A team building alternative: get your team working on a real issue

A few months ago I wrote “Don’t do team building” here. I was expecting tomatoes. What I mostly got was one question, always the same: “Fine, but what do we do instead?”

Here is my answer.

What classic team building doesn’t fix

I have nothing against go-karting or escape rooms. People have a good time, and a good time among colleagues never hurt anyone.

The trouble is what we expect from it. We organise a day of fun hoping it will improve the way the team works. Then Monday morning comes: the meetings are the same, so are the things left unsaid, and the thorny file is still on the table. The team shared an activity. It learned nothing about how it works together.

The alternative: solve a real issue together

What I offer teams fits in one sentence: take an issue that truly matters to them and work on it together, with a different method from the usual meetings.

A real issue is a question the team has to answer anyway: how to launch this offer, how to work better with the department next door, what to do with the project that has stalled. The issue comes from you, not from a catalogue of activities.

Cohesion comes afterwards, as a consequence. As I wrote in the first article: cohesion is not doing something together, it is achieving something together.

How a workshop runs

Every workshop is built for the team taking part, but the outline is almost always the same.

1. We choose the issue with the manager. Beforehand, we frame the question together. It has to be real and within the team’s reach.
2. We open up. Using creativity techniques, the team produces a lot of ideas, including the ones nobody dares say in a meeting. This is when people laugh the most, and when the quietest ones speak up.
3. We choose. The team sorts and selects its own ideas, against clear criteria. The decision does not go to whoever talks loudest.
4. We commit. Everyone leaves with a plan: who does what, and by when.

What the team gets out of it

First, concrete ideas on an issue that had been waiting, and a plan to carry them out. That is what justifies the day to senior management.

Then a shared experience of a different kind. Participants have watched their colleagues think, suggest, sometimes change their minds. They have discovered talents they never suspected in the person at the next desk. And they have achieved something together, which lasts longer than a podium photo in the WhatsApp group.

Finally, a method. The team has learned to produce ideas and decide as a group, and can use it again without me.

Which teams, and when

This format works well in three situations:

• an annual seminar you want to be useful;
• a new manager arriving, or a team that has just been reorganised;
• a project to launch or relaunch.

It works less well if the only goal is to unwind. In that case, book the go-karts. The two combine very well, by the way: the workshop during the day, the fun in the evening.

What about the budget?

A workshop takes more preparation than a leisure activity, because it is built around your issue. In return, you leave with a piece of work done. Papaya Consulting is Qualiopi and ISO 9001 certified, and 97% of our trainees say they are satisfied. Depending on your situation, the workshop can be part of a training programme.

Feel like trying something else?

Tell me in a few lines what issue your team is dealing with right now. I will reply with a suggested format.

To see who we already work with: our references.