Presenting Proof is The Only Way to Convince Leadership That Real Team Building Beats Silly Team Bonding Games.

Here’s Proof for Real Team Building

Folks, it has happened again.

I am happy to report, for the umpteenth time, another group of wonderful leaders in a huge international company is now convinced that real team building beats silly team bonding games. They embraced our practical, real-world team-building process – Right-Minded Teamwork.

Here is the Short Story and Proof

Recently, I facilitated a team-building workshop for an integrated project management team of 35 leaders. They led a team of 100+ teammates.

The team consisted of teammates from two multinational organizations: the customer and the contractor.  The project size was in the hundreds of millions of US Dollars.

Dysfunctional Issues

There were many dysfunctions:

• lack of trust,
• poor work quality,
• process mistakes, 
• costly rework,
• finger-pointing, and blame. 

For those of you in Project Management, you understand change orders or Management of Change (MOC) can bring out the worst in people. 

Thus, this was the case in this team. This article will go into more detail on how they resolved that part of their dysfunction.

Trust – The Main Issue They Choose to Address

The customer had grown to distrust the contractor’s estimate for more MOC man hours because of the appearance of inflated estimates. 

In turn, the contractor grew to distrust the customer’s ability to understand the complexity of design engineering. Therefore, they believed the customer was incapable of understanding the higher MOC costs.

Before I facilitated the workshop, I started working with teammates by implementing the Right Choice Model process.  

This approach, which helps to create an emotionally-intelligent team culture, is now readily available to any team leader or facilitator.  Check it out.

During the workshop, the 35 teammates created four Work Agreements to address the MOC issue as well as other teamwork dysfunctions.

Immediately after the workshop, they cautiously begin living their Work AgreementsA Work Agreement is a collective teammate promise to transform non-productive, adversarial behavior into collaborative teamwork behavior..

The Proof

In short, as the weeks and months went by,

• fewer work mistakes were made,
• more efficiency was created and
• trust was being rebuilt.

Now, six months later, one teammate said to me in the follow-up interviews,

“Before, all we wanted to do was find a way to leave team meetings. Now it’s the opposite. We are in team meetings to find solutions.  It’s been a huge change. We are learning to trust one another!”

This statement, as well as many other pieces of evidence, was the proof senior leaders saw. 

For another real-world story, this team saved hundreds of thousands of dollars with this real team building process, plus they increased teammate trust by 78%. How to Create Team Working Agreements That Bring People Together.

Real Team Building Beats Team Bonding Games

Real Team Building as Their Best Practice

Now, the project leaders have declared the Right-Minded Teamwork process a best practice. 

They have also asked us to train their internal human resource professionals and their and project managers in the art and science of real-world team building.  Why?

In short, the team bonding games and personality assessments they used in the past did not work.

The Right-Minded Teamwork process does work.

So, what about you? 

Are you ready to facilitate real-world team building in your organization?

If yes, here are four actions you can take right now.

1. Understand the 5 Elements of Right-Minded Teamwork.
2. Take this training course – 12 Steps in How to Design a Right-Minded Team Building Workshop.
3. Implement Right-Minded Choice in your team.
4. Create Team Working Agreements that bring your teammates together.

To Your Success, Dan

Attribution: image by Luigi Mengato via CC BY 2.0