5 Signs it’s Time for Team Building

Teamwork is essential to business or organisational success on an ongoing basis. However, it’s also one of those situations where you often think you have it — right up until you figure out too late that you very much do not. My company found that out the hard way not too long ago.

Often, it’s never any one person’s fault that things started to slip or went awry, but what I only realised in retrospect is that warning signs tend to start showing up fairly early on. Knowing what to look for could help you avoid some of the pitfalls my team fell into.

Those include the following:

1) Frequent communication breakdowns

One of the biggest warning signs that cropped up early on and which team-building exercises helped us sort out is that my workers weren’t always effective at communicating with each other, or with me. According to Vantage Circle, this could mean you don’t have a way of effectively letting each other know where you are in various processes, what needs to be done at each step or what’s required to ultimately complete the task at hand.

When this becomes a persistent problem, team building is needed to right the ship.

Teamwork is something you should always try to improve.

2) Lack of trust between co-workers or management

When communications break down, it becomes easy for team members or managers to resort to finger-pointing. That, in turn, sows discord between all members of the team. Some may feel like another person threw them under the bus, or that the boss is putting more pressure on them than a coworker. All of this is a potential problem. Simply put, trust in one another, or you just can’t have a cohesive team unit.

3) Rising complaint volume

Whether managers are hearing more complaints from staff members, their own bosses or worst of all customers and clients, that should set off all sorts of alarms for you. The Forbes Leadership Council pointed out that while you’re never going to go through life 100% problem-free, when you start seeing more complaints, or a greater concentration of gripes related to the same issues, you need to figure out what’s gone wrong.

4) Missed deadlines and goals

If you’re like me, you’ve certainly found that you occasionally have to push back a deadline or fall short of a goal through no fault of your own, or anyone else’s. That’s just how it goes sometimes. But if “occasionally” becomes “frequently,” you have a problem on your hands.

5) Employees seem burned out

One of the biggest warning signs I encountered when I dealt with these problems was that my workers always seemed stressed out, and some of them ended up leaving the company. That’s the reason the Undercover Recruiter pointed out that a healthy workplace is one where employees have fun in addition to staying on task.

Of course, you need to keep in mind that these are all worst-case scenarios and team building is something you should always strive to get out in front of. In fact, I’ve found this shouldn’t be a set-it-and-forget-it proposition: It’s best to provide continual opportunities for teams to grow closer and work better together. As the holidays approach and this stressful year comes to a close, it might be a good idea to reconnect the team, boost morale and refocus on the team’s priorities.

If you start to spot more than one of these potential warning signs creeping into your organisation’s efforts overall, it’s time to address the problem. The experts at ICML can design a series of great team-building workshops for your employees to get a better handle on not only your operational efficiency, but also cohesion and morale. Get in touch today to learn more about what ICML can do for you.