11 Reasons That Team Building Is Important For Getting Projects Done

Project success depends on teamwork.

One person can’t do as much as a whole team aligned in pursuit of a common goal. And while we talk a lot about improving performance in project management, we often forget about the importance of team building activities.

When your team comes together, completing projects suddenly gets a lot easier.

Your organization starts experiencing immense benefits, regardless of a project’s complexity. Not only does your culture thrive, but your project completion rate skyrockets.

What’s there not to love?

In this post, we’re going to show you why team building is important, and how to use team building activities to improve project completion rates.

Let’s take a look!

1. Team Building Improves Collaboration

Projects are essentially all about teamwork. The whole is better than the sum of its parts, and the completed work compounds to help you improve your project completion rate.

However, as with all things related to (project) management, structure matters.

If you want to implement a structured way of connecting your team, you need to establish team building objectives.

Every team has its strengths and weaknesses. If you want to improve collaboration on your project team, you should understand your team’s peculiarities and define the areas to work on.

For example, maybe your team members started working together recently. They’ve got good chemistry but they don’t trust each other just yet.

If you are aware of that, you can select team building activities that help them develop trust and strengthen their bonds.

The trust from the activities will translate directly into trust during projects.

If you don’t know much about your team just yet, you can use team building activities to get acquainted with them. It’s a win-win.

2. Team Building Improves Project Communication

Communication is key to improving your project completion rate. In fact, it’s so crucial that the vast majority of failed projects hit the rock bottom because their communication wasn’t up to standard.

Structured team building activities are made with diversity in mind.

Everyone’s a different person but the main reason why team building is important is that it allows team members to understand one another.

Even simple activities like discussing index card topics will help your team learn:

• How everyone else on the team likes to communicate
• What they value
• What they are like as a person.

Once it’s time to start working on a project, they’ll retain that knowledge and use it to improve project communication.

3. Team Building Increases Motivation and Engagement

When your team successfully completes an activity as a direct result of working together, they’ll start feeling really good about themselves as individuals. However, they’ll also start thinking about themselves as a part of a group.

This benefit relies on the psychology of motivation. In particular, it relies intrinsic motivation that makes people want to perform certain behaviors so they feel good about themselves.

Numerous studies have shown that teams who frequently worked together had higher motivational levels. Employees were more engaged at work when they were intrinsically motivated.

Team building activities shift even the most individualistic members’ perspectives.

And unlike regular work, the activities are fun. Team members will bring that sense of fun and accomplishment to the next project.

4. The Importance of Team Building Activities for Productivity

The fastest way to improve your team’s performance is to teach them how to work together.

While it may seem like a no-brainer, a lot of teams don’t actually understand how to navigate teamwork effectively.

Instead, they pause when they need to request information, shy away from giving feedback, and the behaviors compound to create an unproductive project culture.

Conversely, teams who take part in team building activities as simple as scavenger hunts understand one another. They learn how to collaborate effectively.

If your team members communicate, there won’t be any instances of duplicated effort or wasted time.

Instead, they’ll all focus on the same goal.

And since they enjoy working together, they won’t have a problem doing so to complete projects in record time.

5. Positive Reinforcement and Recognition

Recognition is crucial to having a happy team.

Projects can get hectic, causing you and your team to forget how much every single task brings you all closer to project completion.

You should incorporate recognition and positive reinforcement into your daily work life. Take a few minutes every day to reflect and reward positive behavior, or simply schedule time to celebrate successes.

If you’re managing projects with Office 365, you can monitor status updates and reward team members who make the most monumental progress.

Positive reinforcement goes further than berating negative behavior.

In fact, you’ll be actively shaping your project and company culture by recognizing and praising the behavior you want to see.

6. Team Building Encourages Creativity

Creativity is the lifeblood of any organization. There will always come a time when you’re working on a project and you realize you need a miracle to get it done on time.

If you’re encouraging creativity with your team building activities, your team members will be there to give you a miracle. If you don’t, well…

They may just sit back and decide to stay quiet.

Take the time to brainstorm problems and projects as a team, and let team members bounce ideas off of each other.

Moderate the discussion, by all means, but give them free mental reign.

7. 99 Problems, but Problem Solving Isn’t One

When you have a structured way of implementing team building into the way you and your team work, you can actively improve your problem solving skills.

The stakes are high when your team is solving problems on a project.

However, if you give them a safe space to think about overcoming (imaginary) obstacles, you’ll see how creative and motivated they get.

In fact, even if you are working on solving problems for a particular project, you can still carve out time for individual members’ suggestions and feedback sessions.

8. Benefits of Team Building for Leadership and Accountability

When we’re talking about team building and its importance, we can’t forget leadership and accountability.

Your goal is to have a group of capable individuals who know how to work together.

You can use a structured activity like a deserted island scenario, or simply incorporate leadership opportunities into your day-to-day operations.

Who are the natural leaders? What are their leadership styles?

Encourage your team members to delegate tasks and take responsibility.

9. Team Building Reduces Conflict

When people work together, there’s bound to be conflict.

However, team building activities can strengthen the bonds between your team members and stop conflicts from ruining your entire project.

You can structure activities that provoke conflict on purpose.

For example, pair team members up and give each a stance to defend. It’s just like a debate club.

Then, make sure you moderate their discussions and steer it back to utilizing proper arguments that will show them how to disagree productively.

10. Team Building Can Improve Your Project Management Processes

If you’re not sure your processes are as effective as possible, why not use team building to reexamine them?

Make your team use the same processes you normally use on a mock project.

This way, everything will be simplified for clarity.

Your team members will be able to work together to identify problems and shape suggestions for improvement.

11. Team Building Fosters Healthy Company Cultures

Ultimately, team building should help you and your team members feel engaged and satisfied with your jobs.

With time and momentum, your team’s communication and collaboration will slowly turn into a process of its own.

Things may change, new team members may join the group, and projects may become more and more complex. However, you and your team will always know what it takes to succeed.

And it all starts with a few team building activities.

Originally published at https://www.projectcentral.com.