8 Team Building Activities to Bond Better at Work

If you run a team of associates or manage a group, consider what makes people like and trust you. For a personal trainer, public speaker, or business coach, if your clients and employees don’t trust you and cannot connect with you on a personal level then you could lose sales. Whether you want to motivate employees or bond better with corporate clients and business partners, bonding activities can help you get closer to them. Improve your relationship with individuals both within and outside of your organization, starting with these team building activities.

1. Sports Training

To take your relationship with your clients or employees to the next level, one option is to sign up for a sports training course together. Whether it’s visiting the local golf course or taking on squash, these activities provide opportunities to discuss ideas in a more relaxed environment than the office. A change of scenery and setting can have a positive impact on your connections.

Get to know more about your clients’ and employees’ needs by taking conversations to the recreational space. Find out about their priorities, needs, and aspirations while you’re doing the team building activities.

2. Community Work

You can also take your employees and business partners into the community for team building exercises. Get them to come up with ideas on local group involvement. Whether you want to improve your company’s reputation or explore new markets, there is a good chance that you will find what you are looking for in the heart of the community.

It’s there that you can engage with college students, deliver training for them, or pick their brain. If you would like to develop talent, provide opportunities for your team members to deliver presentations in the local community and showcase their leadership skills.

3. Set Up Charities

If you need a few extra projects to bond with your business partners or employees, you can set up charities together. Agreeing on the mission and cause will help you align your values and connect on a new level. Start your own charity or create a project that raises money and awareness for a particular issue.

When you involve your employees in team building activities, you will find it easier to spot talent than before. When you manage projects with clients and business partners, you will find common ground and respect each other more. As a result, your communication will improve, and you will both benefit from improvements in brand reputation.  

4. Conferences and Training Days Out

Organizing trips and training together can be another great way to bond with your team and business partners. Take them on a field trip on an aircraft similar to the German chancellor plane or go on a boat trip to see a new development abroad, for example.

Get a different perspective every time you arrange a meeting, conference, or day out for bonding with clients and employees. You need to look after your professional relationships to get better results and increase your client retention rate. Team building activities are a great way to do so. Check out Gild Collective to find the training program for your employees.

5. Business Trips as Team Building Activities

You might also combine business trips with training and take some of the new leaders with you to help them develop their interpersonal skills. Supervise them, but allow them the freedom to lead the conversation during team building activities. Let them be the ones to develop the pitch for a new potential client.

You can put them in charge of:

• Arranging the trip
• Researching business opportunities in the area
• Finding out as much as possible about the prospect

Watch them work and give them constructive feedback after the trip to help them grow. Sometimes you need to take a back seat in business to allow others to develop professionally.

6. Brainstorm over Lunch

One of the best ways to promote new projects and involve everyone in the planning process is to hold a brainstorming lunch. Team building activities like this one can be at the office or an outside venue.

Start by sending out invitations for the lunchtime event to:

• Your employees
• Team members
• Associates
• Business partners

Highlight the issues you want to address together over lunch in the invitation. Then ask them to prepare a presentation of their ideas. During the lunch, ask them to think about the risks and benefits of each proposal at the table.

Then, put someone in charge of investigating the project’s technological aspects, another person to complete the risk assessment, and a third person to liaise with partners and local government agencies. If you’re unsure who to assign to which tasks, ask them which one they’d like to spearhead. You’ll learn where their strengths, desires, and talents lay and how their expertise aligns with their current job role.

7. Job Shadowing

When it comes to developing and keeping talent, there is nothing more valuable than home grown leaders who understand the philosophy behind your business and can learn from you.

If you are looking for talent and want to train them personally, you don’t necessarily need to sit down with them in person. Instead, arrange job shadowing for a few days a week. That’s when those who have their eyes on a promotional opportunity can learn what the job involves to decide if it’s right for them.

Perhaps you’re looking for a new financial analyst in your company. If so, teaming up the potential candidate with the person currently in the position will help them and your business too.

8. Mentoring

While arranging mentoring within a company can be straightforward, you can pool your resources with business partners and help each other out. Are you looking to train someone to specialize in presentations and don’t have anyone to learn from in your organization?

If so, ask your business partners if an employee could get their practical training from them. You can swap and share skills and talent, thus growing together. You will have an employee who knows a lot about the business partner and has established connections and communication channels so they can manage that particular area of business.

Conclusions about Team Building Activities

Whether you are a business coach looking for new markets or the owner of a large financial firm, it is important to pay attention to relationships within and outside of your organization. Bond with your employees and clients over team building exercises, involving them in different projects to grow together.