If your team is underperforming, traditionally, you would be advised to seek out a ‘team-building’ company, exercise or activity to help with many of these and bond the team together. But 'team building' is not always the solution, and here's why…
In the vast majority of cases and solutions available, team-building is about taking the team out of their normal environment, doing something challenging and fun that brings the group together and helps them work on problems. That is all well and good, but there are a couple of important elements which are nearly always missing… Sustainability and transferability.
How do you take that great energy, and newly formed bonds and help them survive beyond the two week stories over the tea making in the staff kitchen? Because that is what usually happens. Those learnings, those stories, those experiences do not easily transfer back to the workplace and prove themselves more sustainable than the few weeks of memories and anecdotes of the HR Director stuck quivering half way up a high ropes course.
Your outcome of embedding new thinking, strategies and working bonds needs to go beyond a one day quick-fix and focus on a longer term integration and embedding back in the workplace. Hint: It requires more than a one-day wonder involving thrills, child-like giggles and a group high five at the end.
Skills Integration addresses that short-coming