How team building and leadership training has moved with the times.

By James England, MD of Blue Sky Experiences ? As Printed in The Courier & Advertiser Perthshire

How team building and leadership training has moved with the times.

The importance of clear leadership, and subsequent efficient teamwork, can be traced back many centuries.?One of the most famous examples was exhibited by the Royal Navy at the Battle of Trafalgar, when even although Admiral Nelson fell, ?his senior officers had a clear understanding of his plan and strategy; they, in turn, had passed this on to their officers and unit so the battle was still won through extremely efficient team-work, the understanding of the aim and how it was to be achieved.

Over the years, the military has continued to be at the forefront in developing action-centered learning and perfecting experiential learning activities or command tasks to help develop their soldiers and units.

In the late 1920?s businesses started to appreciate the importance of teams within the workplace. Analysis of workers working in the teams showed that the most significant factor was the building of a sense of group identity, a feeling of social support and cohesion that came with increased worker interaction.

In the past 50 years team building has developed considerably and has become an integral part of most businesses? training budget. In the ?70s and ?80s, team building activities tended to be associated with country sports such as quad biking, off-road driving and clay pigeon shooting, more commonly known as team bonding activities as they do not require the team to actually work together.

They are still hugely important in developing any team, allowing the individuals the opportunity to become more aware of others in the team and, above all, create a sense of team fun and confidence within the team.

In the past the true team building or experiential learning activities were targeted at the management teams or executives and were leadership orientated. These training programmes definitely had their roots in the military-style command tasks, pushing potential business leaders out of their comfort zones and observing how they operated under the pressure leading and working in a team.

Both the country sports and the army-based command task are not particularly inclusive and can alienate many individuals within the business team; however, for some teams, they will still play a huge role in many team building events today.

As team building events have become part of the annual business calender and are now something that the whole business or department might expect to do rather than just the management teams, so the activities incorporated within the events have had to move with the demands of the clients team.

Physically demanding army-style assault courses have been replaced by high-ropes courses and low-ropes courses. These activities all create a level of apprehension within the team and require them all to work together to achieve the journey on the courses. Team trust, support and motivational skills will be pushed to new limits with all these activities.

The command tasks have been integrated into the corporate team building events as well through the use of activities such as raft building, bridge building and the development of numerous 15-minute Krypton Factor-style team puzzles which, again, can cater for large teams and are fully inclusive.

These activity styles will promote very different team skill sets to the ropes course. They will require teams to think laterally, problem solve, create a plan and strategy and them teamwork effectively to achieve the objective.

Over the last 10 years, teams have become more sophisticated in their demands so the activities have had to develop ? as when we started BlueSky Experiences, we had a puzzle zone, treasure hunts and a low-ropes course, all three hours each, complemented by quad bikes and clay pigeon shooting for the team.

Businesses started to demand indoor, collaborative teamworking activities so we developed project-orientated events like Mission Improbable and Building Bridges, both activities requiring collaborative teamwork and which celebrate tackling the challenge successfully rather than the traditional prize giving.

In more recent years team building activities have become very focused on the indoor events and integrated into the business conference or meeting agenda. In the last years our team building events have been required to follow the mass appeal of the reality television shows such as I am a Celebrity, The Apprentice and Ready Steady Cook, with the inquiries coming in continually to develop events similar to these shows.

Bring on the next 10 years of developing and delivering a huge diversity of team building activities.

Source: http://www.blueskyexperiencesblog.com/2012/07/how-team-building-and-leadership-training-has-moved-with-the-times/

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