Teambuilding - The Time Is Now

by Tom Sylvester

Companies need effective teambuilding now even more than before to help enhance employee skills, improve morale, and provide the people who remain with tools to work better and more efficiently together. I see consistently that teambuilding training offers the added value companies need more than ever when times are very difficult and challenging.

The economy may not make this New Year seem very champagne-worthy, but business professionals can have many ways in the year ahead to show their value to the organization. Tough times can bring opportunities for those who are ready to pursue them. This is precisely the time to mobilize resources and invest in training for your competitive edge.

A downturn presents a fantastic opportunity to enhance the skills your people really need to excel. “Are you kidding?” you might ask. I have found that even in the best of times, organizations often pay only lip service to employee training and skills enhancement. Frequently, I hear executives say “When times are tough, training is a luxury.” Not so.

Often that’s precisely when there is the time to give your people the chance to better themselves. Employees at all levels can benefit by receiving training to improve their teambuilding, and team working skills, and bringing in a sense of personal responsibility and other skills that can pay off for the organization when normalcy returns to the economy.

In company after company, I have seen individuals who are great when it comes to their performance but fail to build teams or to be an instrumental part of a team. The organization finds it difficult to do away with them since they contribute significantly, particularly in the short term. In the long term, however, such individuals are value dissipaters. Investing in training such managers in particular to act in ways that strengthen the organization is probably the best investment that a company can make in a downturn.

Most challenges in the workplace today require much more than good solo performance. In increasingly complex organizations, success depends upon the degree of interdependence recognized within the team.
Research studies have shown that star performers with poor team skills became change agents within their companies after going through cycles of team-building exercises. Teach solo high performers how to collaborate better, focus on the big picture and consider the organizational implications of their work, and you will reap sizable rewards.

Of course, casting a downturn as an opportunity to fine tune employee skills is not easy. It requires visionary leadership, a courageous attitude to look at a downturn as a time to fine-tune the organization. Various stakeholders’ anxieties about the short-term need to be assuaged and be framed in a long-term context. That includes the people whose skills are being improved. They need to have a broad enough view of how their professional development fits into individual and organizational goals to be sufficiently motivated to make the training investment pay off. And they must be confident that the organization’s culture will support the learning process.

Actively seizing a downturn as an opportunity can reduce the pain of the current one and can soften the blow of the next. Those are luxuries you can’t afford not to indulge in.

Teambuilding is a process of awareness building. It’s helping people to understand themselves and realize that they are greater collectively than individually. It is an understanding that all of our decisions will be better when some degree of collaboration is applied. It is bringing people to a place where there is an honest appreciation of each other.

Organizations would do well to invest in people and enhance what Nobel Laureate Mohammed Yunus calls “Social Capital.” The term encompasses those social relationships that help people to get along with each other and act more effectively than they could as isolated individuals.

Fostering teamwork is a top priority for many successful leaders. The benefits are clear: increased productivity, improved problem-solving, employee empowerment, improves morale and leadership skills.

Training teaches employees how to raise awareness, build relationships, effectively communicate, and resolve conflicts creatively that can have a major impact on team collaboration. Expertise at communicating is never more needed than when times are challenging. The most productive, innovative teams are led by people who are both task and relationship oriented.

It is no longer a luxury to have work teams that can perform effectively within a turbulent environment. It is a necessity. Teams must not only respond to change, but actually initiate it and consciously create a promising business horizon.