Team Building or Forced Fun?

Making the most out of your team-building experience

Think twice before you organize the next team virtual yoga or escape room session. As much as virtual communication platforms have made collaborating from a distance as seamless as possible, it doesn't hold a candle to being together in a room whiteboarding, brainstorming, skill-building, and bonding with your colleagues in person. 

Pre-pandemic, team-building activities usually meant you and your team could network and collaborate, learn new things, and get to know colleagues on a more personal level. 

Now, the lines between a regular workday and the time allotted for team-building activities are blurred. As cool as it is, ending a Zoom work meeting to log onto a Zoom Murder Mystery game isn't as thrilling of a team-building experience as it would be in person. Not only that, virtual fatigue is real and asking people to be completely present online as a way to relax and unplug from work is almost impossible to sell as a ''fun'' day. On top of all that, reading social cues and body language is extra challenging when all you see are faces, maybe with poor lighting, poor connections and everyone desperately trying not to talk over one another. 

On the surface, maybe many employees are happy that the days of sitting directly in front of people they hardly know playing ''Two Truths and a Lie'' are behind them. However, the impact that team-building sessions have on the team bond can't be behind us. 

We now have to be very intentional when we consider who these team-building sessions are serving and what we can do to create meaningful experiences for our teams. 

As the holidays approach and you're planning your team-fun holiday get-together, don't miss the opportunity for some team building. But, before you hire that magician to perform virtually, keep in mind some key recommendations to optimize your team-building experience.

• Keep it small. As much as the big team-building activities are enticing, have a bigger budget, and allow for more integration across your organization, we cannot discount the importance of keeping things intimate. The bigger the group in a virtual environment, the harder it is to get everyone involved and reach everyone on the same level. There's always at least one person with their camera off or on mute the whole time. When you have a smaller group, there's less distraction, making it easier to stay engaged and collaborate.

• Keep it practical. Like I said earlier, ask yourself, who is this team-building activity for? Knowing your audience, having a clear purpose, and articulating that purpose goes a long way with your team. Does everyone already know one another, or do they work closely on a day-to-day basis? Are you all coming together to solve a work problem? Maybe it is to get to know each other better? Or are you just looking to get everyone to unplug from work and be entertained? Whatever it is, having a purpose will help you design the activity better, and it will help your team understand their role when it comes to participating in the session.

• Keep it facilitated. I cannot stress this enough; a poorly facilitated session is worse than not having a session at all. Facilitation keeps everyone focused, engaged and, let's be honest, ensures there are minimal silences from everyone being on mute.

• Keep it going. Your most important job as a leader is to nurture the team, and these activities are perfect kick-starters for ongoing coaching. Have some clear key takeaways and follow up on them outside of the session. For example, if you participated in a virtual escape room, talk about what worked and didn't work when you were problem-solving in a fun virtual environment and bring that up again at the next collaboration session on how you can better work together on more serious projects. 

Team-building sessions are just another example of how we must adapt as leaders in this new world.  The way we collaborate and come together to bond as a team may have changed, but the goal of connecting and growing as a team has stayed the same. Don’t settle for just some murder mystery games or virtual wellness sessions; that’s throwing money at the problem and hoping it will go away.  We must be vigilant and be intentional about how we design your team-building sessions, you are ensuring that your team is getting the most out of the experience. These moments should go beyond the session and, if done correctly, you can not only have fun together, you open the door for tangible skill-building and deeper connections that help us all stay accountable for one another. 

For support on how to maximize your team-building opportunities, send an email tony.yu@sensenous.ca.