10 Keys to Corporate Team Building

10 Keys to Corporate Team Building

Below is list of 10 Keys to Corporate Team Building Events with a brief explanation.

This list assumes you want to maximize team engagement, team interaction and team improvement. It does not apply to team building events more focused on individual interaction or just fun – which are awesome as well – but in a different category.

You can use these 10 Keys to evaluate a team building event or a team building company for your group, or to design your own team building event.

1. People Must Care – you need a goal, narrative, or outcome that makes people care about the event and participate fully. Time pressure, being the winning team, not being the losing team, suspending disbelief because of  narrative and/or props, are some ways to inspire caring about the outcome.  As examples, our Robot Battles events feature a “build competition,” “a World Record Competition,” and “a winning team for the robot battles” and a compelling narrative, “robot battling”, as incentives to participate fully.
2. Multiple Vectors of Solvability: its nice when teams can take different routes and/or use an assortment of clues to solve a challenge. This allows for out-of-the-box thinking and accommodates multiple problem solving styles. Many teams today are dynamic and require folks from different departments and/or vendors to all work on the same problem at the same time, until the problem/challenge is solved, and then off to the next team.
3. Strategy Matters: teams should always be able to benefit from better strategy. Strategic thinking offers the biggest opportunities for growth and success in business, and likewise this should be reflected in corporate team building events. How you look at something is often the most important key to success. Our Who Stole Anti-Matter? virtual/onsite event is an example where strategy is key to solving and proving the case.
4. Collaboration Improves Performance – the solving time is reduced or the quality of the outcome is improved by multiple folks working together better. TeamWork Energizer emphasizes this skill.
5. Accessible AND Challenging: must be solvable by an acceptable % of teams/folks, and not solvable (or delayed) by an acceptable % of teams/folks. Real challenge evokes maximum engagement.
6. Clear Concise Instructions which can be understood quickly, intuitively, and remove all ambiguity.
7. Visually Appealing: interesting, colorful, unique, and clear images/props that benefit the accessibility of the game, add additional challenge, and make it stunning and/or beautiful. Our Future Crime virtual team building event comes to mind – we created unique, professional, websites for each of four made-up futuristic companies. The images and realistic look add greatly to the overall appeal of the event.
8. Have a “Slow Down” Trick: this will catch “short cutters”, those in a hurry/going too fast, or it requires a degree of out-of-the-box thinking. This will improve engagement from everyone, not just the loudest or most “in a hurry” folks. Contemplation, strategy, caution, fact checking, testing each others assumptions, and other high level team skills are rewarded. Our Virtual Escape Rooms use these tricks consistently to reward strategic thinkers.
9. No Fatal Flaws that ruin the overall experience. Even 1 bad or misunderstood component can compromise a great game. Bad or missing instructions, too hard, too easy, confusing, ambiguous, multiple answers unaccounted for, not novel or interesting, seen it before, boring, too many components, too hard to understand quickly, wrong or offensive images, are examples of potential game killers. Suspending disbelief is a big part of successful corporate team building events. We want folks to participate freely and completely. Maintaining clear rules and boundaries avoids real life frustration creeping in. One advantage a professional team building company has over folks creating their own event is the power of observation. We see hundreds of folks doing our events, and believe me, we hear feedback on what doesn’t work, and on what works great!
10. It’s Fun! The whole should be greater than the sum of the parts – all components should come together to make something fun to do – this is the ultimate goal! I find there is no replacement for observation and improvement when it comes to finding the perfect mix that makes an event create this result. Human nature is hard to predict, people are smart and capable, and they always surprise you with what works great!
    Even the greatest comics in the world have to work their routines, their material, for months or years in front of multiple audiences to get it all right; to have it all come together in a perfect set where the whole of the entertainment value far exceeds the sum of the induvial stories and/or jokes.