Achieving Corporate Nirvana - 3 Effective Team Training Ideas

Is Gordon Brown the best person for the job? Who knows, but what I can tell you is that if you are in business and you have a badly trained team, then your company will not achieve its potential. Even in these gloomy economic times, team building is an essential corporate activity. A well motivated and dedicated team will undoubtedly help you get through the Credit Crunch.

Effective team building always ensures increased productivity, competence and increased profit. The advantages of corporate team training include improved morale and leadership skills, a greater ability to tackle barriers, clearly defined business objectives and goals and better understanding of processes and procedures. The newly achieved team spirit will not allow the team to be let down. The team members will fight obstacles and challenges as one unit.

But how does one achieve this corporate Nirvana? And without sending the company into financial ruin too! Simple, organise several short, half day energisers for your employees throughout the year. These energisers should be corporate entertainment events that involve team building. The reason for using such events in this way is that it is team training by stealth. Choose your energisers wisely and you will develop skills within your team without them really realising.

For example, corporate archery events. Most of your staff will never have handled a bow and arrows before, or if they have, it will probably have been as a child. So this will necessitate training to use unfamiliar materials. It is human nature that some will learn faster than others and you will find that the onlookers who are faster learners will support the less able team members; your team will start to develop the habit of training and helping each other. Since the equipment is not complex or high tech, you will usually find that this is a low budget option. Archery is portable so you could even have it on your own premises.

Another Credit Crunch busting corporate training event is the treasure hunt. If you go to a reputable supplier, they will provide you with a hunt that is enjoyable and which develops a supportive atmosphere, thus developing the same habit within your team. To select a good treasure hunt, you should look for someone that provides more clues that could be answered in the time available (trains planning skills), has a variety of easy and hard clues plus extra activities such word games (allows everyone to contribute and develops lateral thinking skills), has a scavenger element (develops negotiation skills and self-confidence) and has a time limit (training for meeting deadlines).

If that is too tame for your liking, why not go for an adventure game style of event such as one of the spy training days or half days. Immerse your staff in the world of James Bond for a few hours to release them from the pressures of everyday business life. With events like safe cracking, axe throwing, crossing a laser filled room, identifying agents, coming up with inventive disguises with only what is around them, crossing a minefield and defusing a bomb, an event like this will be talked about for a long time afterwards. It will also have been a great team building exercise as to achieve success; the winning team will have needed to work together as a unit. Again, it will contribute to the development of the right attitudes and skills needed in a successful business.

So, choosing short corporate events carefully, your staff will have a good day out and be revitalised. You can sit back, smugly knowing it was money well invested.