As a provider of team building, retreat facilitation, and experiential training for organizational improvement, I make a point of researching the trends in my industry.  With no shortage of information available on the internet, I am painfully aware of the confusion and the negative feedback that surrounds the ideas and the execution of activities under the umbrella of “team building”.

There are many companies that promote themselves as team building service providers.  Here are just a few I found when I did a search for ‘corporate team building’:

• cooking
• murder mystery
• scavenger hunts
• board breaking
• bowling
• paintball
• fire walking
• sailing
• gym climbing
• ropes courses
• wacky olympics
• bike building
• pinewood derby racing
• white water rafting

  and the list goes on…

Now, I’m a big fan of using a novel experience as part of a team building program, but I am skeptical about the level of facilitation and actual team development that goes on during these events.  If I was a client looking for a team building activity, here is what I would want to know:

What type of facilitation is going on during the ‘event?’  Do the facilitators know anything about group dynamics and team development, or are they simply experts at taking the group through the activity or experience?

How do the facilitators transfer whatever is learned during the off-site back to the real-world of the workplace?  Without some sort of debrief and discussion with regard to the group experience and the work experience, participants might as well be calling it recreation rather than team building.  Without a well facilitated discussion, the ‘team’ is not building anything!

Once you have taken part in this experience, what do you do for the follow up?  The number one complaint about even a well facilitated team building event is that while participants may have had fun and learned something about how to work more effectively as a team, as soon as they returned to the office on Monday, it was back to business as usual.  Without a proper follow-up, there is no long-term value.

Too many of these companies that offer experiences without facilitation are giving team building a bad name.  The only way a company off-site can hold any long-term value is if the experience is more than just bonding and fun.  Real value comes with building trust between the members of the group, learning how to communicate more effectively, working through conflict, and creating an environment where members are committed to the mission of the team.  When these goals are met, the team is ready to perform at its peak.

Let’s not lump together every activity that is offered for your company off-site and call it team building.  If an organizer knows the right questions to ask, they can usually differentiate between the experiences that will have lasting value and the ones that will be short-lived memories.  Although, I do have to admit – walking through fire sounds pretty cool…