7 Team Building Strategies
One of the secrets to managing a successful team of marketing employees is fostering an environment where those employees are comfortable collaborating with each other. If your team members are capable of communicating efficiently, sharing when they’re overburdened and splitting the workload, and genuinely enjoying each other’s company, they’ll be much more productive—and more likely to stick with your company as well. They’ll also be more likely to stay on the same page in their approach to representing your brand in various marketing channels.
There are some strategies you can use to control the environment to nurture more employee bonding and collaboration, such as creating collaborative workspaces and decking out the break room, but it’s just as important to host occasional teambuilding events; that way, your employees will have a chance to informally bond with one another, learn to work together, and enjoy themselves at the same time.
Improving Your Marketing Team Through Teambuilding
These team building events each have the potential to help your employees personally bond with one another, and learn how to work and communicate more efficiently:
1. Take a boating trip. Whether you purchase a company yacht or simply rent a boat for a low-key fishing trip, getting your employees out on the water can be an amazing teambuilding experience. Being on the open water gives you all a chance to talk to each other in a non-work setting, and possibly engage in activities like water skiing, fishing, or swimming. If your employees love the outdoors and if you live in a city near water, it’s the perfect excuse to get your team together.
2. Solve a murder mystery or escape room. Murder mysteries and escape rooms have one important principle in common: they require your team to work actively together to solve a mystery. It’s highly unlikely that one person will have all the information necessary to complete a challenge or fully solve the mystery, so teamwork is an absolute must. On top of that, it’s fun to be immersed in a story, and you’ll all learn some valuable puzzle-solving techniques that can help you when brainstorming new content ideas or troubleshooting a failing campaign.
3. Have a board game night. If weather is preventing you from enjoying the outdoors or if you’re ready for a night in, try to host a board game night. Modern board games are enriching experiences that combine strategy, luck, and in some cases, social deception. It’s the perfect way to get your team members communicating with each other, exchanging information and trying to find the perfect strategy to overcome a challenging situation. With the diversity of board games available, you can cycle in new options every event and never run the same game twice.
4. Get physical. Getting your employees to engage in some kind of physical activity together is good for several reasons; it helps your employees stay in shape, it gets them producing endorphins together, and in many cases, it forces them to work as a team. The best example here is to start a recreational sports team, but if your employees aren’t into the idea, you could try something simpler, like going ziplining or going on a long hike through the woods.
5. Sing karaoke. Not everyone likes the idea of karaoke, but it serves several important social functions. It’s a way to get a sense for everyone’s musical tastes, and a shared experience that all of you will remember, for better or worse. Most importantly, singing karaoke requires the individuals in your group to, one by one, make themselves vulnerable by singing in front of the group. The group, then, can provide support and make them feel like part of the team.
6. Take a class. You can foster a team-centric experience by taking your employees to a class, too—especially if it’s a creative class. For example, you could take your employees somewhere they can learn to paint or attend a cooking class with them. They’ll appreciate the chance to learn something new, and they’ll all be doing it together.
7. Go out for drinks. Sometimes, the simplest team building events are the most effective. If you can’t decide what to do, or if your team doesn’t want anything fancy, you could simply take them out for drinks at a local bar or restaurant. It’s a great way to facilitate conversation in an informal context.
Learning From the Past
Some of these team building events will work better for your team than others. It’s important to experiment with different approaches so you can determine which ones your team most appreciates. Then, you can find tangentially related events to try in the future, or simply repeat the nights that were most successful.
