Whilst scanning the headlines on the BBC’s news website the other day, the words ‘corporate team building’ and ‘terrible’ sprang out.
To be perfectly honest, the article came as no real surprise to us. The horror stories mentioned – about colleagues who are totally confused as to why they’re doing an activity, embarrassed or singled out or, worse, far from bringing everyone together end up hating each other. Tell your team you’ve arranged a day of kayaking and rock climbing and some will relish the challenge and see it as a bit of a jolly, whilst others will greet the news with dread and instantly start planning to be mysteriously ill. But probably all of them will wonder how on earth paddling down a river or dangling off a rope will improve team morale or performance.
We don’t do corporate team-building events
Do a Google search and you’ll discover an endless list of corporate team-building companies all over the country, it’s big business. It’s easy to spend your allocated budget and tick the team-building box. But we firmly believe that it has to be more than a simple box-ticking exercise. Ask us what we can offer and there will be no menu of activities to hand and a list of available dates to choose from. What you will get are questions. Lots of questions.
We want to understand the ‘why’
The BBC article says this of team-building events: “They can actually lower morale, especially if they’re a response to deep-rooted problematic team dynamics that require more serious solutions.” And it’s exactly those ‘serious solutions’ that MGN events is known for providing to corporate clients. All the questions, all the probing – that you may well not expect of an event organisation and management company – are all about understanding why there is a need for team building, identifying issues within the team and understanding the team’s business function.
Only by identifying the problem, can we then design a bespoke solution – one that has relevance to the business. As the article says, artificial problem-solving exercises are of little help if you can’t take the learning back into the work environment. And unless the solution is closely aligned to the core problem, you run the risk of compounding that problem by taking a wrong approach and may end up with a disengaged, disgruntled team.
Every business is different and so are the team-building solutions we create
Many of the team-building events we provide are as part of corporate away days. Think we could do something for your business or team? Why not give us a call for a chat and be ready for lots of questions!
