Teambuilding and Teamwork
BUS 318 Organizational Behavior
Susan Brown
Instructor: Anthony DiGaetano
August 11, 2013

With me currently working in a large organization where team work is extremely important, the team-building process is the part of this course that interested me the most. When I first joined the team three years ago there appeared to be a lot of closeness and a strong team appeal within the office. I really enjoyed going to work and doing my job every day. Not long after that, there were some changes in management and somehow the strong team seemed to dissipate. With new management came new changes and my guess would be that people do not like change. Ever since that time it has been a constant battle to rebuild that team spirit that was once the driving force of a great HR unit. Having gone through this course, I have come to realize how important the team-building process is to our organization. Team-building is defined in our text as a collaborative way to gather and analyze data to improve teamwork.( Schermerhorn, 2012). Even organization teams can suffer a loss of motivation or disagreements between team mates just like in the world of sports. When situations like these occur it starts to affect the effectiveness of the organization’s success in carrying out its mission. In our office, there were a lot of negative comments made especially about the management. This would sometimes spill over to our outside contact who they were dealing with on a daily basis. Basically, it made our department start to look bad when the team got disgruntle. When management noticed the problem with the team, they decided to take action to begin rebuilding the team. In his article, “Teambuilding A Manager’s Construction Guide,” Burdett, (1989) emphasized “teambuilding begins with leadership.” Our leadership actually planned a two day team-building event for our entire HR department. They conducted

meetings amongst each other and then talked to us individually. At the time, I was not aware that this was a part of the process. I have become aware that step one was to gather data and that was what they were doing. They even sent out a survey that we all had to complete online. Little did we know, the team building process had begun. Once they gathered all the data and were aware of the issues involved they began brainstorming on how to improve the team. They came up with a plan of action which was the two day event that consisted of motivational speakers and games that required teamwork to complete. Once such game that stood out was one where we had to call out another team mates name before we threw the balloon to them. It stood out because; it did not dawn on me of how many coworkers did not know each other’s name. I thought to myself, that we hardly ever took the time out to get to know our coworkers. There are only about forty five of us in the central HR department and some people did not know other people’s names. So at least this exercise helped us to get to know each other. Communication is also important within a team and we learned that also during this two day team-building event. We also got a chance to give feedback and ask questions of management during this time. We were able to write down our questions or concerns on a post it note and all the notes were taken up and put on the board. No one really knew who wrote the note because we folded them and dropped them in the basket that was coming around the room. A lot of the questions and issues were the same which to me meant that the issue was pretty important and deserved top priority in finding a resolution. We were even asked our input on what we felt

would help solve the issue. I think that helped to bring us closer together with the managers because we felt that we actually had a voice. “Program leaders must take the time to discuss insights with participants, and to interpret the individual and team traits that