7 Common Mistakes Team Building Event Planners Make

We’ve all attended horrible team building events.

Especially me – that’s kind of why I started TrivWorks, after all. The dreadful activities, forced interaction, and overall cheesiness really just rubs me – and many others – the wrong way.

But I don’t think it has to be that way. I firmly believe that there’s value in an enjoyable shared experience, one which fosters bonding, cohesion and teamwork. Employees love this because it makes the workplace feel more comfortable and relaxed. Bosses in turn love this because a workplace with happier employees means less drama, more productivity and, ultimately, more money.

Yet even those with the best of intentions can fall into some pretty nasty traps when it comes to planning these events. The result of a bad event on morale can be even more detrimental than no event at all, so you really don’t want to screw it up! Here are some of the most glaring mistakes I’ve observed in over two decades producing corporate events, first as a scavenger hunt writer/guide, and for the past seventeen years as a trivia team building host and producer. A lot of these may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many planners don’t take the most basic things into consideration before organizing an event.

Wrong Activity for the Group

Not every activity is going to resonate with every group. Plan the wrong thing for YOUR audience, and you’ll have doomed yourself from the start. Is your team more “indoorsy?” They probably won’t enjoy something involving nature. Are they introverted? Then you most likely shouldn’t plan something that involves a lot of “getting up in front of the room and performing.” For my part, I’ll be the first to tell you (or any prospective client) that trivia isn’t for everybody. If the activity isn’t properly matched to the audience’s interests or abilities, it’s not going to have the effect you want.

Wrong Time of Day

If you want your program to have an impact, take it from me: pick a time of day that works. High-energy activities that require a lot of moving around, gross motor skills etc. should be done in the morning, or at least before lunch. Otherwise, you’re just going to have a bunch of tired, grumpy people who want to leave. Also, consider holding your event after hours if your activity lends itself to it, like my trivia events do – but not if it means you’re going to lose half of your attendees. Poll your group, see what time of day works best for attendance and energy level.

Choosing a Lame Activity

There’s a reason why team building activities get such a bad rap, and why folks naturally groan when they see this on the day’s agenda. So many activities just SUCK! You know what I’m talking about: the trust falls, the dumb role playing games, pseudo-improv exercises. If you’ve ever been forced to suffer through one of these, you know that A) they do indeed suck; B) they don’t make you feel any closer to your coworkers; and C) they can even leave you feeling resentful. The result here is folks leave feeling even WORSE than they did when they arrived, which is decidedly not what you want!

Hiring Unqualified “Experts”

As I’ve written about previously here on my blog, the bar to becoming a self-proclaimed “team building expert” is pretty low. Anyone can take any activity and throw a label on it, and claim it’s a way to foster group bonding. To my mind, this is nothing more than a way for folks to make money off of planners like yourself who legitimately want to improve the workplace and reward your colleagues. The reality is that most so-called “experts” have little to no formal training in how teams work, how workplaces function, or even know why what they do works at all. You may be committing your team and spending your entire budget to having a fun time, but it’s not going to do much more than that.

Planning on the Cheap

Of course you want to keep your spend limited. After all, this event isn’t resulting in any revenue generation – not directly, anyway. So you find the most inexpensive path you can: hiring a budget vendor, holding the event onsite, limiting any food/beverage to the absolute minimum. I get it, I do. But you’re not going to get the result you want by not spending anything. As the adage goes, “You need to spend money to make money.” Team building events are an investment, meaning you want them to have a major impact on the way your group works together. If you book a low-quality vendor in Conference Room B, serving Doritos and warm bottles of Dasani, you’re not setting yourself up for a win.

Trust me: it’s not worth it to go cheap.

Not Asking the Group What They Want

It’s easy to simply say “let’s plan a fun outing” or a “group bonding activity,” and then just throw something together based on your own interests. Repeating whatever’s been done in the past is also a safe path. But is it what your group WANTS to do? You won’t know until you ask them. Not only will this help you narrow down your options/choose the right activity (as mentioned above), but it will also help your colleagues feel like they’ve got some kind of ownership in the process. The last thing they’ll want is to feel like they’re being dictated to, rather than having a say in what’s happening. Which leads me to the next common mistake….

Forcing Everyone to Participate

Way back when I first started blogging on this subject some fifteen years ago, I wrote a post called “Should Corporate Team Building Activities be Mandatory?” I believed then, as I do now, that forcing people to attend team building activities is another way to shoot yourself in the foot. Think about it: if your ultimate goal is to make your colleagues feel better about coming to work every day, how does requiring attendance at a non-revenue generating activity further that goal? People have work to do: deadlines, quotas, etc. If you say to them that they cannot work because they have to participate in a group bonding exercise, they’re going to show up with a scowl. Maybe that’ll turn upside-down into a smile by the time the event is over, but I think you’re really taking a gamble here. You can’t improve morale by force.

Conclusion

I know that one little blog post isn’t going to change the way people feel about team building. Folks will continue to think it’s a waste of time and resources, a drain on limited bandwidth, a pointless activity that can even cause more harm than good. But if I can do anything to help change the perception just a little bit by influencing how YOU, the planner, approach these events, I think it can have a major impact. I say this not as a business owner or a salesman, but as someone who has seen firsthand how a well-planned, properly-executed team bonding activity can absolutely improve things back at the office. If you want your workplace to work better, for people to feel more comfortable working with each other and for your business to ultimately make more money, it’s worth the effort to plan your team building activity properly.

If you want to learn more about this topic, you will probably enjoy “How to Ruin Your Company Team Building Event in 6 Easy Steps.”