Putting together the right team building package can make the difference between a day spent playing games and a day dedicated to productive challenges, tailor-made for your group. A flexible approach takes into account company needs while still offering staff an enjoyable, engaging program that encourages full commitment.

Active Participation

True staff development comes from personal experience. And a high quality, interactive workshop provides employees with a shared goal to work toward. Creative activities and challenges can be directly work-related, or indirectly work-related, such as through a charity team building project.

Taking folks out of their familiar work environment can shake them up a bit. They can’t hold onto the routine they keep up during the course of a normal workday. A good workshop will send them away from the program with a clearer understanding of themselves, their colleagues, and the work that they do, both individually and a cohesive unit. Learning by doing offers an opportunity for meaningful and lasting change.

An effective team building program needs to be highly specific. After all, each company’s challenges are unique. Some organizations need to work on the building blocks of communication, empathy, conflict resolution, and trust. Other groups already have strong teams in place, and their needs include finding ways to keep these folks challenged and engaged. In all of these cases, active employee participation is a critical part of successful change.

Specialized Professional Development

People talk about professional development but really, the crux of these programs is relationships. Interpersonal skills are vitally important and many people think these qualities can’t really be taught. And while some folks are definitely a natural when it comes to attributes like leadership, negotiation skills, and personal engagement, a well-crafted professional development program can in fact improve employees’ soft skills. Experienced facilitators guide employees through targeted challenges and activities designed to elicit greater personal awareness and tools for change that are related to a specific role within an organization, such as management or sales.

Not All Team Building Packages Are Equal

A responsive training group puts together the right team building package for clients, rather than push a pre-planned program they’ve got flat-packed and ready to go. Skilled facilitators do their homework; they build programs that reflect company needs and take into account corporate culture and even the “personality” of a group. Successful programs are aligned toward a specific need, yet still fun and effective enough to generate ongoing progress that goes beyond the day of the event.