Team Building Events – How Do You Choose the Best Team Building Event for Companies?

Team building events (and the question of how to choose the best, most suitable team building event for your group or situation) can be extremely difficult when… Hello?! Team Building Event companies! If you google “Team Building Events”, you get results for all kinds of activities, from classroom team training and charity events to outdoor scavenger hunts and high-ropes courses. You can also get results for non-team-building activities, but fantastic shared experiences that teams enjoy as a way of spending time together, and that can be a fun, unforgettable occasion, yet these kinds of activities are not necessarily team-building – that is, while the outcomes of these activities are fun and memorable, they do not contribute to teamwork if the team atmosphere is not very good. So how do you choose the best team building activity for companies? There are three important types of team building activity, or team event. We have listed them according to the situations in which they are best suited. 1. Shared experiences in small groups Team activities: This type of activity involves some kind of shared experience whose main purpose is for the group to have fun with others. As long as you have a small group and a good atmosphere within the group, these kinds of activities are fun and very inexpensive. There are no limits to creativity here; you can also play the old classics such as bowling and golf (or mini golf). There are also nice venues like Dave & Busters, where your team can have dinner and play billiards or arcade games. You could take a day off and go to an amusement park, or have dinner and go to the cinema. Pretty much any kind of leisure activity is possible here. There are many “non-team-building” organisations that specialise in this type of event. (When we talk about “non-team-building” events, we simply mean that these organisations provide a service other than their main source of income, and team events are only a secondary source of income for them.) Organisations that specialise in this type of activity include large holiday hotels, cookery schools, racetracks (racing schools), amusement parks, bowling alleys and so on. If the group size grows to more than 20 people, or if you have a particular challenge in your group that you want to improve – you might be appointing a new team leader, dealing with groups that have merged, or other team problems – these kinds of team activities can be counterproductive, so be careful, unless you already have a small group and a fairly strong team atmosphere. 2. Classroom team building: Most people think that the classroom is boring, and when we are in a classroom we are bored to death. Good team building companies and instructors, on the other hand, are enthusiastic and fun. Teams led by professional facilitators can improve many team building skills in next to no time. Participants learn faster when they are having fun, and the group can achieve fantastic results and feel that their time was well spent. This type of team building event is best suited to groups that want to achieve a particular team outcome – for example, when an organisation merges with another company and the leaders are trying to create a new team culture, or when leadership has changed and the new leaders want to make a fresh start. If you hold quarterly or annual meetings in your office or breakout sessions at your annual conference, these kinds of events are particularly well suited to such time slots. You can also book these facilitators for fun and entertaining talks if you have a free slot at your conference or meeting. Apart from the shared-experience events, only a few companies specialise in classroom activities, so these are harder to find. Be careful, because if the company specialises in large-scale events rather than seminars or workshops, you may end up faced with a load of promotional activities that do not deliver the best results. Type “classroom team building” or “classroom team building seminars” into Google and you will get a good list of qualified companies. 3. Large group shared experience team events: This type of event is much easier than small-group team events, but also much, much harder to organise. If, for example, you have strong people in your group, you can hire two lanes at a bowling alley or have two foursomes on a golf course, and everyone will be active the whole time. If you have 100 or 1,000 people, you can run the same activities at any time, but a lot of people will be standing around watching (and getting bored), with the facilitators not knowing what they are doing. If you have a large group and want your team to have fun and stay active, then you should invest in a professional team building company. (If you have built up a good reputation, you should leave this decision to your event planner. Event planners are very good at finding inexpensive hotel rooms, organising complex events and making sure the group enjoys the food, but many of them will do whatever it takes to keep the client (i.e. you) happy. If you ask them for a particular team building activity, they will help you even if the event or activity does not produce the best result for your group. You will achieve a better result if you turn to a professional team building company, because these professionals will help you choose the very best event for your team. If you make a mistake, the facilitators will point it out to you, and if you have an event planner acting as an intermediary and you make a mistake, the team facilitators will point it out to the event planner. The event planner who wants to help you simply has to find another company that provides the services you want. As a rule, you will find a group from a different category. Be very careful when you have a large crowd in a large group. The key to choosing the best event for your group lies in asking two important questions. Question number one (1): Are you after a particular change in behaviour? If so, commission a team building company that specialises in classroom team training, or engage a good, team-oriented speaker. The second question is (2) Do you have a large or a small group? If the group is small and you simply want to have fun, make money and play bowling. If you have a large group and they simply want to have fun, you should commission a company that specialises in large charity events or fun corporate activities, take responsibility for commissioning the company and take its advice into account. This way you will save a lot of money and can be sure that the event runs smoothly.

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