Make Team Building a New Years Resolution

If you are a team leader, a new year can be a good time to tackle some of those people performance issues that have been niggling away over the Christmas break. We all tend to return to the workplace after a holiday with a refreshed perspective and a renewed desire to achieve personal and professional development goals.

So I was struck by the timeliness of a headline in Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development’s Jan 2016 People Management magazine, ‘Close bonds at work boost productivity.’ The principles of productive teams outlined in the article are well aligned to the outcomes of LifeAdventureCo’s team building exercises. According to the Centre for Evidence Based Management and Advanced Working Associates (AWA) there are six factors that affect the productivity of knowledge workers – a rising proportion of the working population in the UK and Ireland. The factors identified are based on AWA’s review of 800 scientific studies and they offer some sound guidance for business and team leaders who wanting to team build or boost business performance:

1. Social Cohesion - A shared liking or team attraction
2. Perceived Supervisory Support - How employees feel their supervisor helps them
3. Information Sharing/Transactive Memory System - How teams pool and access their knowledge and expertise which leads to the team being able to think and act together
4. Vision/Goal Clarity - The extent to which the team has a common understanding of objectives and a commitment to team goals
5. External Communication - The ability of teams to span boundaries and seek information and resources from others
6. Trust - The belief in the reliability, truth and ability of others

I have seen how we at the LifeAdventureCo have brought out these qualities through simple team building interventions and theres no doubt that even early on, the benefits are obvious. If you would like to know more about how we can help you develop closer bonds and boost productivity please get in touch and make this new years resolution an all year round resolution.