What is team building?
Team building is about the development of a team that works towards a common objective. Critical to organisational success, effective corporate team building is about involving the participation of all team members towards the same accomplishment of company goals; it is about promoting the personal and professional growth of every member and directing the team towards success.
Why is team building important?
Team building games and activities serve as an effective means to bring individuals together from different educational and social backgrounds and orient them to a common goal. Team building exercises serve as an excellent means to help people adapt to the working environment and to encourage them to communicate together. The success of an organisation depends largely on the trust between employees and their teamwork.
Team building activities help in developing and strengthening the professional relationships between company employees. These activities and exercises assist in the development of a healthy working environment and is key to productivity. Team building exercises help in boosting the morale and confidence of the employees and make them comfortable in a working atmosphere.
Team building is a process that helps the employees assess themselves and also understand their team members; it helps analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the team members, therefore enabling the management to promote their strengths and train them to overcome their weaknesses. Team building exercises give the management an opportunity to assess the employees, so that the employee expertise can be effectively utilised for the growth of the organisation. In this quote “When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.”- By Joe Paterno, it clearly represents how working together can produce more effectively than individual performance. Team building activities help in the development of planning, problem solving, decision-making and leadership skills, time management and a healthy competitive team spirit in the employees.
How does race the dragon represents this?
The beauty about Dragon Boating is you can take a group of people or make a group from individuals that have never met, never seen a dragon boat or even been involved with any kind of water sport before for that matter, and get them working together as one to power their dragon boat to victory. Each time they enter their dragon boat you can see the level of team work increasing and the progression of skills and unity throughout the day is absolutely amazing. You will even see some continue on dry land working out the best way to progress. You have to be aware of what you are doing whilst being aware and Intune with your team mates some very much out of their comfort zones. They have a little bit of dry land coaching to get them going and thinking along these lines to make victory possible, it only takes minuets to see such great benefits!
Over the day you will see the individuals take their own role in the groups, some becoming leaders some becoming motivators, the quiet ones and some pulling them all together, and we can’t forget the jokers! Each role essential in any team. After a day of racing the amount of connections between the individuals made is immense, all learning and knowing a bit more about each other so the goal of the day is met, to strengthen relationships between the employees themselves and the company as a whole. This is why an activity like this can be so vital for both employees and managers as it puts everyone at the same level.