)?
• Whom do we serve (internal or external customers or audiences or partners)?
• What are our performance gaps (difference between the desired level of expectations and done performance)?
• What support is available?
• How will we track our performance?
• How/when will we review, assess, celebrate, and refocus?

Teams develop answers and related-action plans around each question. This approach has proven to be much more effective than artificial team situations, theoretical discussions of group dynamics or outdoor adventures. Bringing a team together with a shared focus and taking necessary action to make it happen is a powerful way to mobilize, motivate and energize.

In a company people from different thoughts of school come together and if each starts pulling in a different direction the tasks and goals will remain unattained. If employees come together and work coordinately as part of a team then the company stands a better chance and this is why the importance of teamwork activities lies here. Some teamwork activities can be attempted to unite the team members together.

But making your team work all the time is not fair. After all, your team is a bunch of humans and not robot machines. So, it only makes sense that you give your team some time off and give them a much needed and well deserved break. Sometimes you may require to take some steps to improve your team and to boom your team development.

If you are giving your team the break that it deserves, you are likely to keep your team members happy. And a team leader would well understand the importance of keeping various members of different backgrounds of the team happy. After all, an organization can achieve the desired output only when its teammates are happy. Besides, a break gives various members a change to refresh and rejuvenate themselves. So, when your team gets back to work again, they are likely to offer much better results. And a break does not necessarily mean sending all the teammates for a long vacation. It is just a short span of time to let them revive after much hard work. A nice corporate lunch or dinner can serve the purpose or it may be a day off after the accomplishment of any particular project or task. And being a leader you will notice the differences of the overall output.

There are some categories of teamwork activities. These are the followings:

• Teamwork activities for adults
• Teamwork activities for kids
• Teamwork activities for youths

Go through more on these texts!

• Some effective ways to motivate your team
• Some unfamiliar Secrets to Booming Team Development
• Organization
• The way to define the Target Market
• Ideal leadership Management Team
• High Performance Teams: some Important Components regarding team building
• Some Secrets to Booming Team Development
• Team working skills
• Some Teamwork activities
• How to improve your team
• Motivate the team by exposing them!
• The importance of Teamwork
• Classification of Team
• Teamwork activities
• Teamwork
• Stages of Team Growth
• Teamwork activities

Read More

Team

Team is a unit of two or more people to work together interdependently and cooperatively who share a mission and the responsibility for working to meet the needs of their customers or audiences accomplishing a purpose and goals. It is a cohesive unit of people who enjoy the privileges of making decision and continuously work to improve the organization, accomplish certain goals.

Team is necessary to solve any type of problem

The team helps to align the organization around the functions; it enhances ability to work toward a common vision. A product development team, an executive leadership team and a departmental team are long lasting planning and operational groups. Short-term teams might include a team to develop an employee on boarding process, a team to plan the annual company party or a team to respond to a specific customer problem or complaint. Teams are created for both long-term and short-term interaction.

Team has been a buzzword not only in corporate world but also in all phases of solving problems. Interact can take on many definitions but the basic premise is there is some benefit by people “interacting” versus individual results. So a team refers to-


A group of people with a specific objective or
A group of people who interact well together

Here is a list of some features related to working collaboratively in a team-

• Listening
• Sharing knowledge and reasoning
• Allowing everyone to contribute
• Asking questions - making sense of your own understanding
• Explaining by telling how and why
• Helping others - by responding to their needs
• Helping others - to do things for themselves
• Finding out what others think - asking for, listening to and making sense of their ideas
• Reflecting on and making use of what has been said
• Being concise - communicating thinking
• Giving reasons for ideas - communicating reasoning
• Pulling ideas together - sharing, listening, valuing all contributions

Some reasons why team is needed:


• To gain accurate, reliable, unbiased, actionable market information
• To make confident, more informed decisions
• To spawn new ideas for growth
• To identify potential new market entrants
• To be more productive


Go through more on these texts!

• Some effective ways to motivate your team
• Some unfamiliar Secrets to Booming Team Development
• Organization
• The way to define the Target Market
• Ideal leadership Management Team
• High Performance Teams: some Important Components regarding team building
• Some Secrets to Booming Team Development
• Team working skills
• Some Teamwork activities
• How to improve your team
• Motivate the team by exposing them!
• The importance of Teamwork
• Classification of Team
• Teamwork activities
• Teamwork
• Stages of Team Growth
• Teamwork activities

Read More