The CEO’s Guide to Effective Team Building

The CEO’s Guide to Effective Team Building
By Anne Thornley-Brown

Team Building can be a very effective strategy for enhancing team cohesion and boosting business performance, however, it takes time and carefully planning to produce desired results. Here are a few simple guidelines that will greatly enhance the success of team building.

1. Clarify your objectives.

It is important that you be clear about the reasons you want a team building. Do you want to generate solutions to pressing business issues? Are you attempting to foster “out of the box thinking” in the members of your team? Is there a conflict that requires resolution? Be specific about what you are trying to achieve and articulate this clearly to the person who will be obtaining quotes from suppliers on your behalf.

When companies contact me for information, I always ask about objectives. That is when confusion becomes evident. Far too often, the person who has been tasked with making the calls doesn’t have a clue. Once source of confusion has to do with the word “team building” The terms “team recreation” and “team building” are often misused and treated as if they are interchangeable. They are not.

TEAM RECREATION

Team recreation is intended to get your team involved in an activity or experience just for the fun of it. There are no specific business objectives or outcomes.

TEAM BUILDING

Team building seeks to enhance team cohesiveness and performance to improve business results. Many team building sessions involve recreation, however, recreation is a means to an end, not the end. Team building can be delivered on-site, off-site as a day session or at a hotel or resort involving overnight stays, locally or at a foreign destination

The phases of effective team building are:

• pre-session communication to communicate goals, objectives and expectations
  
• executive briefing to identify key business issues, communicate your support, and clarify how team building is relevant the business (1 hour)
  
• context setting and team briefing by facilitator ( 1 1/2 – 2 hours)
  
• recreation (flexible & optional)
  
• simulation (3 – 8 hours)
  
• debriefing (1 hour)
  
• business application exercises (1 – 1 /2 hours for prep., 5 to 15 minutes per group for presentations)
  
• business agenda items (flexible)
  

2. Clarify your decision-making criteria, process, and timing.

Be prepared to make a decision 1 or 2 weeks after receiving a quote. Delays can increase costs and reduce the likelihood that preferred venues, dates and airline space will be available.

3. Match your time frame and your objectives.

Failing to allocate enough time for your desired objectives is one of the main reasons that team building fails. Here is a guideline to timing based on your objectives:

Half day:

• strictly for recreation
  

Appropriate for:

• recreation with business meeting
  
• very simple simulation with debriefing, short business
  
• application exercise and brief report back from breakout groups
  

2 days:

• suitable for simulation (or recreation), debriefing, and in-depth business analysis and short presentations from breakout groups
  

2 1/2 to 3 days:

• suitable for simulation that includes recreation, debriefing, in-depth business analysis, business meeting
  

3 1/2 to 4 days:

• suitable if you also want to include customer and supplier presentations
  

4. Don’t pack the agenda and don’t fail to build in buffers.

Allow ample time for transportation delays and for people to settle into the venue, especially during the winter or if you are leaving the country. Remember, a late night arrival and early start is efficient but it’s bound to create resentment and generate.

Make allowances for some down time even if it means adding half a day. One of the worst things you can do is take your team to a beautiful location and give them no time to relax and enjoy it.

5. Start planning well in advance and before you lock in your final dates.

Ideally, you should be contacting suppliers at least 8 to 12 weeks prior to your session for something local. (For foreign travel, 3 – 6 months is best especially if the destination is popular.) Allow about a week for quotes. Make sure that your dates aren’t carved in stone until there has been an opportunity to determine the availability of suitable venues.

6. Brief your assistant fully.

Be certain that the person to whom you delegate the task of obtaining quotes from suppliers is clear about:

• preferred dates – it is always best to have 2 or 3 options
  
• group size, composition and degree of physical fitness

• other agenda items to be included
  
• your objectives (see number 1)
  
• timeframe (3 days, 2 days, 1 day, 1/2 day)
  
• budget
  

7. Delegate fact finding but never decision making.

As the decision maker, you should ALWAYS have a conversation with the senior facilitator or event planner from the firm with whom you are thinking of doing business. This will ensure that all pertinent information has been communicated and provided. Unless your session is strictly recreational, decision-making by committee should be avoided. A committee is great for exploring options and giving input but an executive should always make the final decision based on what is best for the business.

8. Don’t fall into a rut. Try something new.

For example, use your team building session to give your team a new perspective. This will foster “out of the box” thinking and help them generate ideas to ensure that your company remains competitive in the global marketplace. To find the budget, maybe have 1 retreat this year instead of 2 or arrange an off-site every other year instead of annually. Take your team on a desert safari in Dubai, abseiling in Oman or horse riding in Jamaica and use an experienced facilitator to link your experience with your day to day business challenges.

9. Set the tone with pre-communication.

Use an e-mail or carefully crafted communication piece on your intranet to convey objectives, expectations and code of conduct. For example, if your group is in the habit of having a drunken fest, re-think your approach in the light of:

• recent court decisions about company liability for accidents caused by intoxicated employees
  
• how this behaviour would appear to shareholders
  
• the impact on your company’s reputation if the press got wind of it
  

10. Ensure full attendance by the entire team for the duration of the session.

This may be challenging but it can be done. It is difficult to achieve results when key players are popping in and out of the session. Have each attendee arrange back up and provide a full briefing about some of the situations that are likely to emerge. They should let key customers and suppliers know how long they will be away from the office, when they are returning and who to contact during their absence.

11. Keep your briefing brief.

People have limited attention spans, particularly if there has been a long journey to get to an off-site. A half hour presentation followed by a half an hour for questions is more than sufficient to kick things off. Going overtime, puts pressure on the rest of the agenda and frustrates the members of your team. You can always build more airtime into the agenda during the business portion of your retreat or session when all of the team building is finished.

12. Arrange for regular checkpoints with the facilitator or event planner and involve him or her in all course corrections.

Discuss how things are going and come up with solutions together if there are any concerns.

13. Don’t cut the simulation or debriefing short.

Remember, analytical learners won’t “get it” just based on experience. They need time to think and process. If you panic and cut things short, they will never have an opportunity to get value out of the session.

14. Follow up, follow up, follow up!

Encourage the use of the new tools introduced through team building on an ongoing basis. Give each breakout groups a project and have them provide periodic updates in the months following your team building session.

(c) 2008 Executive Oasis International. All rights reserved.

Anne Thornley-Brown is the founder and President of Executive Oasis International, a Toronto based firm that helps executive teams design strategies to survive, thrive and grow in our turbulent economy. Their services include executive retreats, incentive travel, and team building. Destinations include Canada, Jamaica, Asia (Singapore, Malaysia) and the Middle East (Dubai, Oman).

For information about our executive retreats, please visit her web site:

Team Building and Executive Retreats

Incentive Travel

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