Btb Guest Author: David Perry

There are nowhere near enough good commentators and very little real debate about corporate training in Ireland, it is unfortunately all too rarely that I am struck by what Irish trainers have to contribute.

Recently however, I came across a letter in the Irish HR and training magazine First Train which is published by www.corpoaratetraining.ie The letter referred to an earlier article on so called team building activities and events such as abseiling, paintballing, quad biking etc etc, which are proving to be increasingly popular with Irish business.

The letter was written by a trainer from Cork called David Perry and offered a fabulous insight into the effectiveness of these type of corporate jollies. I approached David directly to congratulate him and asked if he would like, on occasion like to contribute to this blog. I’m delighted to say that he accepted and I have no doubt that readers will benefit from his experience and insight.

David Perry holds qualifications in Training, Personnel & Management and is a Chartered member of the CIPD(Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development). He’s worked as a management trainer in a number of outdoor management centres in the UK and also holds a number of canoeing & hillwalking qualifications. He has also worked as a trainer & personnel manager in a number of organisations. He has over twenty years experience in this field.

So here’s what David had to say about this type of team building event:

1. There are a number of other reasons why ‘team building’ is undergoing a rise in popularity. Flavour Of The Month is always a strong contender and many training (& business) activities run in cycles. I’ve seen the rise and fall - (and rise again) of outdoor management training, NLP, Transactional Analysis, different approaches to Training Needs Analysis and Quality Circles to just name a few. Many of these fall out of flavour for the simple reason they become a ‘must do’ activity. People jump on these bandwagons and eventually end up doing them badly, thus they then fall out of favour. Trainers like line-managers are subject to influences and thus flavours.
2. On its own, having a day out doing traditional outdoor activities such as problem solving activities using canoes, ropes, planks, abseiling, archery etc., or, at the other end of the spectrum paintballing, quad biking ‘Quiz show’ treasure hunts, film-making and similar corporate entertainment can hardly be considered team building. None of these activates on their own will ever sort out the problems, problem teams have. This is one reason why that outdoor activities run by ex military types failed. It fell out of favour. Not because the concept was wrong, simply because it was done wrongly. The people who ran these activities often did not have the knowledge, skills and understanding to address the issues at hand. Similarly having ‘a sense of fun’ as the most important factor to a day out will not make any contribution to better teamwork. You may as well go watch a comedy film.
3. The activities themselves are not the most important factor when running team-building activities yet these are often the main reason why certain activities or days out are chosen over others. Activities need to be mentally challenging rather than physically demanding. Of course enjoyment or fun helps as it does in many learning situations. What matters most is what they need to learn. This could be based on the positive attributes of a good team, or an analysis of what the team is not doing well. My own experience leans in favour of using certain outdoor activities but I have used indoor activities and a combination of both. Other trainers with different or better skills may have different preferences.
4. The most important factor is the skill of the trainer running these events. He or she needs, an understanding of team behaviours. A day, or days out, without continual discussion, analysis, feedback and tutor input is wasted money. Such reviews, which need to take place throughout the course, are the key to effective teambuilding. These reviews at worse concentrate on the teams ability, or otherwise, to complete the task. At best they should concentrate on the team processes, dynamics, skills and attributes of the individuals in the team. The team should look at their own behaviours and the relationship to what happens in the workplace. You cannot do this if you know little about these things. A poor trainer may simply make things worse. Learning does not take place by chance.
5. Teambuilding is often wrongly suggested for problems, which cannot be solved by teambuilding such as rigid hierarchical structures, inappropriate management philosophy and so on. Poor teams may exist because of outside influences they have no control over. It is important that the right people are identified and trained.

Firewalking, quadbiking and other fun days out may raise the motivation and moral of staff for a while, but unless the underlying problems are addressed staff and management may remember the day or days, positively but with no last benefits these events run under the guise of teambuilding will also fall out of favour.

David Perry
Lissacaha
Schull
West Cork.

 

Tags: corporate training, managing teams, team building, team building activities, team building exercises, Training goals, Training ROI, training solutions

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.