Team Building: How to Avoid Team Building Gone Bad

Recntly, I did an interview for NPR called Paintballing The Boss: Office Team-Building Exercises Gone Bad. While I shared a lot of team building tips with the interviewer, only one small part of what I said made it to air. None of the activities mentioned in the NPR programme or so far in this blog post represent real team building. Yet, a lot of what was discussed is being passed off as "corporate team building". In fact, it's not team building. It's team fun at best or team frivolity. Here is how to avoid team building gone wrong.

Team Building Trends for 2014

Last year, I took a stab at forecasting what lay ahead for corporate team building. Here are the projections that came true. Unfortunately, they don't bode well for 2014.

Jumping to Conclusions – A Team Destabalizer

There is one type of communication block that is highly destructive but rarely discussed. It's jumping to conclusions. Communication is the cornerstone of team effectiveness. The ability to slow down and truly hear what team members are communicating will significantly improve team performance.

On-Site Team Building: When Time Gets Cut to the Bare Minimum

With the trend towards shorter and shorter time frames it can be challenging to keep team building upbeat and interactive and yet retain the essential ingredients for effective team building. I have previously blogged about one day team building pitfalls and how team building participants are getting shortchanged in the push for shorter team building. While I consider the following formats to be far from ideal and despite all the cautions, the trend towards short timeframes is clearly not going to disappear any time soon. Here are 2 formats for effective team building when a longer session just isn't possible.