Why Team Building Retreats May Not Be What Your Company Needs?

During my breakfast this morning at my hotel in Singapore, I met the F&B manager who was super excited about the trip that his department staff along with 100 other employees will take the next few days and he called it a “Team Building Retreat”. His excitement about the subject inspired me to write about Team Building. Ever though, an out of the office gathering is very good for the morale of our people and brings people together; many company senior executives don’t understand what it takes to put a great team together. Understanding how to put a team together, in my opinion is prerequisite of any team building retreats.

John Maxwell, in his book, ‘The 17 indisputable Laws of Team Work”, discusses that the most important part of building a team is understanding the components that can affect a team. Team building exercises are a good way to bring together the people who are on a team already but how do you put a great team together? Here are 3 things that I learned from Maxwell’s book that may help you in the process of building a team:

Know Your Team Members

As a leader we need to learn about each individual team member on our team. We need to understand their strengths, weaknesses, inspirations and goals. We need to evaluate their past experiences of success and failure and we need to talk and listen to them instead of just judging them from the surface and have this preconceived notion of how we like them to succeed based on our perception.

Must Know Your Entire Team

Understanding our team as an individual unit is very important and we need to evaluate how the team aligns with our vision and if our vision is aligned with our team. If my goal for the company is to do $20M in revenue but I have not aligned my goal with my team’s goal, there will always be a discrepancy between my goal and theirs. This is one of the reasons that your see many successful companies lock their winning team in to company’s revenue and profits.

Understanding the Situation

As a leader, I need to understand the situation that I am facing and pick a team that matches the situation. A big and challenging situation requires a team that has the experience and knowledge of how to overcome those challenges. This is why a team that handles a project one year for a company that did $5M in revenue may not be qualified to do the same project for the same company that grows to $10M in the following years. We must match the team to our situation.

Allen Nazeri DDS is a leadership and management expert. He is the founder of Dr. Allen Nazeri Consulting & Investment Advisory Group focused on health care organizations where they like to improve operational efficiency, scale through strategic joint venture partnerships as well as raise funds from private equity investors or Initial Public Offering. He may be reached at Drallenci@gmail.com.