Whenever the term team building is mentioned, understandably many people think of sports teams and how teamwork is important for success. This is absolutely true, but it is not just in sporting arenas that working as a team brings results. In the world of business, it is critical, and it is no secret that those companies which have invested in team building seem to be the ones that get the greatest results.
Whilst sport and business are two prime examples of where effective team building is essential, there are many others. Non-profit organisations, charities, state and federal departments, local clubs, hobby groups, in fact, any scenario where results depend upon several people all contributing, is one where teamwork is necessary, and where team building will bring greater success.
You do not need to be a self-help guru to understand why this is the case. In any situation where the end result is achieved from the cumulative efforts of each individual, it is patently obvious that if they are working together as a team, striving for the same goal, and supporting each other their achievements are going to be greater than if each person is simply doing their own thing.
Aristotle hit the nail on the head when he coined the phrase, ‘The whole is greater than the sum of the parts’. What he meant by that is that the collective effort and ultimately the combined result is greater than if we take each individual’s contribution and added them separately.
One example of this is often seen on the sports field where you have one team who, on paper, has individual players who clearly have more skill and ability than the individual players of the team they are playing against. If teamwork played no part in determining the result, then the team with the better players would win 100% of their matches against their seemingly weaker opponents.
However, as any sports fan or gambler who has lost a fortune backing a ‘dead cert’ will tell you, it is not always the team with the best individuals who win. Often, the team which shows the most togetherness, cohesion, and passion, and who works and fights for each other throughout the match comes out on top. The reason was that this ‘whole’ team was better than the group of individuals they were up against.
This can be seen in just about every area of our lives where sports teams, companies, individual departments, and organisations achieve greater success and results than you might expect of them, due to the fact that everyone involved works together and collectively achieves more than they would have working as individuals.
Now, in a lot of these teams, teamwork did not just suddenly appear overnight. Often it came about as a result of a manager, business owner, or coach implementing team building as an intricate part of their team’s activities. This could be via a number of routes which include team-building training courses, team-building consultants, team-building exercises, and team-building activities.
All of these can take a team who all work or operate in their own little bubble and transform them into a team who work for each other, and for the collective cause. This leads to better results, but more importantly than that it can mean everyone within that team has a vested interest in the results of their teammates or colleagues, rather than just their own.
