Studies show that “More than half of workers admitted to being nervous about returning to work.”

So, you need to focus on reengaging and reconnecting with your team. And providing some team-building activities can help you do it. 

First and foremost, it will allow you to spend time with your team and understand how they feel and how you can help support them through the transition. Second, it’s a way to ensure that people feel supported and valued during the process, whether it be remote or onsite teams. 

OUR PERSONAL STORY

At Optimist Performance, we had our first in-person meeting a couple of weeks ago. Naturally, we wanted to see each other personally, but we also wanted to evaluate how everyone felt. 

We started our morning by focusing on people’s strengths and how we could help each other to reduce workload and stress. Based on this, we created a strategy to optimise people’s strengths and time. 

After a productive morning, we move onto the fun part of the day. We spent the afternoon out in the river and enjoyed our first lunch together……..finally! 

It wasn’t a crazy team-building activity, but it still brought us closer together and allowed us to catch up, break bread, re-engage and get to know each other better. 

The reason to share this story is that we have seen first-hand how getting the team together for some ‘out of the ordinary’ activity can help productivity, performance, teamwork, and even mental health. 

THE BENEFITS OF TEAM BUILDING ACTIVITIES

Team building activities can have many benefits, but it’s essential to have a clear purpose. Knowing what you are trying to accomplish will help you plan a suitable activity for your team. 

Once you know the purpose of the session, it’s important to communicate what you intend or hope to take away from the experience, whatever that may be.   

These are some of the benefits and purpose of team building activities:

Reconnect with your team 

According to a Microsoft study, our networks have shrunk during the pandemic. Team building activities or events are an excellent way to build new connections and strengthen the ones you already have. 

Why not explore organising an event for every team in your organisation? An opportunity to help people build connections outside their immediate teams and reconnect with each other and the company after such a long time away.

Improve productivity and innovation

Changing our scenery can be hugely beneficial to innovation. It gives people a different perspective and can help to bring new ideas to the table. 

Any activity that gets us out of our comfort zone can spark our innovation and creativity. Even games that make our inner child flourish are great to inspire innovation. 

Enhance teamwork and collaboration 

Collaborating outside the office environment can help people to recognise and value each other’s strengths. In addition, it will make it easier to apply these strengths to the workplace and make people more confident about asking for help. 

Organising an activity where people need to work together towards achieving something, be it big or small, can help boost teamwork and collaboration. 

Improve communication

Sometimes, it can be challenging to find the time to have a conversation with a colleague during work hours. If you’re new to the company or a more introverted type, it can be complicated to start conversations at work, even more so if working remotely.

Team building activities allow everyone to talk to each other in a more relaxed environment that feels less time-constrained or work specific. 

Take advantage of our newfound freedom and try to get everyone together for an in-person activity. It’s a lot easier to talk to different people when we are next to each other. 

Develop a better work-life balance 

Investing in these kinds of activities is a great way to show people that you care about their work-life balance. Of course, we all want our teams to be productive, but it’s important to let people know that not everything is about numbers. 

By providing a fun activity and environment for your team, you demonstrate the value you give to work-life balance. 

Create a sense of belonging

Everyone likes to feel included, but for some people, it can be challenging to interact with others while working remotely. Being part of group activities allows more accessible interactions and can help people feel part of the team. 

The more varied, challenging and, in some cases, extreme the situation, the deeper and stronger the bonds can be. It’s common sense but often isn’t common practice.

When you spend an extended period of time with someone or overcome a challenge together, it creates a memory. That memory prompts you to feel more connected to that person, which in turn builds trust, and trust helps to foster long term, sustainable and more productive partnerships.

Thankfully for you, life-changing experiences and creating great memories is one of our areas of expertise! :). 

Team building activities have many benefits, and they can help reinforce your company values; unfortunately, they can’t produce miracles. 

If your company values aren’t aligned with and underpin the event’s purpose, then the whole thing just becomes an excuse to have some free time and a jolly. Either way, it loses its value and undermines the entire intention of it and can end up being a waste of time and money. 

THE OPTIMIST VIEW

As a leader, it’s your job to lead by example and ensure that your actions and intentions are aligned with your company values. A well-planned team-building activity can help you deliver and emphasise those values to the rest of the team. 

We are aware of how much we can gain from these activities, which is why we organise life-changing experiences that help you re-engage with both your team and your clients. 

Life is about creating memories, and we want to create an unforgettable one for you and your team. We can organise activities both online and offline, and we tailor all our activities to your purpose, values and needs. 

Get in touch with us to know how we can help you create a life-changing experience for you today.

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“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results”. – Albert Einstein

This notion of insanity could also be applied to leadership. We can’t expect old habits and skills to be useful in one setting and have the same results in a totally different situation.

Workwise, one of the major challenges we are seeing is the change to remote working. Either this is a temporary or a long-term situation, the reality is that you are dealing with it and it is your duty to do your best. 

What leadership skills are most valuable now?

At Optimist Performance, we are always looking at defining great leadership skills. Studying the present circumstances, we think that developing the following skills could help your team, your company, and yourself to evolve and get through these difficult times.

Emotional Intelligence

Definition: the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict. 

We are living under stress and experiencing different challenges. Also, not having direct or face-to-face relationships is making it even harder to interact with people. 

This is why, as leaders, you should focus now more than ever on your emotional intelligence. The ability to understand both your and others’ emotions is critical in identifying people’s needs and finding the right approach. 

Creativity

Since this is an unprecedented situation, using old answers to solve today’s problems may not be effective. Leaders who can be creative and think outside the box will be able to find better solutions. 

 Ability to build trust

Trust has always been an important leadership skill. But working from home (WFH) has made it an even more essential one. 

Different ways trust can be seen:

Trust in people. You can’t see people at their desks anymore, so now your trust in them has to be even bigger. You need to create a culture of accountability, so everyone knows their jobs and is accountable for them.  

Trust to create good communication. Build relationships where trust is a two-way street. They need to trust you so when they encounter a problem, they will have the confidence to talk to you about it. Either personal or professional problems can affect performance, so hiding our problems won’t solve anything. On the contrary, most of our matters could be easily solved if only we had the trust to talk openly about it. 

Trust in yourself. As a leader, you don’t need to have all the answers, and no one should expect you to. But you need to trust yourself to be able to make decisions and keep moving. Otherwise, you will end up staying still out of fear of failure. 

Trust in the process. You and your team have created a process that all of you believe is the right one. Now it is time to trust that it will work. You still have to be vigilant in case something goes wrong and has to be changed, but it is important to trust that what you are doing is the right thing. 

Adaptability

If you are not capable of adapting to change, it will be impossible for you to evolve. You need to be able to learn and adapt. Everything that happened gives us a lesson to learn. Don’t be afraid of failure. If you have the ability to learn from them, they could be your best teachers. 

Lead by example

This is maybe not a skill per se, but it is crucial if you want to build trust. You can’t say one thing and do the opposite. We often learn more from what we see than what we hear. So set a precedent and be the model that people can look up to. 

We are all experiencing challenges, and sometimes they can be overwhelming, but no situation will last forever. So we need to trust ourselves, be strong and positive, and believe that we have the power and the strength to evolve and come up victorious to the other side. 

We understand how difficult it can be, so we are here for you. Either what you need is an inspirational talk, a workshop, or a 1-1 coaching session, we want to help you achieve your maximum potential. 

Get in touch with us for a free consultation about any of our services. 

We would love to hear from you, leave a comment below and let us know what leadership skills you think are important while WFH. 

The post Are you adapting your leadership skills to the new situation? appeared first on Optimist Performance.