I am sure you might have participated in one form of team building exercise or the other, with or without even realizing it; for example, you have probably participated in sports, at some point, and sports are a type of team building exercise; they can be of immense benefits to your health if done right.
Team building exercises are activities that are done in a group to improve the mental, social, physical and emotional well being of the individuals doing it. There are many different types of team building exercises that you should consider for your organization and we will be looking at some of them right now.
Physical Team Building Exercises
These exercises are mostly done by sport teams who use them to train their muscles and perfect match tactics. But it can also be used by any group of people who want to stay fit and in shape. Physical team building exercises, could literally be any sport of your choice, and have the advantage of reducing stress by causing feel good hormones, opiates and endorphins to be released into the body which relaxes your mind and your muscles. Although these types of exercises are also usually great for bonding, not everyone one in your group might fancy getting physical, and if this is the case, you might opt for some of the other types of team building exercises in this article.
Problem Solving Team Building Exercises
This is a type of team building exercise that exercises the mind and brain, and helps to improve the thinking skills of individuals. It requires people to solve a problem for which the answer is not apparent, demanding that people think creatively. These exercises are also great for bonding and for improving mental capacity, but won’t do much good for physical health and well being.
Communication Team Building Exercises
This type of team building exercise is designed to cause participants to communicate better and more effectively between themselves and it involves the use of problem solving exercises that are designed in such a way that solving them is impossible without good communication between the participants.
Trust Team Building Exercises
These exercises are designed to instill trust among participants for their fellow participants; they are incredibly complex tasks and duties that will require you to have high amounts of trust in other participants, sometimes to uncomfortable levels.
Conclusion
You can design your own activities using these guidelines; remember that for holistic wellness, you should probably include an element of each of these types of activities in your team building exercises.