Team building failed hybrid & Remote teams

Lately we’ve been exploring what category Playgrounded sits in. We launched the business thinking of ourselves as a training organisation - people learn things from us, therefore we must be trainers. But, we pivoted away from training days as our research found they often don’t actually make work better. That worried us… if we’re not training, then that means we’re…. team building. And we… hate team building. OK, that’s harsh, but it feels true to our personal experiences, and so many others.

Sure, when we got to the bowling alley or golf course with our teams, we had a reasonable time, sometimes we even had fun. But, those activities did not help us connect to our work, collaborate better or improve our understanding of our teams’ motivations. Our to-do lists got longer, and we didn’t see efficiencies miraculously appear out of the putting-green ⛳️

We can use activities like these as a chance to take a break together, recognise achievement of the team or reward high performance (but the cynic in us says if it was purely about rewarding a bunch of individuals, forcing them to spend time with their colleagues outside of work hours would not be seen as a reward for many.. but that’s a whole other post). Now those things can be great, but they don’t have tangible positive impacts on team effectiveness. They might build relationships in your team but those relationships are based on enjoying the experience of ‘not working’ together. In that world, not-working together is fun, working together is not fun.

We think how the market thinks about team building is broken. The goal of team building exercises is to connect people to each other so they can work better together. Relationships aren’t the only thing that helps teams work effectively together. In 2018, Mars found that connecting collaboration to the motives of success-minded team members is what unlocks productive teamwork. In the hybrid & remote world we live and work in now though, how we build relationships at work has to change. So we need to intentionally surface motivations and connect humans effectively. Bowling alleys and escape rooms don’t do that.

Times are tough right now. Budgets are tight. We’re already seeing companies revoke team building budgets because they don’t help teams work better together, and ultimately, they don’t help the company make more money. We need something different. What we do is embed connection through story and you can authentically build connection in to the day to day of your teams, understanding motivations, connecting to work and each other. We don’t have to fight about whether relationships or individual motivations are the key to team collaboration, because sharing authentic, work-appropriate stories with our teams, we can do both.

Try sharing with your team why your job challenges and engages you… and see what they say. After you’ve shared, see what you get when you ask them the same question.