Essentials of Team Building

By Terry Abriel Poh - (CCPE) Anglican High

Helping people become respectful competitors, cooperative team members and community leaders is a goal that educators, coaches and recreation and community leaders alike deem worthwhile.

Team building provides individuals and teams physical, social and emotional challenges. Moreover, team building is the conduit by which people achieve these challenges. Specifically, team building is the strategy of facilitating the creation of a team through a series of purposeful activities and then assigning the team carefully constructed physical challenges to overcome. The people on the team must work together to develop and implement a strategy for achieving their objective. Team building allows participants to find out for themselves that the process of achieving a goal is what’s important and that the outcome follows the process. This is an extremely valuable lesson. In addition, team building provides an environment that helps participants understand that failure is only temporary. When one fails, he or she needs to reorganize and try again and in doing so travel a much sweeter path to success.

Team building addresses several specific skills:

Problem Solving
Appropriate risk taking
Building working relationships
Cooperation
Leadership and communication
Creative thinking
Building trust
Making decisions
Setting goals
Developing physical skills


The purpose of me writing this topic is to get CCPEs to share Team Building Challenges on this blog so that all can benefits by using is in their school.


Let me start of by sharing this challenge:

Communication Activities
Title: Group Construction

Setup:
Team members sit in a semicircle with their backs to the center of the circle. They should not be able to see other group members’ toothpicks as they build their designs on the floor.
One team member designated as the construction manager sits with his or her back to the rest of the team on the opposite side of the semicircle. The construction manager places his or her toothpicks on the floor one at a time and attempts to build a design of some kind. After placing each toothpick on the floor, the construction manager orally guides the rest of the team to place their toothpicks in the same position. The construction manager tries to get all the builders to construct the same design that he or she is building.

Rules and Sacrifices:
The construction manager is the only one who can speak.
The construction manager must give directions one toothpick at a time.
No one may look at the construction manager’s design or at any other builder’s design before completion.
The construction manager may not look at the builders’ design before completion.

After the construction manager gives the direction for the last toothpick, the builders and the construction manager look at each other’s designs. How many designs exactly matched the construction manager’s design?

Equipment:
Ten toothpicks for each team member.


P.S. Follow the same guideline when posting your challenges.