Team Building - Collaborative vs. Competitive
Copyright 2006 Sandstone Limited
Think back over all the team building sessions that you have
attended over the years. There is a very good chance that at
each and every one of them the facilitators organised your group
into teams. Any that weren't were probably small groups. Sound
familiar? Why do they do that?
Well, one answer is to encourage maximum involvement from the
participants. Small team sizes help ensure that everyone joins
in. Quieter people will be less likely to fade into the
background the smaller the team they are in. But that's not the
only - or even main - reason.
Most team building events are run as competitions. Teams are
usually given identical goals and are awarded points as they
move towards them. Points mean prizes and the winning team
members get to take them away. Why?
There are a few answers to that one:
* Competitive events are relatively straightforward to run.
* Put a group of people into teams and it is easier to justify
using the training budget.
* Competition generates a buzz.
* Many conferences are for sales people, who are naturally
competitive.
If all of these factors are relevant to your conference, then a
competitive event is probably a good decision for you. However,
two factors might make it a less good decision. Organisations
are increasingly looking to arrange events for non-sales
functions and many of these see competition as a bad thing.
Secondly, senior managers often prefer to stress the "one big
team" approach as important to a large department or the
organisation as a whole. If either or both of these are relevant
to your group, then a competitive event is not the best choice.
The opposite of a competitive event is a collaborative one. The
whole group is given a common goal to work on together rather
than multiple, identical ones to work on in isolation. They may
still be organised into teams or not, but the key characteristic
is that everyone is collaborating with everyone else to achieve
something as a whole group.
Options designed to be collaborative not only exist - they are
among the most enjoyable conference or away day events for the
participants themselves. They can deliver a superb mix of
camaraderie, corporate message, learning and fun.
Isn't that combination a great outcome from a team building
event? Indeed, isn't that an outcome that you want from your
teams at work - day in, day out? Sure, you want your individual
teams to aim to be the best - but not at the expense of the
corporate goal or goals. You want the natural motivation that
the best teams feel to be productive for the organisation - not
detrimental to other teams and, thereby, detrimental to the
organisation.
So what does a collaborative team building activity look like? I
have written a number of other articles that describe the
characteristics that you can expect to find in good options
generally. Rather than duplicate them here, I shall concentrate
on those elements that can focus on the collaborative aspect
specifically. They are:
* There is a single, common goal that all individuals and / or
teams have to work towards.
* There is a genuine possibility - indeed probability - of the
group achieving it.
* Not all individuals and teams are doing the same thing -
multiple, different functions is a feature of the workplace and
needs to be a feature of a team activity if the learning is to
be relevant.
* As at work, the participants need to exert some form of
overall co-ordination to maintain the focus on the common goal.
So at your next team building event, don't send your people away
bragging about how they managed to outdo their colleagues - send
them away thinking at least in part how well they worked with
them. Then maybe back at work something might just rub off.