ifind Team Building featured in Spice Magazine

ifind Team Building was featured in the December 2011  issue of events magazing Spice.....

Team Building Or Team Boring

Organising a team building activity for your group? When there’s so many different activities to choose from, how do you know you’re choosing the right one that won’t leave members of your group out in the cold?

“Having worked in corporate team building for many years now, I have come to realise and accept that ‘Team Building’ is a very broad term these days and encapsulates everything fromhaving a BBQ round at the boss’s house, to fun activities, to personality profiling and understanding team dynamics,” said Adrian Risely of ifindteambuilding.com.au, a website that assists corporate planning in finding the most suitable activity for their group.

Risely, founder of ifind Team Building refers to the site as “The Yellow-Pages of team building.” He created the website after years of working in corporate team building and realising how difficult it was for people needing to organise team building activities to efficiently explore all the options.

In the last 12 months ifind Team Building has received over 12,000 visitors and is neatly arranged into activity categories and the categories that are viewed the most, offer a good indication of what’s hot in team building right now.

“At the basis of any solid team is trust. Trust is essential to creating a high performing team, and in the presence of a lack of trust, team members will not share knowledge and will waste time and energy worrying about what other team members are ‘up to’.A lack of trust, which is often a result of lack of understanding of other team members, creates an environment of individualism, with team members working on their own agendas and not towards common goals,” he adds.

“A balanced approach to team building is essential, incorporating a mix of fun & theory based team activities. Team building is not something you can do in one hit or with one type of experience, but must be an ongoing and diverse series of team building events and workshops.”

We asked if there were any activities that are getting a bit stale and are there any activities that are completely under-rated or new?

“Organising ‘fun’ team building activities is definitely the trend and I think some focus has been lost as to what can be achieved by gaining a better understanding of ourselves and others and our roles within the team and team dynamics. I like to refer to this as ‘team development’ and there are a number of tools that can be used to assist in creating a better understanding and acceptance of others, such as Myers-Briggs, DiSC, TMS, Belbins etc.”

The most visited category is Team Challenges. These activities range from building billy-carts to 4-wheel-driving over obstacles to physical demanding ‘boot-camps’. “It goes to prove that managers are really looking to ‘challenge’ their people, and through this challenge bring the team together” said Risely.

Without doubt, Cooking remains a popular team building activity.

“With TV series’ like MasterChef and My Kitchen Rules it’s easy to understand what is driving this popularity,” he said.“A cooking activity is great for mixed groups as it doesn’t require the physical input needed for many other activities. It also offers the added benefit of eating what you create. ifind Team Building lists cooking team building all over Australia. 

It seems that TV has a great influence on team building activities, with the ‘Amazing Race’ category being the second most visited. “These treasure hunt style activities create a fun environment that require input from every member of the team to solve tasks and challenges while navigating to the next check point” said Risely.

Also making the top 5 are Artist Team Building and Adventure. These are both great team building activities as they can be tailored to suit different groups and different objectives. Artistic team building is attractive to employers wanting their people to be creative, think differently and overcome mental blocks in their thinking, such as ‘I’m not artistic, I can’t do that’.  Risely says there are definitely some ‘do’s and on’ts’ for organising the right activity for your group.

See his top 10 tips. 

Also for more ideas on activities for your group visit www.ifindteambuilding.com.au