Team Building Exercises

Following the great corporate mantra 'I can't but We can', team building exercises are designed to promote a smooth and efficacious work environment. Healthy in-house competition between employees trying hard to get the next promotion is good for the company's growth, and insubordination and petty differences can drag or hold the growth of a company hostage. Nowadays, people spend more time at their workstation than anywhere else and at times this can take a toll on the moral, job satisfaction and efficiency of employees. Companies who have realized, that to accomplish its mission they need each of their employees pulling in one direction. Building a winning team needs some work and team building exercises where employees come together to better understand each others strength, and bond with each other are an ideal way to kick-start your campaign.

Many great firms have attributed their continuous success to team building exercises that fan the fire to 'achieve', increase productivity in employees and to forge strong bonds within the organization that can sustain work pressure. The importance and need of team building exercises for the workplace is so great that there are institutes that offer specialized services which cater to a companies team building needs. These institutes offer to inculcate real team values and teamwork in their clients employees. Let us take a look at some team building exercises:

Picture Story: In this fun and simple picture game, you can explore the creativity and communication skills of your employees. Think of a theme or a moral for the story and accordingly download a few pictures from the Internet and pass them around in a team. Do not allow the team members to see others pictures. Ask each member to dole out a paragraph or a sentence about the picture they have got - in a way that, it can be a part of a story. For example: If the moral that you choose is 'slow and steady wins the race' download pictures from the Internet of a rabbit, tortoise, woods, rabbit in a sleeping pose, a tortoise walking slowly and a finish line. Distribute a picture to every team member and ask them to add a tag line for their picture. Observe individuals trying to align their thoughts to the member who starts the story. This team building in the workplace game will educate your employees to visualize the bigger picture, make adjustments to achieve target and have fun while doing all of this. It is a great game for employee motivation and workplace ethics.

Card Castle: A great way to check your teams dexterity and skills at creating something out of, a deck of cards. Design a card castle and give a part of the design to each member and also give them one picture of the completed design. Let them workout between themselves which part of the castle each would like to build and which part should be done first. All you will need for this exercise is a couple of decks of cards and design specks of the castle. Team members will soon realize that the game is not as easy as it sounds and looks, if effective coordination and communication with other members is not maintained. Through this game you could stress the importance on proper planning and coordination needed at different stages of a project for successful completion of a given task.

You could even take your team on a field trip and arrange for outdoor team building exercises like transferring a load of sticks from one place to another and arranging them in a specific way. To make it interesting you can stipulate that each member can do just one task, for example a member can either carry a number of sticks or can arrange a specified number of sticks.

Team building exercises are an amazing way to motivate the employees and get them to perform their best. These activities also help to relieve job stress and seem to help co-workers better network with each other.