If you wish to play an office prank on your colleagues then just try walking into the office and mentioning in passing that there is a company team building event planned soon. The looks of horror will cascade around the office as your colleagues picture the trust falls and group chanting in a secluded field somewhere around Dorset.
Although his is an exaggeration, many employees are subjected each year to company team building events which include various hellish pursuits such as role plays and colleague bonding. In fact so many companies do it that it has developed into a multi-million pound industry catering for everything from a day out at the races to its a knockout family fun days.
In the midst of all the psychosomatic testing and complimentary Danish pastries lies some carefully over-complicated theories which this article intends to make a bit clearer. There are many different schools of thought however this article will use the definition that team building is the process of creating a collaborative enterprise that can perform or effect change.
We all function in groups, however what makes a group of people a team and furthermore, what makes a team good or bad? Have you ever been dragged into some makeshift and invasive psychometric testing asking the question, what possible use can this have? The answer is that the psychology of individuals in a group dictates how set group functions as a team.
A popular framework for this is the Sixteen Teamwork Complexes which is based on the psychoanalytical theories of the renowned Dr Karl Jung. The framework uses the Jungian theory of psychological types and facilitates the pre-emption of differences between the individuals personality, work persona and preferences.
The theory revolves around the overall team function relying on a balance of various roles. A fun game is to look around your office and guess which function your colleagues are performing. Are they a crusader or explorer, a scientist or an innovator? All these team functions can be underused or overused in the group dynamic creating a dysfunctional team.
Let us take for example a team role labelled coach. Then let us define this as one who assess other team members involvement in a task and to contemplate how to gain the teams involvement and commitment to a certain task. The underuse of this role will result in a team working as a group of individuals and the overuse will result in team members being fearful of disagreeing with each other, either way resulting in a dysfunctional team dynamic.
There are eight different psychological types and an underuse and overuse projection for each, creating the Sixteen Teamwork Complexes. The task is identifying who performs which role in the team and whether that individual is underusing or overusing that role. In order for this to be effective an overall team goal is essential.
We all joke about the office stickler, whose obtrusive lust for inflexible deadlines and documentation can become disruptive to your day, or the office whirlwind who disrupts the office doing everything at ludicrous-speed, well this framework identifies these overuses within a team with foresight to correcting and therefore streamlining the team dynamic.
There are many companies on the web who offer training and solutions to your team building issues. Much of the time it is members of senior management who are effecting the team dynamic with overuse of their team roles, so next time a team building event comes up do not role your eyes as it could make your office environment that much smoother to work in.
Team building exercises serve to bring together a working community, improve relations and generally facilitate a happier office environment once everyone is back at work. The types of activities chosen for these corporate bonding events vary greatly, and often seem to reflect a psychological need for battle and challenge between co-workers. Personally, I would have bet my last fiver that creating tensions between workers would stir up any underlying tensions, and maybe end in a non-planned boxing event at one of these team building retreats.
It seems that this is definitely not the case. These days are well organised, and are structured to encourage participation and the formation of bonds based on simple psychological functioning of certain areas of the brain. For those that are holding inter-office grudges, it actually functions well as a way of releasing tensions if the source of your aggravation is on another team, or by negating the stress if you are forced to work together.
The way these psychological systems work are not dissimilar to the instinctive behaviour witnessed during times of social stress, such as conflict. The part of the brain responsible for such emotional responses is called the amygdale and it rests in the temporal lobe of the brain forming part of the limbic system. It's primary role is in the response to fear and aggression. The activity in this area of the brain is greatly increased during times of threat and interestingly during bonding attempts.
Studies of this part of the brain have yielded results that show the amygdala is activated when it comes to a sense of belonging, forming a team and having a goal, such as in the activity of team building events. This can be equated to the same processes involved during bullying. When a group gather in a common cause to inflict negativity on a victim, there is a greater chance that a person will choose to join the side of the majority due to the chemical activity in the brain and the chemical rewards that come from such a response. Some people are obviously not wired in this way, and their response system delivers chemical rewards based on altruistic motives.
These psychological responses can be exercised safely in the controlled and friendly environment of a team building day out, and research shows that these activities could be beneficial for many industries where workers do not have an opportunity to express themselves with each other out of work hours. Many offices and factories often have groups of people that will meet socially, but the interaction from these meetings are limited. It is quite likely that the groups that form will retain their dynamic keep themselves separate from other groups that have formed between workers.
This can be likened to the formation of gangs; and although office workers don't tend to have a tattoo to show their allegiance to a group of workmates, divisions are clear between groups. By enrolling all of the members of staff on a team building corporate day out, there is a forced interaction that brings about positive results, and can add to the dynamics back at the workplace. By encouraging interaction between already established groups, new workers and employees at various levels of management, there is a chance for new networks and friendships to form.
For some this will show as a emerging with a more positive attitude, for others, the ability to demonstrate leadership skills. This is not only a chance for workers to have fun, it is a social event that can influence the opinions within an office environment based on a wider view of what those brain chemicals display as personality!
Both Shaun Parker & Dominic Donaldson are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.