Corporate Team Building Action Plans

Sometimes, a team doesn’t need or isn’t quite ready for an in-depth set of team building activities. Maybe it’s a team that is just forming after reorganization, or maybe it’s a team of individual contributors and teamwork is less essential to success. In these cases, team building icebreakers can be a great start to establish healthy communication habits with your teams.

These activities are all relatively simple to implement – most just need time on the calendar, and a little bit of preparation. People who know each other engage in teamwork more easily. Even casual events without an express goal can yield many benefits.

Types of Team Building Icebreakers 

Here are some ideas for team-building exercises that tend to achieve better team camaraderie.

• Self-Development Training. There are many personality and team assessments that provide personal insights about individual strengths and weaknesses. When these assessments are administered and explained in a team setting by a skilled trainer, they can provide insights on both an individual and team level.
• Physical Games and Challenges. There are many skilled trainers that can facilitate team-building games, exercises and activities in both outdoor and indoor environments. These exercises can be modified to meet any physical limitations in the group, while still taking people out of their comfort zones for learning purposes.
• Cross-Functional Meet and Greets. To build connections across teams, schedule meet and greet lunches or field trips that bring together teams that rely on each other, but that do not work together every day. For example, have marketing and operations share a lunch, or have the technologists and human resources teams visit a museum together.

While planning out these corporate team activities, it is important to make it a common practice to revisit the goal. Many team-focused articles talk about the importance of mission clarity and alignment, but too often, teams don’t actually ask, “wait, why are we doing this?” in the middle of their work. To infuse mission focus into teamwork, start meetings with, “Ok, today we are going to talk about X. The goal is to Y. This is important to achieve because it will help A do B. Any feedback on that before we start?”

Corporate Team Building Example: Playing Cards

First, create small groups of 2 to 6 people, depending on group size. All groups begin with the same task, designed to address some topic of interest to the team. For example, the task may be to list:

• Projects that this team should consider in the next year
• Ideas for creating a new innovative product or service
• Ideas for creating efficiencies or streamlining business processes

Each group generates cards that respond to the assigned topic— only one idea per card. Each group may generate as many cards as they wish, as this is the brainstorming section of the activity.

Once each group has generated a stack of cards (takes about 10 minutes), the stack is passed to a different group (so each group gets a new set of cards). Then, in a second round, the group sorts through and reads the cards they have received from the first round. The group must select the top 2-3 cards from their inherited set— these are the top ideas that the group thinks are the best of all the cards received. For example, Group B receives a stack of 7 cards that list different ideas that Group A generated for new innovative services, and picks the top 2-3 ideas. This round also takes about 10 minutes.

In a third round, the 2-3 top selected cards for each group are then passed to a third group. The rest of the cards are set aside. For this final round, the group selects what they believe is the best idea from their inherited cards and then drafts a preliminary action plan to bring that idea into reality. The output from this step is a statement of the idea and a plan of attack for carrying it forward.

Tips to Build Awareness Usings These Activities 

When it comes to making sure your team is communicating both internally and with customers or clients, making sure your team is consistently reminded of these other individuals will help to establish health habits of communication. 

• Actively prepare overview briefings and talking points about the team’s work. Build in time for the team to develop overviews about its work.
• Schedule time to talk about the external environment. Specifically talk about the potential impact of the team’s work on stakeholders. 
• Invite in guest speakers. Consider organizing a group session with another team doing similar or even competing work, or a guest speaker that represents the voice of the customer. 
• Use a team “scout.” There is usually at least one extraverted team member who enjoys connecting with external people to bring up information that can benefit the team’s work. This person needs to be someone who asks good questions and recognizes how the team’s work fits. 
• Celebrate success and key milestones externally. Building external awareness by celebrating team success with external stakeholders – this can be done through regular status updates and alerting key people to important delivery points.

Why Establishing Team Building Action Plans is Important 

Tangible outcomes from team building action plans feature practical benefits that are an advantage for any team. From larger corporations to small businesses who want to develop their teams, team communication training is one of the best ways to develop both team chemistry and individual skills to handle difficult situations in and out of the workplace. Pryor knows all about the importance of effective communication, and that's why we have a whole category of seminars, webinars and onsite courses dedicated to helping your department develop communication skills to reach success. 

A few of our specialized communication courses, such as Spark Innovation and Think Strategically and Communicate with Tact and Professionalism are courses with takeaways that can benefit everyone in an organization, from a CEO to an entry-level analyst. Other courses, such as Managing Emotions Under Pressure, are great for both individuals and organizations, as they can assist you develop steady self-control, essential for all that life in and out of the workplace will throw at you. 

If these courses and their long-term results intrigue you, perhaps you should consider our unlimited training subscription, PryorPlus. The annual pass gives access to more than 5,000 recorded and on-demand professional courses to develop your talents.