Team building exercises are where your employees strengthen their bonds of trust and cooperation. The essence of fun, the lessons of regulations, and the practice of teamwork are what grow companies and their bottom lines. Byron Johnson, a Florida based entrepreneur and founder of several insurance agencies, including Cheap Car and Homeowners Insurance, has a few suggestions on which exercises can give your team the best results.
Why The Need for Recommendation?
Anyone who has ever been on a team-building excursion will know that the activities tend to be awkward and uncomfortable. What was meant to cultivate trust would instead result in nervous chuckles. These recommendations from Byron Johnson are meant to be a direct response to those reactions. Through the following team building exercises, one is intended to achieve a perfect environment for building team cooperation and trust.
Pipeline
A bit of a classic for team-building exercises, the idea behind pipelines is fairly simple. The employees are divided into teams, usually in twos. Each team is given a ball and half cylinder pipes.
The goal is to roll the ball down the half pipes until it reaches the goal. The catch is that the teams are only given a limited number of half pipes and they will need to keep switching ahead to catch up with the ball.
The point of this exercise is coordination. As the last person to roll the ball down quickly runs over to the front, it creates a cycle of movement. If the team members are not in-synch, they could slow down or the ball could fall off.
If that happens, they’ll need to start again.
By suddenly grouping people who may not know each other that well to do an activity that requires all of them to participate, you instill the idea of working together. With the addition of the time pressure, this makes for a perfect mix of stress and excitement.
Whatever the case may be, you’ll still get the result you want.
Message Received
Byron Johnson notes that this is a bit of a tricky recommendation. Message Received is a game that involves, what else, passing a message. However, the message will need to go through multiple people who will form a line. Once it reaches the last person, they will run to the organizer to recite the message.
The biggest challenge of this game is that the message must be delivered word-for-word. Everything must be exact or the process will start all over again.
As for what this activity is meant to achieve, it’s all about clarity of communication and the consequences of mistakes. It might be a game, but imagine what would happen if it occurred at work with an important notification.
Being able to deliver messages clearly, concisely, and correctly is very important in business. Unfortunately, it’s a skill that too many leaders fail to nurture in their teams, according to Byron Johnson.
Issues with communication can lead to any number of undesirable endings. It could impact logistics, supplies, customer orders, explicit instructions from superiors, and more. With this game, workers will realize how poor their memories can be and what they can expect from their coworkers.
Charades
Then comes the game charades, which is as classic as they come. But while it is typically treated as nothing more than fun and games, it’s so much more than that. It is a great way to get to know the personality quirks of the different employees. Their imagination, creativity, and ingenuity will shine through, as well.
Byron Johnson recommends this game because it shines a light on many aspects that coworkers should know about each other. At the same time, it gives managers and superiors a better idea of who can do what.
Having a good grasp of the different attitudes, creative thinking, and response under pressure that the employees exhibit is quite beneficial.
With that said, it would be wise to make this game of charades more relevant to what you are trying to achieve. As such, you might want to stick to topics that all of your employees are supposed to know.
This includes the products that you sell, what you are best known for, the company logo, slogan, and many others. You might also want to include things about marketing, business, consumer trends, social media, and so on.
You get to kill two birds with one stone by going down this route.
About Byron Johnson:
Byron Johnson started his career and opened his own business by franchising Liberty Tax in 2012 and in 2014, built his own Florida based insurance brokerage. Over the years, Byron Johnson’s credibility and leadership in the insurance industry has been topnotch, garnering several awards and regional recognition for his companies. As a skilled builder of teams, Johnson has expanded his insurance agencies, offering coverage nationwide.
On top of that, Byron owns a construction company and a 50-unit commercial property. He is an unstoppable man when it comes to business. His wit and experience combined made him a business magnate at the age of 35.
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