Team work is a much emphasized aspect in every walk of life. If one is capable of working well in a team, it says a lot about the character of the person. Teamwork involves a lot of patience, perseverance, open mindedness, humility and willingness to give up on a lot of things that you wouldn't normally give up. It teaches you to focus on the main objective of the team and drives you to achieve it, along with your team-mates. This Buzzle article will highlight more such reasons validating the importance of team building activities.
Better Productivity
The first and most logical reason for building teams, whether in a classroom of children, in a sport or in an organization is that acting as a team, by default, results in a better productivity, quantity wise and quality wise. When you team a group of people for a job, they put their heads together and come up with a way to complete it in the shortest time and in the most efficient manner. So, they get to know the importance of effective time management and also learn that working in a team enables delegation of duties, which in turn helps to perform the given job better.
Inter-personal Communication
Communication is an important aspect of our daily lives. We encounter people throughout the day and the need to communicate arises constantly. Unfortunately, its importance is grossly undermined in today's times. Hence, in order to get your employees or students to communicate with each other, that too effectively, the best tool you can use is dividing them into teams. Teams warrant compulsory communication for a task to be completed, so the people involved in them have no choice but to communicate. This will help them to get to know each other better and also gauge what are each others' strengths and weaknesses.
Problem Solving
Working as a team, whether in reality or in a game, generally garners better and quicker solutions to problems. This can be verified by a simple problem solving activity assigned to a team. They will themselves realize that with more heads thinking, and more innovative ideas, there are bound to be more solutions to the problem. From these, the most feasible option can be selected by a vote (which is also a version of teamwork) and used to eventually solve the problem in a much shorter period.
Building Responsibility
When you are a part of a team, you are responsible not only for yourself, but also for your teammates. You are merely a part of a whole. You represent the entire team. So wherever you go, you take an image of your team along with you. For students, it is the school they're from. For working professionals, it is the organization on the whole that they represent. Hence, this realization leads to a sense of responsibility within each member of the team, which shapes them not only as team members, but also as individuals.
Adjusting and Acceptance
When you work as a team, you have no choice but to give up any personal prejudices and other issues that you have and behave in a manner that becomes a team. You may have come across people who simply cannot adjust to different surroundings and hence make it a point to have their discomfort become the center of everyone's attention. The reasons may vary from person to person. These are the people who are not team players, and if not asked to adjust, can turn out to be quite detrimental to the final result of the team's output. For this, everyone needs to work as a team.
There can be many more reasons why it is important to conduct activities that promote team building. These were just the fundamental few that need to be highlighted and stressed in every institution that requires its members to work together as a team, for the desired optimum output.
