Team Building

As I prepare to facilitate a team building session later this week, I’m amused when I think of some of the inquiries I have received through the years to help with team issues. Often someone will call me and say that they have a team that requires some team building and ask if I would put together a few fun exercises for them. My usual question of the caller is “and I will do these exercises with the team so that what will result? And most often the answer is, “Oh, I don’t know.

Two of the most important questions any team can ask at the beginning of its work are “what results are we trying to accomplish as a team and how will we define success? Answers to these questions help the team determine if it has the right membership and what its focus will be. More importantly, it gives the members of the team the opportunity to make a commitment to achieving those results. In the absence of asking the “results question as well as defining what success will look like, a team will be missing the direction that all high-performing teams require.