We’ve all heard those stories about work teams heading out to the wilderness to perform team-building activities involving bungee cords and rock-climbing walls. But do these gimmicks actually work?

These exercises can also help employees work on more serious issues, such as learning problem-solving techniques and improving communication skills. This all helps them to build trust, which goes a long way toward achieving better communication.

All that being said, sometimes the best efforts to motivate a team fail. HR departments tend to see team building as the panacea when given the task to raise motivation and engagement levels at work amongst staff members. These tend to be the events planned by executives who don’t understand the team climate. For example, if there are personal conflicts on a team, inviting them to play paintball may only serve to increase hostility rather than eliminate those feelings.

A critical point of what’s missing in these types of team building events is the consideration of extrisic vs intrinsic motivators that every employee has at work. Simply this means is what motivates a person when they think of work – is it external factors ( money, promotions, bonuses etc) or intrinsic (autonomy, self-mastery or purpose). Usually, events such as team buildings only superficial.

Activities that everyone hates will also not go far in building trust. Childish activities like sing-alongs and rope climbing may distract employees from their work relationships, but if they resent having to be there, they won’t open up to improving the lines of communication and less likely improve engagement at work.

Part of motivating a successful team comes from a continuous focus. Planning one annual event does little for the group’s long-term success. A corporate culture integrating regular team-building exercises and allowing employees to connect and learn to trust each other will far better serve the group and organization than a big annual event.

When creating team-building events or exercises, be sure to take these factors into consideration: What’s the overall team climate – is it hostile? Indifferent? How much will management be involved – (support from management helps reinforce the team building )? How long will it take (will workers resent being away from their families overnight?)? What’s the goal?

Many of these events missed out the elements of motivation that are so critical in forming champion teams. To do so, it is more important to understand the drivers of motivation of individuals and teams.

In his motivation theory, Daniel Pink, states that businesses and leaders should use a new approach to motivation which is based on self-determination (see video). People have an innate drive to be autonomous, self-determined and connected to one another. Being able to suss out these three elements ensure the better success that anything you could ever dream of. Money is a motivator only up to a certain extent, but beyond a certain threshold, people will work on something they believe in without even getting paid.

This is highlighted by the Encyclopedia wars in early 2000 when Microsoft paid millions to develop content for Encarta as the Encyclopedia of choice only to be dethroned by Wikipedia, a platform that did not pay a single cent to its content creators. By 2009, Encarta closed shop.

For Wikipedia, the motivation was purely based on the three elements of autonomy, mastery and purpose. It was the self-directed and increases the engagement of its users (autonomy), the consesus of many thousands of content creators to create good content by virtue of trying to achieve excellence (mastery) and the desire to do something with meaning (purpose).

Money is a motivator only up to a certain extent, but beyond a certain threshold, people will work on something they believe in without even getting paid.

To understand the underlying motivation of a team, I think that we need to understand what energizes the team members and how they function at work. Subsequently, leaders must be able to empower their teams in their work by creating a trusting relationship.

While starting with existing team building exercises is fine, customize them to fit your team’s needs. And creating activities to deal with a specific behavior issue is overkill. If you have a situation between two co-workers,  deal with it directly and privately rather than spreading your desire for everyone to get along to the entire team.

You don’t need to schedule a weekend retreat complete with a trapeze to get the job done. You can set up a series of events in your office during hours that an entire team can stop work.

Focus on events that will zero in on the goals you set for the effort. Consider bringing in a consultant to analyze the team you want to help and recommend the best course for creating better engagement among co-workers.

Team building, if thought through carefully, can help your team become better at communicating and interacting. Take into consideration the team’s specific needs when planning a program. The best practice is aways to understand the intrinsic as well as the extrinsic motivation that drives each individual and the team. Then, see whether the overall drive aligns with the organizational goals and objectives. It looks a simple, but many things of value simple is always good. Or you can always drop us a line.