Teamwork is the cornerstone of success in any organization, and it's crucial to foster a strong sense of collaboration among your team members. Team-building exercises have long been used to improve team dynamics and productivity, but what makes a team-building exercise truly valuable? At Amplio Games, we believe that the most effective team-building exercises do three things exceptionally well: educate, recommend, and reinforce. In this blog post, we'll explore these three team-building pillars and how they can transform your team into a high-performing, cohesive unit.

Pillar 1: Education - Understanding Your Own Behaviors

The first step to building a strong team is to understand the unique skills and attributes of each member. This may sound elementary, but we constantly hear from clients that they were unaware of a prominent and consistent behavior that they were themselves exhibiting.

A recent example involved one of our clients, whom we will call Scott. During a problem-solving simulation, Scott would often quickly respond, “No” when other team members offered new ideas. We showed Scott a video reel of this behavior and discussed it with the team. He was mortified. While he noted that he had given thought to many of the ideas that were presented, his reflexive, habitual negative responses became a deterrent for creative ideas from the other team members.

To promote the educational element of team-building exercises, it is valuable to record and/or have a third party observe and comment on the team's interactions. While there are some popular exercises such as “Strengths and Weaknesses Assessment” that are designed to identify individual qualities, team members typically succumb to biases, relationship sensitivities, company politics, and other factors which make the exercise unauthentic. Observing team interactions, either real or simulated, produces feedback that is genuine and often quite revealing.

Pillar 2: Recommendations - Improving Teamwork and Maximizing Strengths

Once your team understands its strengths and weaknesses, it's time to take action to improve teamwork and maximize those strengths. Many team-building exercises are designed to illustrate a specific and important value of teamwork -- trust, communication, collaboration, etc. But these exercises often only showcase the attribute and do not specifically relate it to the team's needs.

We recently had a client tell us that their team participated in an activity that highlighted the importance of active communication. The problem was that their team is already incredibly talkative, to the point of often over-communicating and under-executing. The exercise confused the team and offered little actionability. They were left more confused than enlightened.

Team-building exercises should include specific and relevant recommendations. In Scott's case, we helped build a system where ideas are submitted prior to meetings to give everyone a chance to reflect and evaluate.

By offering specific recommendations for skill development, team members can actively work on their weaknesses and further enhance their strengths.

Pillar 3: Follow-Up and Reinforcement

Effective team-building activities don't simply pass time and build camaraderie. They engage the team by showing them how good they can really be. The team should be excited about the next steps, and the activities should be revisited and re-emphasized. We usually schedule a three-month follow-up discussion on how the team has implemented the recommendations, how their productivity has progressed, and what the next steps are in their evolution.

For Scott and his team, we constructed a 15-minute game simulation that highlighted collaboration. The team could more quickly succeed in the game when they introduced creative solutions and worked together to form those ideas into workable results. The team was thrilled at their success in the game and excited to attack new challenges with their newfound productivity. They also asked to schedule another game simulation to identify other areas to amplify their teamwork.

Conclusion

Team building is not a mere formality but a strategic approach to fostering collaboration, boosting productivity, and creating a harmonious work environment. The best team-building exercises go beyond mere fun and games; they educate the team, offer recommendations for improvement, and follow up to reinforce progress. At Amplio Games, we emphasize these three pillars in our game simulations and consulting, and we encourage you to keep them in mind when designing or participating in team building activities.