TEAM DEVELOPMENT (TEAM BUILDING)
"I believe that ANY team can benefit from Teambuilding and that each individual bring something unique to the team."
How can organisations benefit from Team Development?
Organisations depend on teams to accomplish work tasks. However, team effectiveness isn't guaranteed. Teams quite often fail to meet performance objectives resulting in negative consequences; for example they may not reach their goals, they may lose their competitive advantage and work relations may be damaged. This may lead to low productivity and high personnel turnover. Team Development helps to improve team performance, strengthen morale and lead to higher efficiency.
In which context can Team Development be used?
Team Development can be valuable for the following:
- Establishing new teams, i.e. project teams
- Strengthening the performance of existing teams
- Helping teams that are experiencing difficulties, i.e. poor interpersonal relationships
- Company mergers, i.e. finding common ground
What can you expect during a Team Development intervention?
A Team Development intervention is not only having fun, but learning something about yourself and your team members. I prefer to make use of experiential learning, which literally means learning from experience and reflecting on what has been learned. The focus during experiential learning is to build on the existing strengths and experiences of group members. Typical activities can be:
- Personality analysis
- Getting to know each other better (interpersonal relations)
- Group problem solving activities
- Determining conflict management styles
- Team values
- Shared goals
Team Development experience
My Team Development experience includes the following:
- I have developed and facilitated various teambuilding sessions for clients ranging from Church groups and school leadership camps to corporate groups.
- I have developed and facilitated various teambuilding sessions with the purpose of establishing new teams (project teams), strengthening the performance of existing teams, assisting teams experiencing difficulties (e.g. poor interpersonal relationships), company mergers, to identifying potential leaders.
- I have developed and facilitated teambuilding sessions ranging from ½ a day to 5 day programmes.
- I have trained intern Psychologists in the development, facilitation and management of teambuilding programmes and activities.
- I have facilitated workshops for Masters Degree students at the University of Pretoria in the development and facilitation of team development interventions.
- I have facilitated teambuilding activities ranging from pen and paper exercises, personality profiles, low rope adventure activities to unstructured outdoor activities.
- I have arranged and coordinated fun/morale building activities/events for groups, e.g. drumming sessions, 4x4 adventures, family days, etc.
- I have developed teambuilding activities to address topics such as communication, team work, team problem solving, “getting to know each other better”, etc.
- I assisted in building low rope adventure teambuilding activities at venues that I have used very often.
- I have developed a team building board game. The focus of the game was for team members to learn more about each other as well as the process of interaction between team members and how they can apply their acquired knowledge in their job.
- I have chaired meetings between clients and Psychologists in order to determine specific needs and to manage the logistical arrangements of the teambuilding projects.
I prefer to customize interventions according to your needs. Before a Team Development session attending team members complete a short questionnaire enabling me to make an analysis of their current situation. This will be used to develop a specific intervention for your team.