Best Team Building Activities

Waterfall abseiling is one of the more adventurous team building activities that is both fun and challenging.

Team building has been one of the most influential terms in recent years for the success of any organization. In an era that working culture has become an important aspect of a company as well as the benefits of a staff, team building has been in a crucial position. As the word says itself, team building is all about building a better team. The success of an organization in developing its employee and also a good working culture is largely due to team building efforts are done by the company. Team building is mainly aimed to motivate and encourage cooperation within a team through designated activities or events. In order for a team to work efficiently and effectively, cohesion between the team members is very crucial. Thus, team building is also an effective solution to enhance interpersonal relationships between team members. This article will discuss the following topics to venture deeper about team building :

1. About Team Building

2. What are the Benefits of Team Building?

3. Outdoor Team Building Activities

4. Indoor Team Building Activities

As no man is an island, most of the stages in life, people tend to work together to achieve something whether school, college or workplace. Teamwork has often been emphasized as an important part to achieve success in certain aspects such as organizing an event, playing in a sports competition, writing group assignments and many more. These tasks have helped us to keep in mind of the importance of teamwork. In order to have good teamwork, team building efforts are needed within any team or organizations. Team building can help its participants to get motivated and empower them to provide more creative solutions to any problems that they face. It does not only make the team better but also helping each individual to develop and learn through its activities.

Team building is also important because it lets participants have a change in scenery from everyday life. This is especially important for corporate employees that work repetitively every day. The repetitive work can become very boring and sooner or later might lead to a decrease in motivation for the employee. Thus, team building activities being held once in a while can help freshen the things up and provide the employees with a change in scenery. Whether it is going out for a day trip together or a movie together, it can help the employee to feel appreciated for their work. It can also be a reward for employees who worked hard for the company so they feel encouraged and aim to work even harder. These activities will strengthen the relationships between them and help to create a friendly working environment.

Team building activities within the office is also beneficial towards the workplace and cohesion of the team.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF TEAM BUILDING?

1. Improved Communications

Communications is one of the most important tools for an organization to be effective and efficient. Team building can improve communications between team members by a huge step. Fun team building activities can help team members to know more about each other and thus have a better understanding of each other. Through these fun and simple activities, people will have fun and eventually open up to each other. This can break down walls between them and starts to gain trust. Therefore, team building activity is a great tool to break down the communication barrier in an organization.

2. Increased Collaboration

The main purpose for team building is to increase collaboration between team members. Collaboration is very crucial in a team because a team needs to work together in order to achieve success. However, collaboration is sometimes hard to happen. The reason for this might be the team members are not familiar with each other yet or still does not trust them in their capabilities. This usually portrays a weak relationship between all of the team members. Team building activities are specially designed to force teams to work together in order to solve a problem or complete a challenge. When the team starts to work with each other among the team, it lays a foundation for the teamwork of the team and this spirit can be brought back to the workplace.

3. Increased Motivations

Other than that, team building activity can serve as an effort to help increase motivations among employee to work harder for the company. Most of the corporate employee nowadays have a heavy workload and can be very boring because of its repetitive nature. Team building activities can make the workplace more fun and exciting to keep the employees stay motivated in a fun working environment. Occasional team building activities can keep employees motivated in their job as they feel that the company does care about them. This can also keep the team’s spirit high and lead to a productive and effective team. Other than that, employees nowadays are looking forward to developing themselves individually when they work in a company to increase their own value other than just working. Team building activities also have a strong component on self-development that will help the employee to develop more as an individual. Through team building, they can learn new things, complete new achievements and also overcome great challenges to improve themselves. By organizing team building activities for the employees, companies can show that they value their employees as a valuable asset for the company and thus employees will be more motivated to work.

White water rafting offers a challenging and thrilling experience to the team and requires great teamwork in order to complete the activity.

OUTDOOR TEAM BUILDING ACTIVITIES

There are many places in Malaysia that provide team building activities which is fun and exciting. One of the famous places is Gopeng, Perak. It is a very easy going town which is once the most important mining town in Malaya. This little town in Perak is surrounded by breath-taking limestone hills, flourishing green forest landscapes and beautiful rivers. As Gopeng is a historic old mining town, the streets at the town give off a historical vibe with its old shop lots that remained the same as when the town was first found. Due to its mining town status, the town is populated mostly by the Chinese. Thus, many Chinese cultures can be seen in the town. Now, Gopeng is one of Malaysia’s top destination for ecotourism and adventure tourism due to its exciting landscapes. There are many activities can be found here such as white water rafting, waterfall abseiling, jungle trekking and many more.

