The team with the most talent is not always the team that delivers the best performance. The best evidence of this is often found in the sports world. Who still remembers the performance of the Greek football team at the European Championships in 2004? Becoming champion with perhaps one of the least talented selections is not for everyone. This is only possible through excellent team performance. And our own Dutch team has also proven that team building can in many cases defeat individual talent. At the 2010 World Cup we certainly did not have the best individual players, but the team did deliver a top performance! Could the Dutch team repeat this in Brazil this summer, against all odds? Team building produces results in sports, but does it also offer benefits for your organization?
The benefits of team building
Teambuilding is becoming an increasingly important item on managers' agendas. Under the motto 'there is no me, only us', team performance is being scrutinized more and more frequently. But what exactly are the benefits of a well-coordinated team?
1. Utilizing potential:
When a team works together and strives for a goal, each individual team member can find and utilize his or her true talents. By working in a team, strengths and weaknesses come to the surface much faster than if you work mainly individualistically within your organization.
2. Developing leadership:
Team building, in addition to showing potential, also ensures that leadership in your team will become clearer. Perhaps one of your colleagues turns out to be an unexpected leader, which otherwise would never have emerged.
3. Providing solutions
It's a cliché, but it's one that you can't put a finger on, 2 know more than 1! By looking at problems as a team, the chance of a suitable solution is many times greater than if problems have to be tackled by a single person. However, a pitfall for teamwork is that there is a lot of talking, but no decisions are made. A factor to take into account!
4. Increase productivity:
A complex project requires many different qualities and capabilities. By working together as a team, you bring together all the expertise in your organization and the productivity, but especially the quality, of your work will enormously improve.
Team building can be trained
But where do you start to forge your team into a true unit that delivers groundbreaking performance? It remains a fairly broad concept that is certainly not easy to implement within your company. Fortunately, teambuilding can definitely be trained. Kenneth Smit, for example, offers the two-day Professional Teambuilding course, where the focus lies primarily on effective group activities and interactions within the team. It revolves around collaboration, exploring boundaries, and pushing them. Another service is the Team Development training: this creates a cohesive team and also contributes to higher productivity.
Let people grow
The core of good leadership is getting the best out of your people. That starts with understanding what drives each team member and where his or her talents lie. Not everyone is motivated by the same things. One employee wants autonomy, another seeks recognition, and yet another thrives on new challenges.
As a manager, it is your task to recognize those individual drivers and align your approach accordingly. A personal development conversation is a good tool for this. Not the formal performance review, but an open dialogue about ambitions, needs, and possibilities. Teams in which employees feel seen and heard perform demonstrably better.
Would you like to get started with this in a concrete way? Check out our Coaching Leadership training at Kenneth Smit.
