Why Team Building?
What is teamwork? Let’s look at the dictionary definition: “Cooperative or coordinated effort on the part of a group of persons acting together as a team or in the interest of a common cause.” The definition reads exactly like how you might expect a dictionary entry to read; dry. So let’s extract just the basics: individuals working together as a team in order to achieve a common goal.
With just the basics now in hand, the word “teamwork” is starting to reacquire some of its energy and dynamism. If asked, we can all rattle off a definition of teamwork pretty quickly. We have a general idea of the “what” behind teamwork. But what about the “how”? How do we operate as a successful, cohesive team? This is where the answers seem a little less clear, and this is where team building comes into play.
“The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
If we are to succeed as individuals, we must succeed as a community as well. The ability of a team to accomplish a task or achieve a goal is largely dependent on mastering specific team skills and tools. Team building at Mother Lode River Center develops the skills and provides the tools essential to creating and maintaining group cohesion, team motivation and ultimately, success.
What does building a team look like?
Using a progression of fun group activities, team challenges and team coaching, the skilled facilitators at Mother Lode River Center will guide your group through a challenge course tailored to your objectives and expectations.
- Team work games are a great way to break down barriers and open up the flow of positive energy. Play is good for the soul, and gets the group warmed up for working together.
- Team activities depend on trust and focus on safety systems. The facilitator starts the group with activities that require low to moderate levels of trust, and then gradually moves into activities that require total group trust.
- Initiatives are intellectual group challenges. Effective communication, leadership development and problem solving become the focus. The group’s process and progress are carefully monitored by the facilitator and then discussed by the group to help capture the essence of what has been achieved.
- Low or High elements are specific challenges utilizing structural elements which build on the safety systems of the group building activities and the problem solving of the initiatives.