Whitewater rafting is one of the most famous activities in Gopeng. The white water rafting will be on Kampar River which is graded at level I-III for white water rafting. It is suitable for both beginners and experienced ones. The river has 14 rapids which are excellent for white water rafting. The white water rafting activity requires all the members on the boat to work together and navigate the boat through the rapids of the river. Other than that, caving is also famous in Gopeng. Gua Tempurung offers an adventurous caving experience that is suitable for beginners and experts likewise. It is the largest cave in Peninsular Malaysia that takes around 3 hours for a comprehensive tour in the cave. With all the beautiful stalagmites and stalactites formed in the cave, it will be a great and unique experience together with your colleagues.

Moreover, Gopeng offers a lot of locations suitable for team building activities in a natural setting. There are a number of resorts that provides team building activities too. Due to its location which is surrounded by the forests, Gopeng is one of the favourite team building getaway destinations for many organizations. It is good for the team to relax in the resorts and have some fun activities. The natural setting also brings people especially corporate employees away from the bustling city. Gopeng is a good location for anyone to recharge themselves.

Jungle trekking in Taman Negara is also a fun team building activity to go for. (Image Credit: Flickr//mdhanafi)

Other than Gopeng, there are several more locations in Malaysia that offers great outdoor team building activities. Malaysia is a tropical rainforest country that also has beautiful sandy beaches, this has made Malaysia into a perfect destination for many outdoor team building activities. One of them is Taman Negara, the oldest rainforest in the world. There are many outdoor activities that can be done amidst the peaceful rainforest such as water rafting, jungle trekking, mountain climbing and many more. The outdoor setting can help to invoke a stronger team spirit into the teams and transferring these spirits back to the workplace.

Not to forget the Jewel of Kedah, Langkawi Island is also an excellent location for outdoor team building activities. The island not only has beautiful beaches but also exciting forest landscapes. Activities in Langkawi are such as kayaking, ATV riding, abseiling, flying fox and many other. There are also a number of resorts or tour agencies that provide amazing race and treasure hunt activities that covers almost the whole island. People can work together to win the hunt or race while also enjoying themselves touring the island. Some other places in Malaysia suitable for team building are Desaru Fruit Farm, Cameron Highlands, Mount Kinabalu hike and many more.

Occasional fun team building activities can help to turn up the mood in the workplace and strengthen the bonds between team members.

INDOOR TEAM BUILDING ACTIVITIES

However, team building activities don’t necessarily be at outdoors. There are also a handful of classroom or indoor team building activities which is easy to set up yet fun to play. These team building activities give a different impact than the ones at outdoors. These activities are not time-consuming and can help a lot in team building if planned and executed properly. Here are some of the most chosen team building activity ideas at indoor.

First off is Scavenger Hunt. The scavenger hunt is very similar to treasure hunt with the ultimate goal being to find all the listed items fastest or within a limited time frame. Participants are divided into equal sized teams and given a list of items which can be found around the office building. Then they will need to find them before a specific time. There are many more ways to make the scavenger hunt more fun such as giving it a theme, clues to find items, handicaps for teams and others. Be creative and make the team building fun to make sure team members really enjoy it.

The Human Knot is also a very popular team building activity. Although it may seem easy from the outside, it does need a lot of communication among the team members. The participants will stand in a circle shoulders to shoulders and facing the inside of the circle. Then each participant will grab the hand of someone across them in the circle. Do take note that everyone should hold hands of two different people and no one should hold the hand of someone standing directly next to them. The main objective of the game is to untangle everyone to form the human knot without the circle being broken in the process. If the human knot is being broken in the middle of the process, the team will need to start over again.

Another indoor team building activity is Truths and Lie. This activity is a really good icebreaking team building activity. Everyone will sit in a circle which should not be too big as players need to communicate with each other. Then, each person will take turns to say 4 facts about themselves where 3 of them are true but 1 of them is a lie. The lie should be reasonably realistic so that the guess will not be too easy. Once the 4 facts are told, other players will take turns to guess which one of the fact is a lie. The lie will then be revealed after everyone has done the guessing. Through this simple activity, they will know more about each other and have fun at the same time with some unexpected lies. This can help a lot in building a stronger relationship within the team.

A friendly workplace environment can lead to an increase in work efficiency and the employee will feel more motivated and positive.

IN A NUTSHELL

Team building is definitely becoming more and more important gradually. Many of the organizations nowadays emphasize team building. It has been well proven by many organizations that great team building efforts have helped the organizations to increase its productivity, efficiency and effectivity. Team building efforts by the organization also lead to a good working culture which can motivate employees to work harder for the company and occasionally recharge themselves through the activities.

For More Ideas on Team Building:

• To find out some of Gopeng's best outdoor group activities, click here.

• To discover the best outdoor team building activities in Malaysia, click here.

• To check out the 9 most chosen team building activities, click here.

• To find out more about team building activities and their importance, click here.