Team Building Ideas for Meetings
Whether you book your next meeting at a fancy resort, experiential camp or boardroom, you need great team building ideas. Build a team into a better group by scheduling activities that break down barriers to communication and that increase trust. After these goals are achieved, team building focuses on increasing the quality of group communication so that a team moves rapidly from goal setting to strategy planning.
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Outdoor Adventures
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Sometimes a team needs to get out of the office for team building meetings. Outdoor experiential activities can include group problem solving, such as a scavenger hunt, and trust building, such as a ropes course, camping trip, hike or kayak/canoe race. For longer meetings, schedule teams to work together in a series of outdoor events at an executive retreat center or campground. Get more involvement from team members by letting them choose an outdoor adventure.
Competitions
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Sometimes you can build more communication by adding an element of competition to an event. For example, organize your team for participation in a community team event or a corporate team event. Get the team to organize for a charity event, build bicycles from kits for needy children or raise money in the office and in their personal lives to bring home a fund-raising prize or trophy. The meeting is the launching point. If the group picks its fundraiser or charitable project, members will probably be more motivated to participate.
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Problem Solving
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For larger teams of 15 to 100, perhaps even more in a very large company, plan to solve a real business problem. Assign employees to small groups, such as four to 12 people. Arrange the groupings so people work with others outside their normal groups. Give each group the same problem to solve; provide real business data and resources and project guidelines. Each group must devise a written plan to solve the problem and make a final presentation. After the group strategy sessions and presentations, the whole group will pick the best solution to implement in the company. This project could work for an all-day meeting, or it might fill an agenda of a few days or even a week of business planning.
Team Juggling
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Sometimes a group can benefit from juvenile games that provide a quick warm-up to a sit-down meeting. You can get a set of plastic, foam or rubber balls from the discount store. Divide the parent group into groups of eight to 15 members. These balls have to be tossed from the first person to the next person without repeating any people. This requires people to focus on the faces and names of the people around them.
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References
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