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Reasons Your Team-building Event Might Fail

Not all the team-building events succeed. Organizers need to look out for some of the reasons that could cause an event to fail so as to identify the necessary pitfalls to avoid. Companies that design their team approach well develop better results though most companies get team-building ideas from only members that are at the very top level of management and most of their approaches are poorly designed. An organization model, whose design is not only short sighted but also misguided in its reward and evaluation system, is bound to fail. Team-building events should be based on cooperation not competition. However, most companies come up with activities that set up artificial contests between co-workers resulting in competition. Events, where teams compete against each other bring focus to competition and do not encourage cooperation and therefore miserably fail to meet goals set. Though competitive activities ignite passion and make them more active and focused, the people try to win at whatever cost and this could actually harm the teams.

Team-building activities that focus on getting teams to win will definitely get some to win though not all. When the main focus is on winning and competing, participants that are in groups that do not win leave the team-building feeling they are "not good enough." This feeling leaves a bitter resentment and does not serve the purpose to team-build. If organizers encourage competition they are likely to bring out the worst in the team members in their quest to win. Competition shows most people's true colors. Some become abusive while others cheat to win and this is not a good basis to foster future cooperation. It is even better if members leave the event with pleasant memories where they see each one another at their most likable and best.

A team-building activity, where members focus on competing to be the best or to win does not effectively get members to learn much compared to if they had cooperated to a greater deal. Studies reveal that human beings learn more when they cooperate and less when they compete. Members focused on winning will not concentrate on learning since they will be consumed with applying all their efforts to winning. As a result competition ultimately lowers the performance of an individual or group. Cultivating the habit of cooperation is better since members are able to learn from each other both at the team building event and at work especially when tackling tasks that are complex. However a culture of competition rules out the chance of people wanting to learn from each other and be of help to others in return. Team-building events that focus their energy on finding winners and rewarding them more than ensuring members learn things that can be useful at their places of work fail a great deal. Members begin to find these events as time wasted and begin to resent them as preventing them from doing actual, real useful work. Organizers should ensure the team-building events bring people together to cooperate, learn and see the best from each other.

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