And what happens after the Team building?

Post Teambuilding

The team building of the extraordinary challenges, of the captivating and funny adventures, has always had success. Since it works, a question arises on the later: what do we do? A specialist takes the floor.

1. The invention of the century

Team building is the “invention of the century” in the management of human resources, introducing the principle of “making together” something delightful and stimulating, creates warm and more solid relationships in a team work. It’s a kind of quality that would never arise in a conference room.

Thus we talk about “experience-based formation”, a method that demonstrated to be very powerful by producing advantages in the communication, improving the collaboration, stimulating creativity, escaping from our own egoism and motivating every person to achieve a common objective. We, as operators of the industry, we invented many things, from survival courses to Gregorian singing, from the Polynesian dugout to ballroom dancing, from Fotosafari to kitchen classes… and the good thing is that, with the help of the good experts, all of these activities are successful and it frequently arises that famous “team spirit”, without which a modern organization run aground miserably.

Post Teambuilding2. Let’s make another step

Team building works so much that more frequently, at the end of a well done experience, we ask ourselves: and what happens now? After that a team has started undertaking a work of “building a team”, what can it do to go on? What can it do to naturally develop the abilities of every member and so to make the team grow , its performances and its success?

I think that the experts have the duty and the opportunity to look inside of themselves and to search for the possible answers.

From uniting to making it grow, this is what it seems to me the new horizon of team building. We’ll call it Team Growing.

As for us experts, we feel that we are pushed to train a sort of “green thumb” in order to make grow the team work , like a good gardener does with his plants. And this isn’t enough: we should learn to transfer the attitude and the techniques of the “green thumb” to the team leaders, assist them and encourage them, help them to get in the game, to regulate changes and to accept them. Do we have to change job? No, we simply have to make progress. It’s easier to tell than to do.

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3. Team Growing, that is giving a meaning to the team

From our experiences we surely understood one thing: you can make grow the spirit of a team as much as you want, you can obtain a very harmonious group of friends, but the single person and the team aren’t really motivated in what they do, and for this reason you’ll find this great potential unable to become an efficient action.

So we started working also on the motivation, on the techniques to build it on their own and to share it inside the team, on how to keep it and to enforce it time by time, with the target to create proactivity, self confidence and tendency towards the change, also to whom is discouraged or has a defensive attitude. In one word: apathetic. And…you know what? It works! By putting together Team building activities and motivational techniques we can obtain very encouraging results (we are working to do miracles) and obviously also satisfaction of the clients.

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4. The path of the motivation

We developed a path of four steps and two controls (just like in the rally) and we try to transfer it and to make it accept to every member and to the whole team.

Pay attention: to every member AND to the team. The team must commit into a growth process as much as every single member. Shortly, these are the four steps:

– Make the point: where are you now?

Have a look of yourself on the mirror: no tricks, don’t be too good or too cruel with yourself. Discover your opportunities of improvement, your strong and weak points, start from your securities to face the insecurities. Write down everything. Use a learning diary, take notes about you actual abilities, knowledge, relationships, contribution, ecc.

– How do you see your future?

Think about the future that you want to create for yourself and what will you need for your personal growth. Use the techniques of visualization to make the framework clearer and more real as possible. Once again you write down everything in your diary, and when you’ll have the framework and a general objective, transform it into a sequence of targeted steps.

What do you need to learn or to change in order to pass from step 1 to 2?

This passage is your personal development plan and usually it requires a list of the things that you should learn and change. For each point identify in which way you’ll do it.

– Control your progress and be delighted.

Go back to step 1 so that this becomes a continued cycle. Keep your personal objectives clear in your mind. Look on how you achieved them and how much you filled the gap between step 1 and step 2.

Take your time to reflect on two important aspects. Control:

The content – what did you achieve? Which return did you obtain from your investment on the individual develop plan?

The process – How did you do it? If you would do everything again, what would you change in a different way/or in a better way?

5. Each member and the whole

As I’ve said before, the path is worthy for each member and for the team. Facing together this “journey” reassures and insipire confidence. Don’t leave anyone behind. The biggest teaching of “being a team” is that they grow all together or everything goes badly. Anyway they grow up together.

In my job I noticed that most of the people who accomplish a personal development are those who most grow up with the others. Growing up with the other people is an art that only who is matured and aware of its own self is able to practice: he realizes that he isn’t the best, but he just got different abilities and skills, and he understands that he needs someone to work with. The people work well together when they realize that the destiny of a team consists in sharing. The final target is to change the atomic attitude of the group.

Post Teambuilding

6. Be careful…

The road is rough and the expectations go further: expert guides are needed and they must be available to take the rhythm that the team requires. These elements become essential:

team sessions to have a look on the mirror

team building experiences, by dedicating more time to a personal work and by getting more involved

coaching actions

– meetings about feedback and evaluations

My work is still creating and bringing to team building, but I realized that the classic model of “building” the team has become narrow. Today we have to offer a more personal and involving experience that launches a growth path. This is what the teams expect from us.