Meet Company Objectives Faster and Have Fun Too
If used correctly, outdoor team retreats can be a powerful tool to help your employees reach their goals and objectives easier and quicker.
What would it mean for your team if:
- Everyone was working towards the same agreed objectives
- The relationships between the members of your team were stronger than ever
- Each team member communicated openly and frankly, focusing on behaviours, not personalities, to provide effective feedback on team goals and achievements.
- Team members recognized and valued each other’s strengths, skills and knowledge
Just think – your team could become more powerful and more effective than ever before.
It’s all about team alignment.
But what do I mean by ‘team alignment’? I’m referring to:
- Alignment of working styles;
- Agreement regarding team norms; and
- Agreement about team ground rules.
Each of these aspects of team alignment can be developed through team-based, team building training. The exercises and challenges teams face during this type of training gives team members the skills to discuss and agree on their objectives. They then strategize the plan to bring it to fruition.
This is achieved by building skills and awareness in the following areas:
- Accountability – team members working through the exercises learn the need to be accountable to themselves and to each other. By developing a mindset to support accountability at work, your employees will focus on results. They won’t be making excuses about what went wrong and why. Team members won’t blame each other when things don’t go to plan. Instead, they will critically examine the situation and offer constructive solutions.
- Communication – the shared experiential experiences undertaken– experiences which push people from their comfort zone and challenge them – help people build bonds. These consequently make it easier for them to approach each other when they return to the workplace.
- Trust – as team members have to rely on each other mentally, intellectually and physically to complete the exercises successfully, their trust relationships are enhanced. Team members learn they can rely on their colleagues to support them and to help them achieve their common goals.
- Relationships – the common experience of working and collaborating on physical and mental challenges, and the open communication that results from adventure training, builds bonds between team members that are stronger than those built in the workplace. This is closely related to trust and communication.
- Organizational learning – team building helps teams learn to review their decisions and performance critically, and highlights areas where they need development, providing a solid basis for team learning to improve effectiveness.
Well-structured outdoor experiential training, based on clear objectives and followed by careful debriefing:
- makes sure the lessons learnt relate to the specific team, to its work place and to the team’s performance
- enhances communication ability and openness
- allows teams to develop their team and to agree on team objectives, ensuring they are working towards a common goal.
In short, it helps the team become an ‘aligned’ team, putting it well on the path to becoming a high performing team.
Red Lodge Ropes Course, a division of NexLevel Challenge, works with businesses that share our mindset, philosophy, and values of Connection, Fun & Excellence. Our powerful experiential training programs create high performance teams.
Give us a call 1.866.840.2840, pop us an email or visit our website www.redlodgeropescourse.com.