Planning A Successful Team Building For The Millennials
The fundamental part of any successful business is team building.
Team building activities for adults help employees learn to communicate and work together to solve problems. When your employees understand how to use their strengths for the common good, they will be happier and work more efficiently.
Over the years, there has been a rising number of millennials joining the workforce, and this bunch will soon become business leaders. Millennials value big dreams, social awareness and a desire for freedom. The picture that they have in mind for an office or workplace is also very different from your older employees.
There’s a big difference between these two groups, and these differences don’t just consist of a cultural divide and a simple age gap. Millennials have different measurements for professional engagement and success; they also have different methods for accomplishing their professional goals. The older generations are used to a more individualized work condition; but, the millennials cannot cope with this approach. They are used to working as a team with their fellow employees.
So how do you get them hooked during your team building? Below, we show you a couple of ways you can use to make sure that they have fun during the team building activities.
Make Team Building a Constant Process
For team building activities to be productive with millennials, they should be high-energy, creative, collaborative, innovative, interactive, engaging, and insightful. Not to mention, millennials are very observant and deliberate, so they need to understand that everything they’re doing has a purpose or meaning. It’s crucial for the team leaders and employees to continuously strive to build their teams and encourage them to strengthen their bonds.
Employers must understand the passions of their millennial employees to keep them from seeking work elsewhere. In fact, the best way to get them to love their workplace is to make their boss into a coach or mentor, who will also act as a guide, encourager and provide consistent feedback reward their efforts which gives them the opportunity to improve themselves. They also want trust, flexibility, and team collaboration.
Avoid Activities That People May Find Uncomfortable
Managers often turn to paintball, softball, or golf as a group bonding activity. These sports tend to encourage aggressive behaviour, only focused on destroying the other side. But when it comes to teambuilding, it leverages competition to drive the combined team to higher levels of success. Make sure to leverage the millennials love of competition into ideas that develop a strong and cohesive team, not aggression.
The purpose of these activities is on succeeding, and on working effectively as a team. Also avoid activities in which one team member is singled out, with his or her performance independent of the rest. This will risk embarrassing and alienating the individual, and it does very little to help the collective strength of the team.
Aside from outdoor activities, you can also find indoor team building activities to explore the individual strengths within the team, without putting individuals on the spot. Lastly, companies should also avoid team building events that force participants to share personal information. Avoid prying their feelings and thoughts out in front of everyone and respect the people on your team.
Encourage Full Engagement from Everyone
Millennials love to participate and engage in activities. Creating something as a team is a brilliant idea, alternatively, using activities to focus on a problem that will require the entire team to succeed. Watching other people participate while they sit back is not their thing, they love coming up with new approaches and how to solve problems.
They’re always seeking ways that they can interact with the material and apply their knowledge; so tap this energy in your teambuilding event. Employers can create high-energy, positive environments which promote full participation from everyone when using this method to team building. Selecting activities that rely on every member’s participation will have the greatest success.
Millennials love learning through trial and error. They are always discovering new and innovative methods because they consider their own time and effort as well as others. Remember millennials are highly interactive, and prefer opportunities to connect with others, so getting out of the office can be immediately rewarding. So plan some fun activities for them and start creating a work environment where they will thrive.
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