Team games

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

Having crowded out the calm and traditional options for organizing corporate leisure (buffets, dances, banquets with the participation of motley pop artists and mass entertainers), in recent years, the fashion for teambuilding has not taken place in Russian corporate practice. Teambuilding, a favorite toy of Western HR managers, implies team games and trainings involving the entire team of the company to create a cohesive team. But sometimes it brings completely different results …

Variants

1. "Shooting"

Depending on the weather outside, you can choose between paintball (outdoors) or Quasar (indoors). In paintball, pneumatic markers are used as weapons that shoot fragile gelatinous balls filled with water-soluble paint. The game is held outdoors, and everyone who is not contraindicated in physical activity for health reasons can participate in it. According to statistics from the Paintball Development Fund, "the average age of the players is 24 years, among the players 85% are men and 15% are women."

In Quasar, players use blaster machines, into which at the beginning of the game they enter information about the scenario of the game and its parameters using reloading stations. You need to hit the base and enemy players with a laser beam. At the end of the game, everyone receives a printout showing the number of defeats of each player, the number of shots and reloads they fired, and other additional information. The quasar takes place at a very intense pace, which requires you to react quickly and move through the smoky labyrinth in which the game is being played.

What is pleasant, during the game, the participants do not feel pain, unlike paintball, after which large and very painful bruises remain.

2. "Adventurers"

The Rope Course usually takes place outside. The game is called this because of the large number of ropes and cables used, which are attached to the crowns and trunks of trees (or on rigidly fixed structures in the room).

"Competitions" for team members are somewhat reminiscent of the well-known "Fort Bayard" in a simplified form and almost always involve team ingenuity: from alternating passage along a swinging "log" to moving from point A to point B along a tightrope without the help of hands.

If you want to test yourself, there is a more difficult attraction: to climb the planks nailed to the pine trunk to a height of 10-20 meters and jump from there - with insurance, of course.

Often, the "rope course" includes elements of a relay race: the participants are divided into two teams and are offered, for example, by tying the players in pairs, to run for a while to a certain point and return to the team, passing the baton to the next pair. And there are a lot of such contests. For example, the unrestrained laughter of the audience is caused, for example, by the situation when all the players, including men, take turns dressing up in an absurd long skirt and sent running to defend the honor of the team.

3. "Extreme"

If shooting a couple of particularly hated colleagues with a marker and jumping off a pine tree doesn't seem extreme enough for you, the vigilant team building companies offer a ride called "free hover." "This program is built on building mutual understanding between its participants, - explained to us in the" Academy of Adventures ", - and providing an opportunity to perform an extreme act: jump with a parachute, fly on a hang-glider, perform aerobatics, jump from a bridge …"

The rallying effect is achieved by learning together and overcoming fears before and after the flight, as well as brainstorming and watching video footage.

results

Teambuilding solves such corporate tasks as "mastering a variety of methods of group problem solving - brainstorming, planning techniques and control over the planned implementation." This is achieved due to the variety and sometimes non-triviality of tasks that require the concentration of attention of all participants. As a result, the peculiarities of relationships in the team, the distribution of influence and leadership, the strengths and weaknesses of the group and disparities (functions that are not performed by anyone from the group) are revealed. The specifics of each member of the team are also being clarified, which allows the company to more efficiently use the available workforce.

However, there is also a downside to the coin. The task of the personnel officers of the United States and Europe, who stood at the origins of teambuilding, was to defeat Western individualism, which led to the inability and unwillingness of workers to establish effective joint activities. At the same time, the goal orientation of Americans is an element of culture: planning and "project" thinking is natural for a Western person.

In Russia, the situation is exactly the opposite: our "communal" ties are still strong, there is more than enough collectivism (take at least the traditional "collective creativity" on tests in schools and universities), so additional cohesion is sometimes completely unnecessary.

But poor planning is much more difficult to "cure" by team games that do not reflect real-world objectives.

However, from the point of view of subordinates, teambuilding is sheer pleasure. It allows you to:

1. to dump the accumulated resentment and aggression,
2. increase self-esteem and feel untapped potential,
3. realize their role in the team and feel the support of the team in practice and
4. gives you the opportunity to look at others in a new way and often feel sympathy for them.

Who doesn't want to have a good rest in a cheerful company?

It turns out that there are some! Some do not like collective forms of leisure, preferring to rest on their favorite couch. Others consider themselves not athletic enough to participate in competitions on an equal basis with everyone. If these are unreasonable complexes, then there are ways to convince a person to take part, but what if these are objective indications, for example, shortness of breath or severely overweight?

Add to this the efforts of some overly zealous bosses, who consider failure to attend a team game for absenteeism, and it turns out that team building brings not positive emotions, but one continuous frustration.

Hence, in fact, not the most optimistic conclusion: everything must be approached wisely, taking into account the desires and capabilities of employees. And in this, most of the chiefs were not noticed. But maybe everything will still change for the better?..