3 Team Building Activities That Hone Employee Interpersonal Skills

Sometimes, organizations are at lost when thinking of team building activities that help hone their employees’ interpersonal skills. In fact, most managers believe that team building activities are a waste of time. However, if executed correctly, team-building activities are in fact critical in developing social interactions and communication to build a solid team.

So what are the essential team building activities that can benefit your workforce? Here are three team building activities that we highly recommend to improve your employee’s interpersonal skills:

Spider Web

In every team building activity, rope courses are a must do. One of the popular rope courses there is the Spider Web. Usually, it’s constructed between trees, mobile or stand-alone structures. The goal here is to cross from one side of the web to the other without touching the web.

A team must come up with a well-thought-out strategy to let each participant with the right size and physical agility to lift, pass through. To score points, everyone who passes through the hole of the web shouldn’t physically come into contact with it. This type of team building game act as a great energizer and encourages its participants to be physically active.

Skills on focus:

This problem-solving activity may require the team members to set aside their differences-their strength, intelligence, size, and disposition. Not to mention, it needs a great deal of commitment from each team member. On this team-building activity, communication is crucial. It encourages people to speak and listen at the same time. Other suggested learning outcomes are leadership, problem-solving, cooperation and trust.

Tee Pee Shuffle

The Tee Pee Shuffle can be a log or pole in the ground wherein team members can balance on. Participants usually use the pole as a balance beam in which they maneuver around each other, performing a range of tasks to get to a new order and balance their way in the log.

Usually, challenges have increasing degrees of physical demand that’s designed to test the team. A few sample tasks would be members doing “bobs” while continuously squatting up and down without falling off the log. Members can also arrange themselves according to height, from shortest to tallest, birth month, the number of siblings, age, etc. without falling off.

Skills on focus:

Effective communication is a skill that comes in handy with this type of activity. Just imagine how hard it is doing you balancing act in the log, as you continuously ask members of your team personal information while you do the shuffle.

The Wall Challenge

The Wall Challenge is another team building activity wherein every team member is given a physically demanding task of climbing and helping each other reach the other side of the wall.

Skills on focus:

Physical skills are very much at play with this type of challenge. However, communication and camaraderie among team members are also one of the focal points of the said activity.

The Purpose of Team Building

A team is composed of a group of individuals all working towards a common goal. It’s critical that each member should be developed in a way that their skills complement each other.

A team building’s purpose is to accomplish specific tasks that are otherwise difficult for a single individual to attain or perform in given conditions. Each member must have a clear goal of what a team is willing to fulfill.

The Importance of Interpersonal Skills

Communication is often a skill that people possess. However, fail to communicate effectively and one might end up with an entirely different outcome from the ones that they expect. That’s why more than ever, communication skills are crucial for people to network with others efficiently and effortlessly. Excellent interpersonal skills have become an essential foundation for teamwork and teambuilding.

If you want to be a productive team member, you need to learn to communicate with other members of your team effectively and efficiently as possible. Members must know how to communicate well because it avoids potential conflicts from the tasks performed to the specific roles that are individually assigned. That way, you’ll achieve more as a team, get the stress levels down and enjoy work more.