1. Know your goals
1.1 Before starting any movement, you need to decide on your goals. Team-building exercises are no exception.
1.2 Based on the team's key goals and pain points, current workload and schedule intensity, formulate a goal that will be most useful in the given conditions. A well-designed exercise helps achieve key goals, relieves pain and tension, improves team spirit, etc.
1.3 You don't have to do an exercise just for the sake of it. Be sincere when planning and executing the event, try to bring maximum benefit. People feel when they are treated sincerel; a sincere approach brings corresponding results.
2. Know your team
2.1 Managers often face a number of questions when preparing for their first team-building exercise. The first step is to know your team.
2.2 What does it mean to know your team? This means not only knowing each team member, but also knowing the key principles by which your team functions. It is important to understand that a collective exercise is different from an individual one, and what suits one person may not suit another, much less the whole team.
2.3 With your team's key principles in mind, carefully consider what the exercise should be to provide maximum benefit to the team, help achieve its key goals and reduce pains.
3. Know your format
3.1 Based on the conclusions you made in the previous paragraph, decide on the format of the exercise; now is the time to take into account the resources at your disposal: time, budget, etc. A good exercise is time-optimized, fits well into the calendar, is budget-friendly and brings maximum benefits.
3.2 Based on the resources, decide on the format of the exercise - will it be offline or online, will it be indoors or outdoors, etc. In some cases, a combined format can provide good effectiveness.
4. Know your timing
4.1 Decide whether this is a one-time team-building exercise or a regular one, how often you want to do it, and how long it takes.
4.2 One-time and regular exercise have their pros and cons. In my opinion, if you want to get long-term results, it is preferable to choose a regular type of exercise - regularity makes it easier to form the necessary habits and skills.
4.3 The frequency of exercise depends on all the previously listed factors. Your task is to choose the optimal quantity based on your conditions.
4.4 How long does one exercise take? It is important that the exercise is long enough so that everyone has time to participate and benefit from it, and short enough so that no one gets bored but wants to repeat it in the future.
5. Know your feedback
5.1 Continuously getting and analyzing feedback is a good approach to both improve the effectiveness of current team-building exercise and provide a good foundation for future ones.
5.2 Be grateful for any honest feedback, good or bad. Your task is to eliminate the weaknesses of the exercise as quickly as possible, to find and strengthen the aspects of the exercise that provide the greatest benefit.
5.3 Another tip that can help you gather feedback during exercise is to be natural. You don't need to turn collecting feedback into paperwork, you need live feedback.
Key points
1. To ensure that each participant feels good during the team-building exercise and is fully immersed in the process, take care of everyone. For this, careful preparation for the exercise is important.
2. Be sincere when preparing and conducting the team-building exercise. Don't do exercise for the sake of exercise. People feel both the sincerity and the falseness of the organizer.
3. Do you want to not stop at a one-time exercise, but do it regularly, creating a system? Make sure your team is excited about the very first exercise.
Good luck!